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Bessie Quinn — Ursula Howard
Survivor Spirit
From Galashiels Mills to Garden Cities - the story of an Irish family in Scotland 1845-1922
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Rating 11 (from 17 votes)
Rating: 5.00 out of 5 (6 customer ratings)
Reviews
Polly Tuckett
A moving and deeply engaging
Ursula Howard sets out to recreate the life of her grandmother, Bessie Quinn, with only a few precious objects as clues to her fascinating past. Bessie, almost wholly obliterated from inter-generational memory within the family as a result of her husband’s all-consuming grief and attempt to destroy all traces of her existence, was also condemned to obscurity by her position in social history as a working-class woman and second-generation Irish immigrant whose family had fled the horrors of the Great Famine as penniless refugees, seeking work and a new life in Scotland. From these few prized objects and the scant cold facts about a person’s life as set out in Victorian/Edwardian officialdom, like censuses, birth and death certificates (although, for fascinating reasons we discover along the way, the details of these public records are notoriously unreliable), the writer breathes miraculous life into one woman’s remarkable journey from the slums of Galashiels to the utopian Hampstead Garden City Suburb where Bohemianism flourishes alongside the passion for social and political change. This is no ordinary tale of rags to riches but instead, as the author makes clear in a radical, class conscious argument, a journey that was made possible by the very resilience borne of her family's lifelong oppression.
As much social history as personal biography, the text weaves anecdote, conjecture and fact with a meticulous historicism, always flagging up as such any flights into fantasy, these being, however, eminently plausible when set within the wider socio-historical context. This is as much a hidden history of nineteenth-century working-class life as it is one woman’s story. Bessie’s life, as the eighth child of ten who all, incredibly, survived to adulthood, is intimately entwined with that of her immediate family. The precariousness of their situation is set out un-sentimentally yet with warmth and empathy: descriptions of the ravages of poverty and tuberculosis, dangerously inadequate housing, unemployment, appalling working conditions and cruelly shortened lives make for sobering reading and we become as emotionally invested in the fates of the entire Quinn family as with that of Bessie herself. Bessie, though, with her central enigma, remains the star of the show. Her personality is deftly sketched from the bare facts of her life as passed down anecdotally through the generations, through painstaking research and imaginative recreation – her selflessness, reserve, poise, unconventionality, fierce loyalty; her shyness, resourcefulness, determination and above all, her bravery.
Borders Family History Society
Bessie Quinn : Survivor Spirit
Subtitled “From Galashiels Mills to Garden Cities - The Story of an Irish family in Scotland 1845-1922”, is the compelling story of the author Ursula Howard’s paternal grandmother, Bessie Quinn, born to Irish immigrants living at the time in Galashiels, where she spent nearly half her eventful life.
The book narrates how Bessie’s parents, from the worst-affected West of Ireland, were part of the vast diaspora fleeing the “Great Hunger” of the 1840s, and followed different and circuitous routes before they met; father Owen Quinn from County Leitrim via Liverpool and Haddington, and mother Mary (Lyons) from County Sligo, via Glasgow, Haddington and Walkerburn. As they grew, Bessie and her siblings chased jobs, moving between the Borders, Lothians and Clydebank, where two brothers worked in the Singer sewing machine factory before the family split and Bessie moved South.
In 1904 her life changed when working in Keswick, where she met various liberalminded reformers. There she attended a talk by Ebenezer Howard, founder of the Garden City movement, which campaigned for improvements in urban planning in order to improve the condition of their residents. She later met Ebenezer’s son Cecil, whom she married in 1907 and thereafter told nothing of her previous life. They settled at newly-built Hampstead Garden Suburb, where they raised two sons, one of whom was the author’s father.
They and their father were devastated when Bessie died in 1919, of Spanish flu, her system probably compromised previously by TB. And suddenly, her backstory was gone, to be later painstakingly unearthed by her granddaughter Ursula, who describes finding Bessie with her family in the 1881 census, shattering the later family myth that Bessie had been an orphan.
Wide-ranging in scope, the author describes living conditions, at times harrowing, in rural Ireland, Borders towns, Edinburgh, Clydeside, Keswick and London, and the ongoing social changes and attitudes of the times. She demonstrates how forensic scrutiny of available records can bring the characters to life, with the gaps filled by the author’s imagination.
The book is rigorously researched, (indeed, the author acknowledges assistance from BFHS, in particular Elma, Christine, Bill and Jared), and the main text is followed by comprehensive notes and index. The text itself is liberally illustrated with contemporary photographs, and is preceded by that fairly rare item in biographies, a clear and readily interpreted family tree.
