David Elphick
Born: c.1794
Died: 1866
Author: Lynda Fase
EARLY LIFE AND MARRIAGE
David Elphick was baptised in 1794 in Wartling Sussex. This was a small, isolated village about four miles north of the sea at Pevensey Bay. It was also eight miles from the centre of (what would later become) Eastbourne; still just a collection of villages and hamlets at the time.
David was probably the third of nine children baptised by Richard and Sarah Elphick in the parish church, although the second child died as a baby. The last child was baptised in 1806.
David’s elderly parents were still living in Wartling parish in 1841, so I assume David was brought up there. His father was still described as a farm labourer in his mid or later seventies. The parents were in fact living at Boreham Street in 1841, a northern hamlet of the parish situated on a road that provided a direct route to the larger settlement of Herstmonceaux, and beyond that the town of Hailsham.
David and Mary
The next recorded event in David’s life is his marriage to Mary Barnes at Arlington Parish Church in Mary’s home village. This was not until 1825, when David was at least 30; Mary was about eight years younger.
Arlington is a village to the northwest of Eastbourne. The marshy land of the Pevensey levels would probably make a straight walk difficult between Wartling and Arlington, but perhaps David and/or Mary had already moved elsewhere. All their children were born in Westham, a village on the western side of Pevensey Castle/ Westham is a few miles south of Wartling, and now on the outskirts of Eastbourne.
When the couple married on 14 February 1825 (with David able to sign his name) they both claimed to be of the parish of Arlington, so David may have been working there. Or he may have been trying to save money on the marriage fees by giving a false residence. In any case, their first son David was born less than two months later, on 6 April 1825, and he always claimed to have been born at Westham. None of these places are very far from each other.
RELIGION
David Jr. was baptised in June 1825 at the Wesleyan Chapel on South Street, Eastbourne. Wesleyanism had gained traction in the area due to soldiers being stationed there during the Napoleonic Wars. When I searched for this chapel, the only one I could find was on Old Grove Road, Eastbourne, founded in 1810. There is currently a Grove Road in Eastbourne (not ‘Old’), which does share a junction with South Street.
Wherever it was, David and Mary did not baptise any other child there. For their next six children, born about every two years, David and Mary made the 15-mile journey to have them baptised at the Wesleyan Chapel on St Mary’s Lane in Lewes.
As far as the chapel in Eastbourne is concerned, it seems the congregation was dwindling. This was due to the departure of the soldiers who had been a driving force behind it, and also to the departure of a leading preacher. “Nevertheless, the chapel still existed after this, though with a congregation going down to very low numbers.” (Wikipedia, entry for Central Methodist Church, Eastbourne).
David Elphick and his family obviously joined the exodus for some reason. They stayed within the Wesleyan church but transferred their allegiance elsewhere, which is quite surprising given that the journey to Lewes was four times as long. The change may have been because they preferred to follow a different Methodist persuasion – there were several.
It is also possible that journeying to Lewes was not necessary, and that the baptisms were done by itinerant ministers linked to the chapel at Lewes (and to the one in Eastbourne for the first baptism). Sources suggest that baptisms outside the chapel were rare, but it was certainly not unusual for general worship to be organised locally with the help of local or itinerant lay preachers. If they did have to travel, it seems to imply considerable religious conviction, and some degree of financial means.
David had been baptised in his local Anglican parish church, but there was not a hint of Wesleyanism in the Eastbourne area until 1803, when he would have been nine years old. He was sixteen when the Eastbourne chapel was established. He was married in a parish church, but that was the only possibility at the time for marriages. I haven’t found Mary’s baptism. Nor have I found baptisms in any church for their last three children, born in the 1840s, but that may just be due to a lack of records.
It may have been unusual or difficult for agricultural labourers in the south of England to be Wesleyans at this time, particularly because of their dependency on Anglican farmers and landowners. David’s family might have been mixing with independent-minded artisans and lower middle-class people. Another distinguishing feature of Wesleyans was that they were fierce opponents of smuggling, which did not make them popular in coastal areas like Eastbourne. This sentiment was probably present in the villages where the Elphicks lived too.
WORKING LIFE
We do know that David was appreciated by his employer. The East Sussex Association gave annual prizes to agricultural labourers and similar. In 1837, David was one of two men from the area to be awarded £4 for bringing up ‘the largest family in the habits of industry for the longest time (eight years at least) without receiving any relief from the parish’. Fifteen years later, in 1853, his second son Caleb received a prize from the same source, for his long service (14 years) with the same employer. As he was only 24 at the time, we can see at what a young age agricultural labouring began. The prizes seem to have been handed out quite randomly, as the oldest son David received one the following year for 18 years’ service.
The 1841 Census does not mention the older boys’ occupations, but they were obviously working. In 1851 their younger brother Henry was aged 11, but he was still at school, as was Harriett at 14. Home for the Elphicks in 1841 and 1851 was Red Dykes House, at the far western end of the long village, rurally situated on Dittons Road.
The long-term employer of David and his sons, as mentioned in the prize lists, was William Arkcoll, a man of about David’s age. WIlliam was active in local affairs and was once the Mayor of Pevensey. He lived at a place now called Langney, then sometimes referred to as Langley, a mile or so south of David’s home.
