Custom House Officer. Sounds rather grand, doesn’t it? Important even. Trouble is, where my 2x great-grandfather John Anthony Riboldi is concerned, things are rarely what they seem.
I felt sure I’d be able to find out tons about his working life on the Thames, but it’s not proving that easy. The problem is, Custom House Officer seems a bit of a catch-all term that covers a lot of revenue-related roles. The truth probably lies more in his children’s birth certificates, where he’s always referred to as a tidewaiter. This basically describes what I think John Anthony did. He would have waited for ships from all over the globe, laden with cargo,