Although of general interest to those keen to learn about social history in the period described, the Garden City and linked radical/liberal movements (eg Art and Crafts, temperance and suffrage), local readers will be particularly interested by the chapters covering Galashiels and Walkerburn late 19th century. Borderers with Irish ancestors would also find it of interest.
Hampstead Garden Suburb Magazi
Ursula Howard’s experience working in adult literacy and communal publishing, plus her directorship of an international literary research centre at UCL, has obviously provided Howard with all the skills required to put together this exceptional family biography.
Howard’s grandmother, Bessie was one of ten children parented by Catholic Irish immigrants, refugees from the aftermath of Ireland’s devastating famine in the mid nineteenth century.
The family started life again in Gallashiels Mills, in the Scottish borders, with Bessie, then aged two, in 1881.
In 1904 Bessie left her tenement home, to establish a new life in England and it was in Keswick, whilst working as a cook in at the Newland Guest House, that Bessie met Howard’s grandfather, [Arthur] Cecil Howard who was staying as a guest.
Keswick at the turn of the century was a lively place offering an assortment of holiday activities, including Keswick’s Cumbrian motorcycle rallies which gave Cecil a welcome chance to get out of London and escape his work at the bankruptcy courts.
Cecil’s father Ebenezer, was the pioneer of the City Garden Movement, which was the inspiration behind Henrietta & Samuel Barnett’s Hampstead Garden Suburb.
As a married couple, Bessie and Cecil moved into a semi-detached Arts and Crafts cottage in Asmuns Hill where they brought up their two sons. Tragically Bessie did not survive the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1919, and was buried in the Golders Green Crematorium.
Amply illustrated throughout with almost 60 contemporary photographs, this book gives us a fascinating insight into the fast changing times from 1845-1922.
Both Bessie and Cecil’s extended family are explored in detail and Howard has provided a clear family tree, stretching from Bessie’s Irish grandparents through to Bessie’s own grandchildren.
A map has also been included showing the journeys of Howard’s maternal great grandparents from Ireland’s west coast to Galashiels Mills and also that of her grandmother Bessie’s from Galashiels Mills to North West London.
‘Bessie Quinn’ is family research at its very best and Suburb residents will no doubt find the references to HGS fascinating.
Ann Kelcey
A remarkable book
So far I’ve only read a few chapters of this remarkable book and already I’m immersed in a time and lifestyle so remote from my own experience. Like the warp and weft of the linen that made up Bessie’s linen smock, Ursula skilfully weaves the numerous characters in her grandmother’s story within historical detail. In her own words, she describes “taking the black and white ink-sketches that official records offer, [adding] brush strokes and a colour-wash to documented facts, figures, and reports…to create my sense of their story.” If I were to compare her with an artist, it would be Pieter Bruegel the elder, with his lively pictures of peasant life. Ursula brings Bessie Quinn to life again.
Verified Purchase
Guest Reviewer
Guest Reviewer
An impressive historical journ
For anyone interested in where researching family history can lead, this is a must-read! Ursula Howard’s tenacious drive to discover her ‘missing’ grandmother, Bessie Quinn, has revealed a bitter-sweet tale of endurance from the days of the Irish famine to the Scottish Borders to the early twentieth centuries Garden City’s. I found myself continually rooting for Bessie, her parents and her siblings. Howard moves from the social history of the times to the details of this one family, seamlessly. Occasionally adding drama and imagination to her history prose, Howard’s writing is fluid and never dull. This book is perfect for those interested in social history of the Irish working class in Scotland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. And for those working on family research projects – keep going, you never know what you might uncover!
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Rating: 5.00 out of 5 (6 customer ratings)
Paperback eBook
£18.99
ISBN: 9781914151330
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Description
Bessie Quinn was an early 20th century New Woman, a mother living her love story in the enchanted world of the Garden City. When she died in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918-19, her shattered husband abandoned her memory, belongings and life history. Her disappearance reverberated down generations.
Starting with only an Arts and Crafts kettle, one photo and a linen smock, Ursula has restored her grandmother to life. After long searches she found Bessie in the Scottish Borders, eighth child of working-class Irish parents who’d fled hunger after the Great Famine of the 1840s.
This biography of a poor family unearths hard journeys of love, luck and loss, weaving historical fact with memory and imagination into a compelling story.
Further details
Borders Family History Book Review
Hampstead Garden Suburb Magazine Book Review
Endorsements
“This is the stuff of real history - atmospheric, emotional and acutely well observed. Bessie is a captivating figure. From the moment you see her wonderful, knowing smile on the cover, she has your attention and affection. This is a superb piece of patient and loving work.”
Alistair Moffat, author
“A marvel of dedicated research, energy, presentation and imagination - with lucid writing holding it all together.”
