~ Chapter Eight ~
The Margate Years
Charlie and Amy’s first son, George Stephen Gisby, was born in September 1892 in their house at 9 Market Street in the heart of Old Margate. Charlie was still a fisherman at the time, while Amy had begun to run her poultry and greengrocery shop from the house.
In the year of George’s birth, William Gladstone became Prime Minister for the fourth and final time at the age of eighty-two, so renewing the troubled relationship with his sovereign, Queen Victoria, now halfway through the sixth decade of her reign. With some thirty wherries, or pleasure boats, operating from its beaches, Margate was still enjoying its heyday as a leading Victorian seaside resort. And in the north-west of the country, an area in which George was destined to spend most of his life, the Manchester Ship Canal, in its day the largest navigation canal in the world, was nearing completion.
At the turn of the century, when the streets of Margate were ringing with news of the daring exploits of Lord Kitchener and his troops during the Boer War, there’s little doubt that the eight year-old George would have been caught up in the excitement and romance of that far-off conflict. There’s little doubt, too, that the thirteen year-old schoolboy would have been devastated by the sudden death of his mother in 1906. We know that he disapproved of his father’s subsequent association with Elizabeth Holmes. Nevertheless, he moved with Charlie and his brothers to the new address at Addington Street to share their home with Elizabeth and her two girls.
In 1911, at the age of nineteen, George was still living at Addington Street. He was in employment by that time, his occupation being that of a pastry cook, or pâtissier, a delicate and skilled job which he probably carried out in one of the grand hotels dominating Margate’s seafront. He may well have worked in the Nayland Rock Hotel or even the grandest of them all, the Cliftonville Hotel, both of which are mentioned in the following extract from the book, Abroad And At Home: Practical Hints For Tourists, which was written by New York writer and traveller, Morris Phillips, and published in 1893:
In the year of George’s birth, William Gladstone became Prime Minister for the fourth and final time at the age of eighty-two, so renewing the troubled relationship with his sovereign, Queen Victoria, now halfway through the sixth decade of her reign. With some thirty wherries, or pleasure boats, operating from its beaches, Margate was still enjoying its heyday as a leading Victorian seaside resort. And in the north-west of the country, an area in which George was destined to spend most of his life, the Manchester Ship Canal, in its day the largest navigation canal in the world, was nearing completion.
At the turn of the century, when the streets of Margate were ringing with news of the daring exploits of Lord Kitchener and his troops during the Boer War, there’s little doubt that the eight year-old George would have been caught up in the excitement and romance of that far-off conflict. There’s little doubt, too, that the thirteen year-old schoolboy would have been devastated by the sudden death of his mother in 1906. We know that he disapproved of his father’s subsequent association with Elizabeth Holmes. Nevertheless, he moved with Charlie and his brothers to the new address at Addington Street to share their home with Elizabeth and her two girls.
In 1911, at the age of nineteen, George was still living at Addington Street. He was in employment by that time, his occupation being that of a pastry cook, or pâtissier, a delicate and skilled job which he probably carried out in one of the grand hotels dominating Margate’s seafront. He may well have worked in the Nayland Rock Hotel or even the grandest of them all, the Cliftonville Hotel, both of which are mentioned in the following extract from the book, Abroad And At Home: Practical Hints For Tourists, which was written by New York writer and traveller, Morris Phillips, and published in 1893:
|
Whichever of Margate’s hotels young George was employed in, he would not enjoy that “beautiful air” for much longer; the declaration of war on Germany in August 1914 would mark the end of his years in Margate and the beginning of a new life as a soldier.