My great3-grandparents, John and Martha Gillett, were married at Long Sutton in Somerset in September 1811. John Gillett had been born just up the road in Somerton in 1785. Martha’s maiden name was Isaac and she had been born a year earlier in Sturminster Newton in Dorset, the daughter of William Isaac and Elizabeth Clark. Elizabeth’s younger brother, Joseph, was the father of Cyrus and James Clark, the founders of the firm of C & J Clark, shoe makers, of Street, making them Martha’s first cousins. Martha had a younger sister, Mary, who married William Palmer, a farmer in Long Sutton, and their three sons, George, Samuel and William Isaac, were, with Thomas Huntley, to become Huntley & Palmer, biscuit makers, of Reading. It is remarkable that from such a close circle of families two great business enterprises should grow.
John and Martha settled in Langport, four miles to the west of Long Sutton, where John Gillett carried on a business as a grocer, draper and chemist. He and Martha had ten children, six boys and four girls, and their eldest daughter was Maria, born in 1816, from whom I am descended (click here to see them in my family tree).
Overleigh, Street
Alfred Gillett (1814-1904)
When John Gillett retired he built a house in Street. It was called Overleigh and was built of the Blue Lias rock that is found in the area and which has been a singularly productive source of marine fossils such as the ichthyosaur and plesiosaur. Maria’s older brother, Alfred, who had been an ironmonger in Yeovil, later retired to Street and lived in his parents’ former home there. He was a keen amateur palaeontologist and during explorations of the quarries from which the building stone was being excavated, recovered several complete fossils of these prehistoric sea creatures from about 200 million years ago. Some of his specimens are in the Natural History Museum in London and others remain in Street in the care of a trust named after him.
A fossil plesiosaur discovered by Alfred Gillett
(From left) Maria Simpson, Martha Gillett, Thomas Simpson, Emily Simpson and John Gillett at Overleigh in the 1850s
In 1837 Maria married Thomas Simpson, a ‘fustian, nankeen and cotton manufacturer’ from Manchester, where he was in partnership with his brother John; two years later Maria’s sister Ellen married Thomas’s brother William. Maria and Thomas lived in Chorlton-under-Medlock, as it was called then, although the 1851 census shows them at Whalley Range, an up-market and then largely under-developed suburb south-west of the city. Thomas ended his partnership with his brother in 1862 having set up on his own in Preston where he employed 750 people, and lived in style at Hutton Hall, later to be the headquarters of the Lancashire Police. The family and Quaker connections with the Clarks at Street brought Thomas Simpson back to Somerset in 1863 where he advised Maria’s cousins on how to restructure their shoe business. Such family connections were to prove useful again later in the century when my great-grandmother, Emily, Thomas and Maria’s eldest daughter, and her husband Charles Spencer were able to draw upon another cousin, William Isaac Palmer, to help them financially with Charles’s iron foundry business in Melksham (seeThe Spencers).
The Quaker connection was significant in several of these families. The Clarks were, and still are, members of the Society of Friends, as were the Gilletts and the Palmers. The Simpsons were Quakers too, and came from Greyrigg in Westmoreland, so when looking for marriageable partners it was frowned upon in Quaker circles to look beyond the families of Friends.
Hutton Hall, near Preston, the home in 1861 of Thomas and Maria Simpson and family
The older brother of my great-grandmother, Georgiana Graham, was John Berney Worgan who had been born, like all his siblings, at Catthorpe in Leicestershire, where his father was curate at St Thomas’s church. John went up to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1856 but abandoned his course in favour of entry into the Bengal Civil Service. There he became a Magistrate and Collector, supervising a local administrative area. He would eventually become a judge in the Indian High Court. He had returned to England on furlough in 1866 where, in Brighton, he married his second cousin, Bertha Woods.
John and Bertha Worgan (standing centre) with John’s mother, Philippa (seated left), and sisters Georgiana (seated right), Constance and Frances, at Croydon in the 1860s.
Returning to India, John and Bertha raised a family of ten children, six girls and four boys (another boy had died in infancy) before Bertha died, in London, on the day before her 47th birthday.
