3. Patrick Dott (1867-1938): his family

It seems to me to be clear from the history of their married life, that Annabel and

Patrick were a mutually supportive couple, united in their views.  Patrick's career determined the pattern of their lives, and it seems appropriate to give a proper account of his background and family.

Did Annabel know Patrick Dott before she went out to South Africa?  I don't know.  There is a possibility that they had known each other for a long while, because they grew up not far apart and their early lives ran in parallel.  

Their fathers were both Customs officers in the East End of London.  They died within five years of each other, leaving widows in their early forties with very young children.  Patrick and his siblings were all born in Stepney or in Mile End, where Annabel was born.  The widows and their children lived in Hackney, a couple of miles apart.  Annabel may have gone to the same school as Patrick's sisters.  It seems to me very possible that the families knew each other.

Patrick was born in Stepney on 26 September 1867, the eighth child.  He had a younger brother who died at the age of six months when Patrick was two, and two younger sisters.  He was named William Patrick, but seems always to have been known as Patrick.  

His parents came from Scotland – his father James was born in Kinross and his mother Betsey Forfar in nearby Milnathort.  It seems that James was already working in London when he and Betsey married and she joined him there; all their eleven children were born there.  James was 15 years older than his wife.  She was 23 when her first child was born, and nearly 42 at the birth of her last.

By January 1870, when James and Betsey's baby son died on a visit to relatives in Scotland, the family was living at 120 Stepney Green.  The 1871 census finds James and Betsey at that address, together with eight children and a 14 year old general servant.  James Dott died there five years later on 21 April 1876 at the age of 59.  His eldest child, James, was nearly 20 and his youngest, Bessie, was not yet 2 years old.  Patrick wrote in his private notebook years later that his father's funeral at Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington was attended by some 300 people; there had been an "order issued by Inspector General that all H M C officers who wished to attend were to have leave."

On James's death, Betsey was left to bring up six sons and four daughters.  One would expect that, with such a large family, money must have been more of a problem to the widowed Mrs Dott than it was to the widowed Mrs Hall.  However, Mrs Dott was to leave a much larger estate.  She was clearly a very good manager of her finances, will have been financially assisted by her unmarried sons, and may, of course, have inherited some money.  

By 1887 the family had moved to 96 Lauriston Road, Hackney, and the Electoral Register records that Alexander, Hugh, John and James were all registered there as tenant voters, paying rent to their mother for their furnished rooms.  The Registers give us a glimpse of the living arrangements.  For example, in 1888 Alexander paid Mrs Dott £50 a year for a bedroom and use of a sitting room; Hugh had a bedroom on the third floor at 8s 6d a week; John a room on the first floor (8s 6d); and James a bedroom on the second floor (8s.)  In 1890 John had a room on the first floor and Patrick a room on the third, both at 8s 6d.  At this time Lauriston Road, as seen in Charles Booth's poverty map, bordered on "Middle class. Well-to-do" streets but was itself rather more mixed ("Some comfortable, others poor").

By 1901 the family had left London for 'Wycombe', 78 Auckland Road, Upper Norwood.  This was a neighbourhood of senior clerks and women of independent means.  It was a desirable place to live, built on high ground in attractive woodland.  Mrs Dott's new home was a medium-sized detached house on the east of the road; it was demolished in 1967 and a block of flats stands in its place (see Auckland Road on the Croydon Database website)

Mrs Dott lived there in comfort with her unmarried children, keeping a cook and a housemaid.  It appears from the censuses that her sons John and Thomas were inhabitants of the house, not visitors, and doubtless made a financial contribution.  Mrs Dott died there on 1 June 1911.

Mrs Betsey Dott and her children

John – James – Christina – Hugh – Patrick – Janet – Alexander

Hilda – Thomas – Mrs Betsy Dott – Bessie

Patrick was not quite 21 when his elder brother Hugh (1859-1907) married Eliza Baylis in 1888; Hugh was a lithographer (the 1891 census description), and stationer & printer (the 1901 census description).  In 1890, the eldest brother James (1856-1933) married Emily Williams; James was a wood hoop importer and Emily ran a millinery business.  Both James and Hugh had families.  

