Email wdytyaeditorial@ourmedia.co.uk
Write to WDYTYA? Magazine, Eagle House, Bristol BS1 4ST
SKIPPERS IN THE NEWS
I have been researching my late mother's family, knowing only that although she (Dora Skipper) was born in Bethnal Green in 1908, her family originated from Norfolk. So a trawl through the British Newspaper Archive (britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk) of Norfolk newspapers in the 19th century seemed worth trying - and, indeed, revealed some fascinating information about their Norfolk existence.
My great grandfather was Walter Skipper, born in 1838 into a poor family of farm labourers at Rockland All Saints, a small rural village in Norfolk. So poor in fact that Walter was actually born in Wayland Union Workhouse, built in the village just a year or two earlier for up to 250 souls, and described in Kelly's Directory as a “handsome and commodious building”. By 1838 he would have had at least five siblings (possibly seven, as parish records and the 1841 census disagree), but it is uncertain how many were in the workhouse at this point.
Two of his sisters feature in the local press in of 29 June 1850 when she was aged 18 after being sexually assaulted. Luckily a passer-by came to her assistance, and her attacker Thomas Ellis was apprehended.
