Arthur James: A Butler's Tale

Photo of Princess Sophia Duleep Singh in 1913

Ever since I saw an exhibition about her at Hampton Court Palace as a teenager, the prominent suffragette and feminist, Sophia Duleep Singh has been an absolute hero of mine. So imagine my glee, when going through family records to find Levi's great great grandfather, Arthur James, in her father's employ.

This blog post, then, follows his life and times - from a Norfolk blacksmith's son, to the maharajah's groom, to butler and finally businessman in Brighton and Hove.

Photo of West Pier, Brighton c.1890

Family and childhood

Arthur was born in 1863 in Winfarthing, Norfolk, some four miles from Diss. According to White’s Directory of Norfolk 1854, the little village contained some 156 houses and 691 souls. It had two schools, a guildhall, two chapels (one Wesleyan and one Methodist) and the Church of the Virgin Mary – famous for its five bells, and once home to the relic ‘the good sword of Winfarthing’. The village also boasted the second largest oak tree in the country, said by that time to be over a thousand years old. It measured 40 foot around its middle and was said to fit 30 men inside.

The Winfarthing Oak, painted by James Sillett (c) Norfolk Museums Service

His parents were not natives of the village. That said, they still originated very locally. His father Charles James was a blacksmith who came from the nearby village of Snetterton. This village was even smaller than Winfarthing, home to only 261 souls in 1845 but had a church and a school established in 1836 supporting the education of the poor. His own father (Arthur’s grandfather) the rather imaginatively named James James, was also a blacksmith, from Shropham and Arthur’s older brother George later followed in the family trade.

Victorian blacksmiths at work

Blacksmiths shoeing a horse in 1910

As for Arthur’s mother, Mary Ann Warren, she came from an even smaller village that of Hargham. She was the daughter of a sawyer and carpenter, James Warren and his wife Mary.  Indeed, Hargham was more of a hamlet really, with only 93 souls in 1845, and a church which by 1864 was described as being ‘long dilapidated’ but bearing an ‘ivy clad tower’ which was considered very ‘picturesque’ by the author.

All Saint's Church tower at Hargham today

Map showing the close proximity of the three villages - Arthur's parents' villages are represented by the purple and red markers respectively whilst Arthur's birthplace is represented by the blue one

Arthur only appears once in the census living in his birthplace of Winfarthing. In the 1871 census, he appears with his father, the blacksmith and his brother George. His brother, two years his senior, had been born in the James family home back in Snetterton (where he appears in the 1861 census as a toddler). Arthur’s mother is not in the picture. I first assumed (wrongly I might add) that she had died. This is not an unreasonable assumption, given that in 1876 mortality rates in Child birth were still 4.9 per thousand births and there were numerous outbreaks of disease during this period. A cholera outbreak in 1866, claimed 5,596 lives in the East End of London alone for example.

However, further research finds Mary Ann some seventeen miles north in the market town of Watton, a visitor of Joseph Wells, a licenced victualler on the Dereham Road and his wife, Sarah. It is clearly Mary Ann (her occupation is given as ‘Blacksmith’s wife’) and the fact that Sarah’s birthplace was also Hargham, suggests that she was probably Mary Ann’s sister. Nothing odd in this alone. There are plenty of instances in the census where people are not at home when called upon.

1871 cenus - Mary Ann is not at home

1871 - Mary Ann is 17 miles away in Watton

Nonetheless, what is odd, is that in the following census of 1881, Mary Ann is not at home either. She was living then, back in Snetterton (at no. 6, Cross Road) as a shopkeeper with her son, George (by then a trained blacksmith). Arthur’s father, Charles, is nowhere to be seen. He was clearly still alive (she gives her marital status as ‘wife’ and not ‘widow’) but once again they are not together for the census. Now, this is probably simply co-incidence, yet one is tempted to suggest that the couple were estranged in some fashion. Certainly in at least twenty years of marriage, they only produced two children.

1881 census with Mary Ann James and her son George

Elveden Hall

Unlike his older brother, Arthur did not follow the James family trade and become a blacksmith. By 1881, the boy from the small Norfolk village, had grown into a man and was working as a groom at Elveden Hall, Suffolk.

Elveden Hall, Suffolk as Arthur would have known it

Currently in the possession of the Guinness family, this large Georgian house built c. 1760 was at the time of the 1881 census the home of the Maharajah Duleep Singh and his family. The last maharajah of the Sikh empire, he had been exiled to England at fifteen and was reportedly a favourite of Queen Victoria, who later became godmother to several of his children. It is also he, who was the last Indian owner of the famous Koh-i-Noor diamond, now part of Britain's crown jewels.