Captain R.B. Worgan, 20th Deccan Horse
The youngest of the boys, who was only eight when his mother died, was Rivers. Evidently educated, to begin with, in India, he finished up at Bedford School from where he went to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst before being commissioned in the Army Service Corps in 1900. After service in the South African War he transferred, in 1905, into the 20th Deccan Horse, a regiment in the Indian Army. There must have been something that marked this young Lieutenant as someone to watch, for within a couple of years he had been appointed ADC to the Governor of Madras, Sir Arthur Lawley, the first of several such posts Rivers Worgan was to hold over the next 20 years that emphasised has strengths in administration and efficiency. In 1909 he was promoted Captain.
Rivers Worgan and his polo trophies
Rivers’ book on the Madras Governors’ Body Guard
In India, as an officer in a mounted regiment, he, perhaps inevitably, developed an enjoyment of polo, a sport in which he clearly became very skilled. Another passion was big game hunting. He even found time to write a short book. He had been appointed to command the Governor’s Body-guard in 1910 and that year he published his revision of the Historical Records of the Body Guard of H. E. The Governor of Madras.
At the outbreak of the First World War troops from the Empire were called upon to play a part in fighting the Germans. The 20th Deccan Horse was sent to France, landing at Marseilles in September 1914 and, after a month, moved to Orleans and then on to the Pas-de-Calais where they first saw action that November. Rivers was promoted Major the following year. The regiment was held in reserve for most of 1915 but Rivers was detached from the regiment and in January 1916, as a temporary Lieutenant Colonel and still only 34, was given command of the 9th Battalion of the Cheshire Regiment. The battalion was engaged in the Battle of the Somme from 1st July 1916, the opening day of the offensive, and for the following fortnight, going back into action after a few days away from the front for the attack on High Woods and the Battle of Pozières. In the Spring of 1917 the 9th Cheshires were north of Messines in Belgium, where the Germans held the ridge that gave them a commanding view of the landscape south of Ypres. The British mined the ridge, the massive explosion taking place in the early hours of the 7th June, whereupon Rivers led his battalion (literally) in a series of coordinated advances over the next two days until they were relieved. Rivers, who was awarded the DSO, remained in command of the 9th Cheshires until October that year when, promoted to temporary Brigadier General (though still only having the permanent rank of Major), he took command of the 173rd Brigade, relieving Captain (but temporary Brigadier General) Bernard Freyburg VC, who had been wounded.
Villers-Bretonneux by Arthur Streeton, 1918 (Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney)
Rivers Worgan, 36, in the uniform of a Brigadier General, 1917
The 173rd Brigade were engaged in the Second Battle of Passchendaele at the time but appalling weather and atrocious mud prevented the Brigade from making any significant headway. Exhausted and suffering many casualties they were relieved at the end of October. Rivers Worgan was promoted Lieutenant Colonel in 1918, though he still retained his temporary rank of Brigadier General. In March the 173rd were positioned near La Fère, north of the River Oise and about 15 miles south of Saint-Quentin, when the German Spring offensive began. After four days’ fighting they were unable to withstand the German advance, and so withdrew across the river. By the beginning of April what was left of the Brigade were moved to Villers-Bretonneux, 50 miles to the west and near to Amiens, where they were reinforced. They were in action again on the 24th April when the second German advance began. Using tanks and firing gas shells the Germans made significant gains but were then driven back.
The 173rd Brigade were moved out of the line and in July Rivers handed over his command.
After the war, Rivers was back in India and between 1919 and 1920 served in the Third Afghan War and in the Waziristan Campaign. But, as I mentioned previously, his particular skills in administration were to be called upon again. Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, son of Queen Victoria and a Field Marshal in the Army was to tour India in 1921 and Rivers, now a full Colonel, was appointed his Military Secretary. For his services to the duke, Rivers was appointed a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order.
The Duke of Connaught and his entourage at Poona in 1921. Colonel Worgan is seated far right.