In 1851 William Arkcoll was farming a remarkably large area of 1000 acres and employing 42 farm labourers. He and David probably came to the end of their working lives at about the same time, and David’s fate may have been connected with his employer’s.
In September 1859 all of William Arkcoll’s farming stock and equipment was auctioned off, as he was retiring from business. The auction advertisement below states that Mr Arkcoll was a celebrated sheep farmer. In the 1861 Census he was living in Eastbourne with his wife and two servants, having retired by then. He died in November the same year. The son who proved his will was living in London. The extract below will give a good idea of the type of work that David might have been doing.
(The Sussex Advertiser Sep 6, 1859)
DAVID’S DECLINE
It may or may not be significant that just before William Arckoll’s retirement David was admitted to the Sussex County Asylum, aged 66. It was August 1859, and he was suffering from mania, thought to be caused by ‘bodily weakness’, so he presumably had some physical symptoms as well. There are some physical illnesses which might cause neurological symptoms. Or perhaps he just had symptoms of old age or dementia – along with the lack of inhibition or hallucinations that sometimes accompany this. It must have been quite disturbing for his family to see such changes in this very religious and steady man.
All of David’s children would have left home or been of an age to do so by the time he entered the asylum. In 1861, David’s wife Mary was living in Fisher Place House, a multifamily occupancy residency where her eldest son David resided. This was in Friston, Sussex.
Mary had not forgotten her husband by any means, because two years after David was sent to Sussex Asylum she applied to take over responsibility for his care. However, Charles Lockhart Robertson (the Sussex Asylum Medical Superintendent) wrote to Mary refusing this request. Charles’s letter suggests that David’s condition had improved since he was admitted, but it also expresses concern for his safety if released:
“Better since admission but […] an old man, occasionally depressed and with a suicidal tendency which if discharged I think would more likely than not result in suicide”.
At this time, David’s state of health was described as fair and he survived in the asylum for another seven years. However, he sadly died of tuberculosis in 1866, which would have been rife in the asylum.
(Information about attempts to have David discharged was taken from the book Sweet Bells Jangled Out of Tune by James Gardner.)
THE FAMILY OUTSIDE THE ASYLUM
David Jr.’s steady working habits paid off, leading to his employment in Friston as a farm bailiff. Friston is along the coast to the west of Eastbourne.
David had two young children, so his mother Mary, still only in her fifties, was probably of help to the family – and perhaps she liked being of use. But it seems the family could not support Mary indefinitely. In 1871 (five years after David died in Sussex County Asylum) Mary was listed as a servant and housekeeper in the home of Joseph Coleman, a widowed gardener in Herstmonceaux. Joseph was 49. He had a son, aged 22, and a daughter, aged 9.
In Herstmonceaux, Mary was living closer to her son Walter, an agricultural labourer residing with his family there. One of his sons had even been born in David Elphick’s birthplace, Wartling. And there was another family connection: Mary’s employer Joseph Coleman was the younger brother of Harriet, the wife of David Elphick Sr.’s younger brother Edward.
Edward and his wife, incidentally, were in London at this time, where Edward had a job as a coachman. Harriet’s younger sister Ann was living with them, as was David and Mary Elphick’s daughter Esther, both working as dressmakers. This shows that contact was close with family members who had moved away. So, either Mary had gone to help out Joseph Coleman because of family ties, or he had offered her a job when she needed it.
Mary was in her late sixties in 1871, and she must have returned to live in Westham during the next decade. Her sons Caleb (agricultural labourer), George (agricultural labourer), and Alfred (shepherd) were all living there with their families in 1881, the year after Mary died.
Mary was buried in Westham churchyard. This was the year in which Methodists were granted the right to hold burial services in Anglican churchyards using their own rites. There does not seem to be any obvious evidence of Wesleyan affiliation in the family after the 1830s though.
Author’s Thoughts
This seems to be a relatively happy life story, with a sad ending, but a sad ending was not uncommon for agricultural labourers in old age. The family seems stable, and everybody healthy enough to live to good ages, no children lost in infancy or childhood, and the ability to maintain an attachment to a distant church.
On the other hand, the boys had to work from the age of ten, and there wasn’t much social or geographical mobility. Most of them stayed all their lives in a small area of Sussex, working as labourers. There is no real evidence that David Sr. himself was ever more than a farm labourer, except that his daughter Esther described him as a farm bailiff when she married some years after his death. Esther, however, was marrying a butler in Surrey, and people notoriously inflated their father’s occupations on marriage certificates if there was nobody around who knew any differently.
Was there a connection between William Arkcoll’s death and David’s decline? Had Mr Arckoll continued to employ David despite deteriorating physical and/or mental health? Now that a new owner was coming, he might not have been able to expect such benevolence, and perhaps this provoked a crisis in his mental health.
It is nice to know that an attempt was made to bring David out of the asylum. As a family once used to travelling for religious worship, I wonder whether they ever made the journey to the asylum, although it was ten miles further away than Lewes. And why did they think in the asylum that David’s suicidal tendencies would be worse at home? Were they right? It seems a bit hard to believe, if it was a happy home, but perhaps they thought that they had better ways to prevent suicide than his wife would have had.
In the end he died a natural death five years later, from a cause which he might not have been exposed to at home. And where would he have been happier for those final years?
— Lynda Fase
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