There’s almost nothing I find more comforting than a list of names. I know, it’s weird, you don’t have to tell me. I first noticed this particular weirdness about myself when I was at university. I had come back from the phone box, where I’d had my weekly chat with my mum. She had mentioned, in passing, that Dad had been in hospital a few weeks before. I was horrified. How could he have had a suspected mild heart attack and not told me? What if he’d died? I imagined the conversation.
“How are you?”
“Yes I’m fine. Aunty Mary, next door, slipped down the stairs. We always said that that canary would be the death of her. Oh, by the way, did I tell you that Dad died?”
To be fair, I understand now. It wasn’t his first, or last heart attack. It was mild; just a little warning that the by-pass he’d had three years earlier wouldn’t last, so absolutely no need to stress about it. However, at the time, I was stressed and felt that I was being kept out of the loop.
I sat in the corner of the kitchen, trying to comfort myself, reading. My housemates came in.
“What are you reading?”
“The telephone directory,”
“Why?”
“I love it. It’s comforting. All those names and addresses. All those potential stories.”
My first job, after Uni, was to work on a questionnaire design project. To ensure the validity of the sample an element of randomness had to be built in. This was done using the electoral roll. In those, pre-internet days (early 1990s) that meant a trip to the library of the place you were going to conduct the survey and sitting for several hours, noting down names from the random numbers we had chosen in the office before I left. It was one of my favourite parts of my job. I got to see lots of London borough libraries and just loved the lists of names. You could tell a lot about the residents of a street just from their names. A street of Elsies, Bettys and Freds were more than likely retired working class. A street of Julies, Susans and Kevins were young newly marrieds. Now, of course, all that information is online and with the click of a mouse I can be online looking at a comforting list of names.
As the news gets more depressing, the whole of Europe laughing at us, again, for leaving our second lockdown too late (let’s hope they are wrong) I find I am drawn to lists of names more often. Luckily, with the Moot Hall history project I have a good excuse to look and can convince everyone that I’m doing research, rather than just comforting myself with a list of names.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m writing down the names of everyone that was in the workhouse in 1909.”
“Why.”
“It’s comforting. All those names. All those potential stories.”
This wasn’t going to be what I told you about when I started this blog but I thought you needed some background.
I was going to tell you about a new source of name lists that I’ve found that has made me quite excited. The website historyofparliamentonline.org has fascinating lists of all the MPs of each constituency from about 1470 onwards. This wouldn’t normally be of much interest to me, as I prefer the untold stories of everyday people but who doesn’t like a list of MP names?
“What are you doing?”
“I’m reading the names of every Maldon MP there’s ever been.”
“Why?”
“It’s comforting. All those names. All those stories.”
Just why someone wants to become a member of Parliament has baffled me for a long time. It is probably the original form of virtue signalling.
1510-1523 - Sir Richard Fitzlewis, Thomas Hintlesham, Thomas Cressener, John Strangman, Thomas Wyburgh, John Bozom.
*thinks* I expect he was a bit of a tit.
1539- 1545 - John Edmonds, William Bonham, Edward Bury, Henry Downs, Clement Smith, Nicholas Throckmorton.
Ooh, I know that name. Wait. Was he anything to do with Elizabeth Throckmorton? She was Queen Elizabeth I maid of honour and the woman who secretly married Sir Walter Raleigh. I checked. Yes he was her father. That would explain why they think the Elizabethan lady portrait in the Moot Hall is her.
1610-1620 - Sir John Sammes, Sir Robert Rich, Charles Chiborne, Sir Henry Mildmay, Sir Julius Caesar.
Wait? What? Julius Caesar? Blooming immigrants.
1754-1761 - John Bullock, Robert Colebrooke, Bamber Gascoyne.
“And your starter for ten is...”
1820-1827 - Joseph Holden Strutt, Benjamin Gaskell, George Mark Arthur Way Allenso Winn (he has all the names!), Thomas Barrett Lennard, Hugh Dick.
*sniggers* Silent g Julia, you child.
I lost the rest of the day to finding out about Hugh Dick.
I wonder if the locals secretly referred to him as Biggus Dickus.
I hope you have been as calmed by these lists of names. We are still living in very strange times and I think we are all going to need this kind of comfort.
All those names, all those stories.
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