Maharajah Duleep Singh in 1861

The Koh-i-Noor in the front cross of Queen Mary's crown

Duleep Singh  purchased the hall in 1863, where he remodelled the original Georgian house, in the Italian style; the inside on the other hand was made up to be like the Mughal palaces of his childhood. He set up the 17,000 acre estate as an extensive hunting ground, and gained the reputation as the ‘fourth best shot in England’. It is not surprising that he was in need of a groomsman. Growing up the son of a blacksmith would have stood Arthur in good stead for the role.

The interior of Elveden Hall

The Maharajah in his hunting gear at Elveden. He is accompanied by the Prince of Wales.

For it is working for the Maharajah, that we find Arthur James aged 18. He was one of a large number of staff employed by the Majarajah and his wife, living at the hall with their five children, the Princesses Bamba, Catherine and Sophia (of suffragette fame) and their sons, Princes Albert and Frederick. Though Arthur was fairly local (Winfarthing is only 23 miles away), other members of the staff were from much further afield. The children’s governess, Helen Brooks came from Malta; the tutor Arthur O. Jary from India. Even Lydia Anderson, the laundry maid, came all the way from Scotland. Indeed, it is likely that the maharajah had brought a number of his Scottish servants with him from his previous home in Castle Menzies, Perthshire.

1881 census return part 1

Elveden Census Return Part 2

The Maharajah's three daughters - Bamba, Catherine and Sophia

Arthur lived in the rooms above the coach house where he would have had to maintain the saddles, stirrups and bits, rubbing them with a little olive oil in the evening before bed and rubbing it off with a bit of soft leather. He would have also likely have had the responsibility of maintaining the maharajah’s carriage or carriages, ensuring that its exterior was carefully washed and dried and the leather parts wiped with a little sweet oil to prevent cracking. It was an important job – carriages were extremely expensive. There is no stable boy recorded in the 1881 census at Elveden Hall. Arthur may well have also been responsible for keeping the maharajah’s horses in good condition – feeding them, grooming them and mucking out the stables. It is likely, then, that Arthur’s days (beginning at around 6 am) would have been long and busy.

Victorian Horse and Groom

Groom maintaining a horse

A Butler is Born

Sometime in the next decade, Arthur left the Elveden Estate and moved to Hove near Brighton. In 1886, he had married a Sarah Ann Wright from Murrow, Cambridgeshire in Paddington, where their first two children were born; Grace in Pimlico, c. 1887 and Arthur Cecil in Islington, c. 1889. The third child, Maud, aged 1 in the census, had been born in Hove the year before. It would seem that the family were newly arrived in the town. Living at 18, Connaught Terrace, Arthur’s profession is given as butler. It is clear that since his days working for the Maharajah in Elvedon, Arthur had been working his way up the ranks of domestic servitude. The groom had long gone, and the butler had been born.

A Butler's Livery in 1900

Just a couple of miles up the coast from Brighton, Hove was also popular with Victorians, being seen as a quieter version of its neighbour with wide boulevards, whilst still being close enough for its residents to enjoy Brighton’s three piers and arcades. Arthur remained in Hove for the rest of his life. In the following census in 1901, the James family had expanded greatly. In addition to the older children, there was now Sydney (8), Violet (4), Horace (1) and Herbert (3 months). The family were still living at their address at 18, Connaught Terrace and Arthur was still a butler. There is no sign of the couple’s eldest daughter Grace. She had presumably died in the interim.

The Beachfront at Brighton c.1890

From Butler to Businessman

A Victorian bath chair

This fact is confirmed in the 1911 census, where it records that Arthur and Sarah Ann had lost four children during their twenty-six year marriage. Still, the family had continued growing and had moved to a new residence at 58, Tamworth Road. Following Herbert, Elsie Maud (born c. 1903) and Alfred Wallace (born c. 1907) had joined. In the meantime, a number of the older children had flown the nest. Arthur Cecil, Levi’s great grandfather, had immigrated to Canada in 1906 for example and was a line man on the railroad in the Fraser Valley, British Columbia.

As for our Arthur, he had abandoned his life as a butler and had set up his own business as a Bath Chair Proprietor. This popular device, composed of a wheeled chair connected up to an axle to steer, allowed invalids and the elderly to travel around. It was immensely popular in the Victorian and Edwardian periods and was often used in spa towns and seaside resorts such as Hove. Clearly with a good eye for opportunity, Arthur James’ transformation from blacksmith’s son to businessman was complete.

An advert for a self-adjustable bath chair from 1911

References

Coachman, Groom, Stableman - can be found here

The Maharajah Duleep Singh: Queen Victoria's Beautiful Boy - Blog post on the Virtual Victorian Site

Should the last Sikh Maharajah be returned to India? BBC article (2014) available here

The Victorian Bath Chair - a short BBC article available here

Victorian Brighton and Hove, a short outline by the Regency Society found here

White's History, Gazeteer and Directory of Norfolk (1854) found on Genuki Norfolk here