The Prince of Wales after the tiger hunt (Illustrated London News, 14 January 1922)
Clearly Rivers had proved to be a success as a Military Secretary, so later the same year he was appointed to the same position when the Prince of Wales also toured the sub-continent. This, of course, was a much more prestigious affair, although I suspect a little less formal given the Prince’s character. However, it would inevitably included a great deal of travelling and many receptions. It also involved a tiger hunt, which was a favourite pastime of Rivers. The hunt took place at Karrapur and the tiger that was shot was, in fact, dispatched by Rivers rather than by the Prince. Again, for his services, Colonel Worgan was decorated, this time being made a Companion of the Order of the Star of India.
Lord Reading, Viceroy of India 1921-26
Rivers Worgan would be appointed Military Secretary for a third time in 1923 when he took on the role for the Viceroy of India, Lord Reading, but this time it was an appointment for three years rather than just for the duration of a royal tour. At the age of 49, Colonel Worgan retired from the army with the honorary rank of Brigadier General and settled in London, in an apartment in Pall Mall. In 1932, appropriately given his past career, he was made one of His Majesty’s Body-guard of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms. But the honour was to be short-lived; he died on the 6th February 1934 at the early age of 54.
Brigadier General Rivers Berney Worgan, CSI, CVO, DSO (1881-1934) in the uniform of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms
When he wrote his will in 1769, shortly before he died, my great5-grandfather Thomas Munday described himself as a gentleman of Chamber Street in Whitechapel, just to the east of the City of London. He was evidently a man of some means, leaving bequests to his three children, Thomas, Elizabeth and Mary, and the bulk of his personal estate to his widow, Elizabeth.
St Botolph’s without Aldgate, London
His son, Thomas, had married Dinah Mitchell at St Botolph’s without Aldgate in 1754 where, the previous year, my great4-grandfather John Worgan had been appointed organist, so it is entirely possible that he may have played the organ on that occasion. Four years later it was at St Mary’s church, Whitechapel, that Thomas’s younger sister, Mary, was married to John Berney, whose great-grandfather had been a baronet, but who had recently completed his apprenticeship in the Merchant Taylors’ Company. John would go on to become the Master of the Company.
Thomas and Dinah Munday raised a family of eight children: daughters Elizabeth, Ann, Dinah and Mary, and sons Samuel, and Thomas. Two others died in infancy. All were baptised at St Botolph’s. The eldest daughter, Elizabeth, married Edward Wollstonecraft, whose sister Mary was to achieve fame as the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, and as the mother of the author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley. I am descended from Ann who, at a date yet to be discovered, married Philip Thomas Perryman whose family had also lived in Whitechapel, in Prescot Street which was parallel to Chamber Street, but who, together with his brother Nathan, had become a merchant based at Ostend in what was then the Austrian Netherlands. Their father, Elias, had been a sea captain; the master of merchant ships trading to north European, Mediterranean and transatlantic ports (see Elias Perryman – sea captain).
The organ in St Botolph’s, Aldgate; John Worgan was organist there from May 1753, successor to his brother James
Mary Munday and John Berney had a large family, 11 daughters and six sons, most of whom were also baptised at St Botolph’s. Tragically, but all too common in those times, only two sons and three daughters survived into adulthood. The younger son Edward who, so the story goes, became a Roman Catholic priest but later abandoned the priesthood and died at Cleves, in Germany, married his first cousin, once removed, Philippa, the daughter of Ann Munday and Philip Perryman. Their eldest daughter, another Philippa, was to marry John Hartland Worgan, the grandson of the Aldgate organist John Worgan.
In July 2015 I had the great pleasure, with my late wife Sue, of attending a concert at St Botolph’s without Aldgate at which the music of John Worgan was played. The concert was organised by Tim Roberts, who has championed John Worgan’s music and recorded some of it. The organ in the church is the same organ that he played. It was installed in 1704-5, being reinstalled when the church was rebuilt in the 1740s, and is reckoned the oldest surviving church organ in the country. Click here to see a video of Dame Emma Kirkby singing one of John Worgan’s songs at that concert. My wife and I can be seen sitting on the left in the second row of pews from the front.
Not only is John Worgan my ancestor but so are the two Thomas Mundays and their wives, as well as Mary Munday, Ann Munday, Elias, Philip and Philippa Perryman, John, Edward and Philippa Berney, and John Hartland Worgan (and his father Joseph and mother Jemima).
