“Why don’t you try writing a novel weaving fact with fiction?”
The year before I had completed a course with Exeter University on researching and writing family history and had just written the first of four unpublished books on my children’s ancestry when my daughter laid down that challenge. She holds an MA in English Literature, so to say I was feeling slightly daunted at the prospect is an under-statement. I’d always enjoyed writing though, so I told myself that perhaps one day, if the right idea should present itself, I might have a stab at it.
In the meantime my interest in family history was all-consuming, with the aim to leave an ancestral legacy for my children and grandchildren; to know who came before them. Who were they and what were their lives like?
As we all know from experience, when embarking on the journey to discover our ancestors we must prepare for surprises – both pleasant and sometimes, not so pleasant. Skeletons that our ancestors thought were locked securely away in closets – illegitimacy, brushes with the law, even imprisonment – can now tumble out of them, thanks to technology that those living even a half-century ago could ever dream would become a normal part of their descendants’ everyday lives. Long-held secrets are now common knowledge at the click of a mouse.
So when I began to investigate a branch of my late father-in-law’s family tree, I was expecting it to be fairly straightforward. After all, he was born and bred in Islington, North London – a ‘Barnsbury boy’ – as were his parents and I assumed their roots were firmly planted there, so I wasn’t anticipating anything of any particular note.
How wrong could I be? The first unexpected discovery was that his father was born to a single mother, father unknown. Nothing unusual really; I’d found similar instances in branches of my own family tree, as I’m sure a lot of us have at some point. It was when I researched this paternal grandmother – a kitchen maid when she gave birth – that a whole Pandora’s Box opened up.
To my surprise, Alice Titcombe, the grandmother, was not a Londoner; although she was born in Wales, her parents actually came from a village in Berkshire. That village was Watchfield.
From there, it was quite a simple matter to fill in the generations stretching back from Alice; both sides of her family had lived in and around the Vale of the White Horse for as far back as I could trace. At that point they were just names on a tree; I hadn’t done any particular in-depth research into their lives. Then, at the end of a weekend my husband and I had spent in Oxford visiting the splendours of Blenheim Palace, we decided to return home via Watchfield. It wasn’t too far out of our way and we could then see the place where the Titcombe family came from.
After strolling around this pretty village with its stone and thatch cottages, we made our way on to Shrivenham, passing the old Beckett Estate (now the M.O.D. Defence Academy), where we stopped for a while. My husband went into the Post Office and came out with a booklet on the local area written by the local history society. We just sat for a while, flicking through the book, when two names jumped out at me. Those names were John Carter and Rhoda Titcombe.
Until then I hadn’t taken much notice of them; they were just a husband and wife on that branch of my father-in-law’s family tree. I had concentrated more on his direct ancestors and these two were just cousins, albeit through a tangled web of family ties. John’s aunt had married Rhoda’s uncle, so that made them cousins-in-law. To confuse matters further, Alice’s mother was the younger sister of Rhoda’s mother, whilst Alice’s father was Rhoda’s father’s nephew; so two sisters married into the same family – the elder to the uncle and the younger to his nephew. That made Alice’s father first cousin to both John and Rhoda. As if this wasn’t mind-boggling enough, the reason why John Carter and Rhoda Titcombe were mentioned in this book just blew my mind.
It seems John Carter had an unfortunate reputation. Born into a Methodist family, whereby his paternal grandfather was a Methodist preacher, he seems to have been somewhat of a ‘black sheep’. Rhoda was his third wife and reports of his appearances in front of magistrates for ‘treating his wife badly’ must have preceded him when he returned to live in Watchfield after his much younger second wife ran away. His first wife tragically died after falling down some stairs whilst heavily pregnant. Despite the warnings that must have been directed at Rhoda about him, she nonetheless ignored them and they married. But leopards never change their spots, as she very quickly found out.
The events that surrounded John and Rhoda, and what led up to them, struck me as the basis for that challenge my daughter set me. I knew that here are the bones of a story that I could add flesh to, creating some fictional characters and events to blend with the real to make an epic story of it all – a truly shocking story that is sadly still all too familiar.
And this is it – the book I have written about it all. ‘The Devil’s Tapestry’ – which stretches from John’s grandfather in Wellington’s army in 1814 up to John’s sons and grandson in the trenches of World War 1. Their names have been changed and because of the abuse John’s wives suffered, I will be donating 20% of my royalties to Women’s Aid UK, through the Work for Good fundraising platform. It’s available now to buy at bookstores and on Amazon, in paperback and e-book formats. It’s a local story which will also support a worthwhile charity.
