Census

Well, that’s it then.
After years of telling family and friends that I am descended from French aristrocracy, the recently released on-line 1911 Census returns have brought me down to earth with an almighty crash.
It was the name, you see, Orgill, sounds exotic doesn’t it? There is an Orgeuil Castle in Jersey and the village of Orgill in the Lake District.
Now the myth has been well and truly exploded and I have been found out, thanks to this damned Census. Don’t ever go there; you will undoubtedly discover things from your family past, you would rather not know.
So, rather than having a claim to the French throne, I’ve found out I come from very humble beginnings in the back streets of Derby and Sheffield. I know now, for the first time in 65 years, that maternal granny got married twice, the second time to a "malleable iron machine moulder!" Uncle Charlie was a fetler, uncle Jim was a "picker-outer" on a rivet machine and uncle Tommy worked on a screwing machine. I do remember now, during my visits to the Sheffield family, that my uncles always seemed to be at home. That’s because they were union agitators, always bring their mates out on strike.
I take consolation in the fact that good old uncle Sam was a hero. He was a Lance Corporal in the Northumberland Fusiliers, was killed in 1915, and is commemmorated at the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial. Even my dear, late mum got it wrong. She always told me, proudly, that she was born in the same year that Queen Victoria died. It turns out that she was a year out.

All this really got me thinking about my funny family, so I delved in my dad’s side,and it didn’t get much better with the paternal search. Granddad Albert was an iron moulder in Loughborough, and granny Annie Eliza was "in service."
With the passage of time, one always retains a rosy-coloured opinion and memory of family members, which turn out to be completely misguided.
For instance, I was led to believe that uncle Arthur on my dad’s side was somewhat of a genius. Indeed, he made split cane fishing rods and even violins.








Column………….2
But he was also potty. When the rest of the family upset him, he would sit at the top of the stairs for hours playing his home-made violin. He never had a proper job. Apparently he obtained work at Bemrose the printers. After the first day, he returned home, said he wasn’t being told what to do, and never went to work again. And he kept his meagre Christmas decoration up all year round.
He spent the rest of his life looking after granny, who, herself, sat for hours in a rocking chair, occasionally sneaking a crafty nip from the whisky bottle secreted under an adjacent chest of drawers. The whole of the Orgill family, granddad, grandma, Doris, Anne, Arthur, Lilly May and dad Albert, lived in a tine terrace in Parliament Street, Derby, next door to St. Luke’s Church. They attended church at least twice on Sundays, and were members of the choir or church sidesmen.
They literally did have a very long table cloth, so that the table legs were not showing (yes, it really did happen), and my aunts would prepare the vegetables for Sunday lunch on a Saturday, so they did not have to work on the Sabbath.
All these reminiscences from a couple of clicks on the computer – you have to pay for it, by the way. So I’ve spent £25, only to find out that I am not who I think I am, can no longer preen about like Louis XV or whomever.
But, I’m sure I come from good, humble, yeoman stock, and I still proud of the lot of them.