John and Thomas Dott were twins, born in 1861.  Neither married.  John died in 1922 and Thomas in 1945.  John was an insurance broker; Thomas seems to have been a more flamboyant character, and something of a rogue.  He began his working life as a clerk to a firm of wharfingers, before being employed by the Union Bank of London and then in Australia by the Union Bank of Australia.  He came back to Britain in 1894 and went into business on his own account, selling Australian properties while the Australian boom lasted.  After that he bought the Woorgreen Colliery in the Forest of Dean for £8,000 on a lease from the Crown.  In 1916 he registered as a money lender, but two court cases established that he had been carrying on the business before registration.  At much the same time he set up as a theatre proprietor.  In early 1918 a Captain Levy took him to court over an agreement made in 1916 for profits accruing from the lease of the Strand Theatre.  Levy wanted the agreement set aside as unconscionable, extorted from him at a time when he was in financial difficulties.  (The biographical details I have set out above were given by Thomas under cross-examination.)  The judge set aside the agreement.  

Alexander (1863-1943) was a jute merchant who lived in India.  On his return, he and his surviving sisters Christina, Hilda and Bessie made a home together.

Patrick's sisters were Christina (1857-1940), Janet (1865-1906), Hilda (1872-1957) and Bessie (1874-1957).  The censuses indicate that they remained at home with Mrs Dott.  Christina described herself in the census of 1881, when she was staying with friends in Milton in Gravesend, as "supported by her mother".  Janet was a talented artist, describing herself as an art student in the 1891 census.   I wonder if she taught art afterwards.  She died at the age of 40.  Bessie studied at the Guildhall School of Music and was much praised in a report of a students' concert in The Era on 1 December 1894:

Miss Bessie Margaret Dott, a promising pupil of Herr Pauer, proved her command of the keyboard and a graceful style in Moszkowski's 'Caprice Espagnol,' which Miss Dott gave with requisite vivacity and brilliancy, her playing evoking hearty applause

In her later career as a concert pianist, the Croydon Advertiser and the Norwood News carried frequent reports of Bessie playing locally.  I have found reviews of her concerts in the Chelmsford Chronicle in 1896, the East Anglian Daily Times in 1908, and in the Evening Star (Ipswich) in the same year.  I would expect she also taught the piano.

Bessie was not the only musical member of the family.  There are several newspaper reports of parish concerts organised by Patrick, and it's clear that his singing was much appreciated.  One of his brothers was the organist at the St George's Mission Church at South Norwood and the sisters, according to the newspaper report of Patrick's induction as vicar of Woodside, Croydon, were "well known as brilliant musicians".

Of the ten children, only Patrick, James and Hugh married.  Alexander, Christina, Hilda and Bessie lived together until their deaths.  Christina and Alexander died during the War; Hilda and Bessie died within months of each other in 1957.

Very many thanks to Catherine Brown for the photograph of the Dott family and to Martin Hulbert for the information from Patrick's private notebook

January 2020:  I'm indebted to Debra Arif for passing me the information on the Dotts' occupation of 96 Lauriston Road from 1887. 

Next: 4. Patrick Dott, the first 38 years: from 1867 to 1906

2. Annabel Dott, the first 37 years: from 1868 to 1906

Sarah Frances Annabel – who seems always to have been known as Annabel – grew up in Amhurst Road, Hackney.  In 1871 her parents had just moved to 13 Amhurst Road, but by the time of the 1881 census she and her mother are at Number 323, where they are to be found on census night together with a 45 year old general servant – Mrs Hall describing her source of income as "House Property."   I thought this must indicate a house move, but Lynne Dixon, another Annabel researcher who is based in London, tells me that she thinks it is the same house, which stood in an isolated terrace before the rest of Amherst Road was built.  I assume the street was then renumbered.  The Halls were absent for the 1891 census and only the cook and her nephew were in the house.  Annabel and her mother lived at Number 323 until towards the end of the century when they moved to Bournemouth.