Grey Hen Press: https://www.greyhenpress.com - publishing poetry by older women
“A book that shows why family history matters so much. A moving story about a grand-daughter’s quest for her grandmother’s origins in famine-ravaged Ireland, a granular evocation of industrialised Scotland, a social history of early 20th century Bohemianism, and an examination of the damage done to families by pandemics and silence. Bessie Quinn, Survivor Spirit, deserves the widest possible readership.”
Ian Marchant, writer and broadcaster
“In a trajectory one can only describe as miraculous, Bessie Quinn leads a transformed life in Hampstead Garden Suburb... Rich historical detail is woven with memories and vivid imagining of the losses and gains that Bessie’s rise to the middle class inevitably entails. An innovative contribution to histories of migration, class mobility, and family relations.”
Lyn Thomas, Professor Emerita, Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research, Sussex University
“A journey of Irish and Scottish roots ending in a garden suburb, cut short by Spanish Flu. Drawing on archive sources, fascinatingly illustrated with contemporaneous photographs, the book retrieves the untold story of life on the other side of a family that produced Ebenezer Howard and the Garden City movement. Ursula Howard searches for answers to questions about lives hidden among fragments of evidence, and in so doing brings to life not just Bessie Quinn as a resourceful, resilient woman, but the hard grind of family emigration in difficult circumstances at a time in which urbanism was remade in remarkable ways... An absorbing social history from below, in which Bessie Quinn’s life is both remarkable in itself and illuminates themes of poverty, class, social change and the transformative remaking of place.”
Susan Parham, Academic Director, International Garden Cities Institute
Rating: 5.00 out of 5 (6 customer ratings)
Reviews
Polly Tuckett
A moving and deeply engaging
Ursula Howard sets out to recreate the life of her grandmother, Bessie Quinn, with only a few precious objects as clues to her fascinating past. Bessie, almost wholly obliterated from inter-generational memory within the family as a result of her husband’s all-consuming grief and attempt to destroy all traces of her existence, was also condemned to obscurity by her position in social history as a working-class woman and second-generation Irish immigrant whose family had fled the horrors of the Great Famine as penniless refugees, seeking work and a new life in Scotland. From these few prized objects and the scant cold facts about a person’s life as set out in Victorian/Edwardian officialdom, like censuses, birth and death certificates (although, for fascinating reasons we discover along the way, the details of these public records are notoriously unreliable), the writer breathes miraculous life into one woman’s remarkable journey from the slums of Galashiels to the utopian Hampstead Garden City Suburb where Bohemianism flourishes alongside the passion for social and political change. This is no ordinary tale of rags to riches but instead, as the author makes clear in a radical, class conscious argument, a journey that was made possible by the very resilience borne of her family's lifelong oppression.
As much social history as personal biography, the text weaves anecdote, conjecture and fact with a meticulous historicism, always flagging up as such any flights into fantasy, these being, however, eminently plausible when set within the wider socio-historical context. This is as much a hidden history of nineteenth-century working-class life as it is one woman’s story. Bessie’s life, as the eighth child of ten who all, incredibly, survived to adulthood, is intimately entwined with that of her immediate family. The precariousness of their situation is set out un-sentimentally yet with warmth and empathy: descriptions of the ravages of poverty and tuberculosis, dangerously inadequate housing, unemployment, appalling working conditions and cruelly shortened lives make for sobering reading and we become as emotionally invested in the fates of the entire Quinn family as with that of Bessie herself. Bessie, though, with her central enigma, remains the star of the show. Her personality is deftly sketched from the bare facts of her life as passed down anecdotally through the generations, through painstaking research and imaginative recreation – her selflessness, reserve, poise, unconventionality, fierce loyalty; her shyness, resourcefulness, determination and above all, her bravery.
Borders Family History Society
Bessie Quinn : Survivor Spirit
Subtitled “From Galashiels Mills to Garden Cities - The Story of an Irish family in Scotland 1845-1922”, is the compelling story of the author Ursula Howard’s paternal grandmother, Bessie Quinn, born to Irish immigrants living at the time in Galashiels, where she spent nearly half her eventful life.
The book narrates how Bessie’s parents, from the worst-affected West of Ireland, were part of the vast diaspora fleeing the “Great Hunger” of the 1840s, and followed different and circuitous routes before they met; father Owen Quinn from County Leitrim via Liverpool and Haddington, and mother Mary (Lyons) from County Sligo, via Glasgow, Haddington and Walkerburn. As they grew, Bessie and her siblings chased jobs, moving between the Borders, Lothians and Clydebank, where two brothers worked in the Singer sewing machine factory before the family split and Bessie moved South.
