~ Chapter Three ~
The First Family

Amy was born in 1860, a year after Charlie, in New Street in Margate, less than two hundred yards from Love Lane, where Charlie was brought up initially.  Her parents were unmarried.  Other than the facts that they were called Dianah Ellis and Edward Weston, and that her father was recorded on Amy’s birth certificate as a “Gentleman”, nothing is known about them.  It is more than likely that the pregnant young lady arrived on her own from elsewhere to have the baby, who was immediately handed over to an institution to be put up for adoption.  And it is perhaps no coincidence that a Home for Motherless Girls could be found in nearby Upper Grove about the same time as Amy’s birth.

            A claim that Amy had Jewish blood in her has been passed down through generations of Gisbys.  That claim may well have had its origins in Victorian society’s fascination with the figure of the dusky, mysterious Jewess.  It was a fascination that was reflected in much of the literature of the day.  The following is an extract from George Eliot’s 1876 novel, Daniel Deronda, when the eponymous hero meets Mirah, a beautiful, young Jewess, for the first time:
             “You are English? You must be – speaking English so perfectly.”

             She did not answer immediately, but looked at Deronda again, straining to see him in the double light. Until now she had been watching the oar. It seemed as if she were half roused, and wondered which part of her impression was dreaming and which waking. Sorrowful isolation had benumbed her sense of reality, and the power of distinguishing outward and inward was continually slipping away from her. Her look was full of wondering timidity such as the forsaken one in the desert might have lifted to the angelic vision before she knew whether his message was in anger or in pity.

             “You want to know if I am English?” she said at last, while Deronda was reddening nervously under a gaze which he felt more fully than he saw.

             “I want to know nothing except what you like to tell me,” he said, still uneasy in the fear that her mind was wandering. “Perhaps it is not good for you to talk.”

             “Yes, I will tell you. I am English-born. But I am a Jewess.”

             Deronda was silent, inwardly wondering that he had not said this to himself before, though any one who had seen delicate-faced Spanish girls might simply have guessed her to be Spanish.

             “Do you despise me for it?” she said presently in low tones, which had a sadness that pierced like a cry from a small dumb creature in fear.

             “Why should I?” said Deronda. “I am not so foolish.”

             “I know many Jews are bad.”

             “So are many Christians.  But I should not think it fair for you to despise me because of that.”
            Like Mirah, was a young Amy delicate-faced and Spanish-looking, but a Jewess?  It is true that some of Amy’s descendants had dark hair and eyes, noses that could be described as hooked and skin that could be called olive.  It is also true that Ellis, the surname of Amy’s mother, is of Hebrew origin from many centuries ago, as is the name Amy itself.  However, it is highly unlikely that the myth of Amy’s Jewish roots will ever be proved.

            While the details of both her immediate parentage and her longer lineage remain vague, what is certain is that Amy Weston Ellis was adopted by Stephen and Maria Sandwell.  Since that couple did not marry until 1867, Amy would have been at least seven years old before she was adopted.  By the age of eleven, she was living with the couple in New Cross Street, just round the corner from where she was born and not far down the hill from St John’s Road, where Charlie’s family had moved to.  Since Amy’s adoptive mother, Maria, was the sister of George Gisby and therefore Charlie’s aunt, what is also certain is that Charlie and Amy knew each other as children; they might even have been childhood sweethearts.

            Childhood sweethearts or not, Charlie and Amy were married in 1890.  Charlie had turned thirty by that time.  Although still a fisherman, he was back living in Margate at an address close to his parents’ home.  Amy, who was almost thirty, was still living with her parents in New Cross Street.

            The marriage took place in the recently built Emmanuel Church in Victoria Road.  The witnesses were Charlie’s father, George, and Amy’s mother, Maria.  Sadly, but typically for their class and gender at that time, neither Amy nor Maria were literate enough to sign their names on the marriage certificate and could only mark it with an X.

            The newly-weds set up home at 9 Market Street, an address that was in the heart of Margate’s bustling shopping streets and only a few steps from the seafront, which would often be thronged by Victorian holidaymakers.  While Charlie continued to work in the fishing trade, Amy began running a poultry and greengrocery shop from home.  In support of the myth of her Jewishness, it was often claimed that Amy was the one with the business acumen, so the shop was probably her idea.
            No matter whose idea it was, the shop seemed to thrive over the next decade, so much so that Charlie finally gave up his job as a fisherman to work full-time with Amy in the business, which was now classed as a fruiterers and greengrocers.  During the same period, Charlie and Amy had three sons: George Stephen was born in 1892, Stephen Charles in 1894 and Thomas Frederick in 1899.

            By the turn of the century, therefore, Charlie was a family man with a lucrative business to run.  There are few surviving photographs of him, but in this one, taken at about the same time, he looks every part the businessman.

            As Queen Victoria’s reign drew to an end with her death in 1901, heralding the dawn of the Edwardian age, Charlie was tapping into Margate’s prosperity at last.  But his contentment would be short-lived; tragedy lay in wait only a few years ahead.
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