The ancient village of Hackney had become urbanised after the first railway station opened in 1850, nearly 20 years before Annabel was born, and during her early years market gardens and orchards were giving way to shops and flats and terraces of houses, while industries and manufacturies were proliferating.  Hackney parish was well-known for its charitable institutions including, interestingly in light of Annabel's later career, such Model Dwellings Companies 

as the Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes and the London Labourers' Dwellings Co (these companies provided social housing with a return on the investors' capital), while housing in the parish was leased to the London Labourers' Association, a political society founded by an Owenite radical in 1837.

Amhurst Road had been not long built up when Mrs Hall and Annabel moved into Number 13/323.  These are terraces of tall houses, with three floors above the basement, and steep flights of a dozen steps up to the front doors.  The Halls' neighbours were upper clerks and respectable tradesmen; the Charles Booth poverty map classified the road in 1889 as "Middle class.  Well to do".  Unlike her sister Margaret, who was left a widow with eight children aged between 3 and 23, Mrs Hall had only herself and her daughter to keep and so she could live a good deal more comfortably.

By 1901 Annabel and her mother had moved to Bournemouth.  The census that year finds them, with a 28 year old general servant, living at Hylton House on Surrey Road, a road of comfortable villas and large private hotels and guest houses.  (Photographs of these can be seen on Alwyn Ladell's flickr set; I think Hylton House has been replaced by flats.)  It was there that her mother died on 20 October 1903 having had a stroke.

I have been able to find no information about Annabel's childhood.  I think it is possible that she attended Lady Holles's Middle Class School, in Mare Street, Hackney, a mile and a half from her home, because, judging from its advertisement, the school must have looked very attractive to parents such as Mrs Hall.  Opened in September 1878, it was designed to take 250 girls and had 

a spacious assembly-room, eight class-rooms, three music-rooms, with all other conveniences and requisites ... The instruction afforded by the school will be of a sound, practical character, while the higher branches of education and suitable accomplishments will be efficiently taught.  

Entry was after a "preliminary examination of candidates" and the fees were between £1 6s 8d and £2 per term.  This included instruction in Latin, French, Drawing, and Vocal Music.  The head mistress was assisted "by a very efficient staff of 20 Assistant Mistresses", according to an advertisement in August 1879, which announced that there were only 50 vacancies.  This was the school attended by the younger sisters of Annabel's future husband Patrick Dott.  These girls were a few years younger than Annabel; I have found their names in a newspaper report of prize giving day at the school.

I can find no information about Annabel's life after school and before her marriage at the age of 37, but we can see from her life after marriage that she was resourceful, adaptable and forthright and had no problem in exercising authority, organising a work force or assimilating new information.  She was evidently well educated and in one interview is quoted as saying that she would have liked to have become an architect "if difficulties had not barred the way" [The Vote, 22 April 1922].  She does not say whether the difficulties were financial or came from her mother's expectations or needs.  

So what did she do in those first 37 years?  What were her expectations?  We don't know how much income her mother had, or how much of it she expected to be able to pass on to Annabel.  Annabel would be on her own after her mother's death, with no brother to help her out financially and quite probably no close family to assist her.  Given her talents and her character, I think this makes it more than likely that she followed a course of study after leaving school – one of her future sisters-in-law studied art and another studied music – and quite possibly earned a living, perhaps as a teacher, before her marriage.  The only census in which she appears as an adult is that of 1901 (I can't find her in the 1891 census) in which no occupation is mentioned – but women's occupations are notoriously under-represented in censuses, and so this is not conclusive.

However, everything was about to change for Annabel, and in the remaining 31 years of her life she would encounter opportunities and challenges that she can never have imagined.

On 30 December 1905, a little more than two years after Mrs Hall's death, a notice appeared in the Hampshire Chronicle:

A marriage has been arranged, and will take place at the Cape in January between the Rev W P Dott, rector of Woodstock, Cape Town, and Annabel, only daughter of the late Robert Hall and Mrs Hall, of Hylton-house, Bournemouth

Very many thanks to Lynne Dixon for the information on Amhurst Road

Next: 3. Patrick Dott (1867-1938): his family