In 1904 her life changed when working in Keswick, where she met various liberalminded reformers. There she attended a talk by Ebenezer Howard, founder of the Garden City movement, which campaigned for improvements in urban planning in order to improve the condition of their residents. She later met Ebenezer’s son Cecil, whom she married in 1907 and thereafter told nothing of her previous life. They settled at newly-built Hampstead Garden Suburb, where they raised two sons, one of whom was the author’s father.
They and their father were devastated when Bessie died in 1919, of Spanish flu, her system probably compromised previously by TB. And suddenly, her backstory was gone, to be later painstakingly unearthed by her granddaughter Ursula, who describes finding Bessie with her family in the 1881 census, shattering the later family myth that Bessie had been an orphan.
Wide-ranging in scope, the author describes living conditions, at times harrowing, in rural Ireland, Borders towns, Edinburgh, Clydeside, Keswick and London, and the ongoing social changes and attitudes of the times. She demonstrates how forensic scrutiny of available records can bring the characters to life, with the gaps filled by the author’s imagination.
The book is rigorously researched, (indeed, the author acknowledges assistance from BFHS, in particular Elma, Christine, Bill and Jared), and the main text is followed by comprehensive notes and index. The text itself is liberally illustrated with contemporary photographs, and is preceded by that fairly rare item in biographies, a clear and readily interpreted family tree.
Although of general interest to those keen to learn about social history in the period described, the Garden City and linked radical/liberal movements (eg Art and Crafts, temperance and suffrage), local readers will be particularly interested by the chapters covering Galashiels and Walkerburn late 19th century. Borderers with Irish ancestors would also find it of interest.
Hampstead Garden Suburb Magazi
Ursula Howard’s experience working in adult literacy and communal publishing, plus her directorship of an international literary research centre at UCL, has obviously provided Howard with all the skills required to put together this exceptional family biography.
Howard’s grandmother, Bessie was one of ten children parented by Catholic Irish immigrants, refugees from the aftermath of Ireland’s devastating famine in the mid nineteenth century.
The family started life again in Gallashiels Mills, in the Scottish borders, with Bessie, then aged two, in 1881.
In 1904 Bessie left her tenement home, to establish a new life in England and it was in Keswick, whilst working as a cook in at the Newland Guest House, that Bessie met Howard’s grandfather, [Arthur] Cecil Howard who was staying as a guest.
Keswick at the turn of the century was a lively place offering an assortment of holiday activities, including Keswick’s Cumbrian motorcycle rallies which gave Cecil a welcome chance to get out of London and escape his work at the bankruptcy courts.
Cecil’s father Ebenezer, was the pioneer of the City Garden Movement, which was the inspiration behind Henrietta & Samuel Barnett’s Hampstead Garden Suburb.
As a married couple, Bessie and Cecil moved into a semi-detached Arts and Crafts cottage in Asmuns Hill where they brought up their two sons. Tragically Bessie did not survive the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1919, and was buried in the Golders Green Crematorium.
Amply illustrated throughout with almost 60 contemporary photographs, this book gives us a fascinating insight into the fast changing times from 1845-1922.
Both Bessie and Cecil’s extended family are explored in detail and Howard has provided a clear family tree, stretching from Bessie’s Irish grandparents through to Bessie’s own grandchildren.
A map has also been included showing the journeys of Howard’s maternal great grandparents from Ireland’s west coast to Galashiels Mills and also that of her grandmother Bessie’s from Galashiels Mills to North West London.
‘Bessie Quinn’ is family research at its very best and Suburb residents will no doubt find the references to HGS fascinating.
Ann Kelcey
A remarkable book
So far I’ve only read a few chapters of this remarkable book and already I’m immersed in a time and lifestyle so remote from my own experience. Like the warp and weft of the linen that made up Bessie’s linen smock, Ursula skilfully weaves the numerous characters in her grandmother’s story within historical detail. In her own words, she describes “taking the black and white ink-sketches that official records offer, [adding] brush strokes and a colour-wash to documented facts, figures, and reports…to create my sense of their story.” If I were to compare her with an artist, it would be Pieter Bruegel the elder, with his lively pictures of peasant life. Ursula brings Bessie Quinn to life again.
Verified Purchase
Guest Reviewer
Guest Reviewer
An impressive historical journ
For anyone interested in where researching family history can lead, this is a must-read! Ursula Howard’s tenacious drive to discover her ‘missing’ grandmother, Bessie Quinn, has revealed a bitter-sweet tale of endurance from the days of the Irish famine to the Scottish Borders to the early twentieth centuries Garden City’s. I found myself continually rooting for Bessie, her parents and her siblings. Howard moves from the social history of the times to the details of this one family, seamlessly. Occasionally adding drama and imagination to her history prose, Howard’s writing is fluid and never dull. This book is perfect for those interested in social history of the Irish working class in Scotland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. And for those working on family research projects – keep going, you never know what you might uncover!