Admin/biog history
These documents mainly relate to the Field family of London, Berkshire and area and especially to John Perring Field who was baptised at St Mary Magdalene, Bermondsey, on 24 April 1801, the son of Simon Field, a citizen and draper of London. John Perring Field, though, seems to have been a gun maker, and a not very successful one, as he went bankrupt in 1845. He then became a tobacco manufacturer for a short time in the 1850s and then returned to being a gunmaker, but again went bankrupt, in 1864. However he was able to salvage something from the wreck – his grandmother left him £1500 and his wife brought him something. Also for a time he owned property at Cookham in Berkshire. As a result when in 1870 he retired to live in Dunstable, because it was cheaper than London, he and his two daughters lived there on £110 per annum (less income tax of £2.7s). His daughters provided their own clothes and pocket money, but also did all the housework.
The impression which comes through from the documents, of John Perring Field, is of a rather fussy, not quite successful man. For his Cookham property he chose tenants who had difficulty in paying their rent. The agents he employed to collect it, do not seem to have been very successful, either. When he moved to Dunstable from Lewisham, he left certain items behind to be sold by auction. The auctioneer he chose only put some of the items in his sale, and these sold for very little. Even so it took ten visits by a nephew to get what money there was for the sold articles from the auctioneer. Although a non-conformist (he was baptised by total immersion into the Baptist Church in about 1835) he obviously had no objection to drink (indeed he owned a share in a Cookham beerhouse) or to smoking. On his death, though, one of his sons described him as 'in every sense of the word a truely educated gentleman..'.
His brother, Octavius Adolphus Field, set himself up, in 1832, with yet another brother, Horatio Frederick Branganza Field, as a chemist and druggist. This business had 'long been discontinued' by 1840. By 1867, though, Octavius, now a surgeon, was accused of acting improperly towards a female patient, a Mrs Wight, and it had cost him £800 to defend himself in two actions. A subscription list was set up by friends and colleagues to help meet the cost. However he seems to have been casual about money because shortly after his brother’s bankruptcy, in 1865, he was asking him for a loan. Their grandmother seems to have assessed the worth of her grandchildren. On her death she left the bulk of her property to her grand-daughter, and only £3000, out of a total of £9000, to be divided between the two surviving grandsons. The grand-daughter, though, managed to squander her share (and also her mother’s property to which she became the sole beneficiary).
John Perring Field married twice. By his first wife, Mary Sare of Suffolk, he had four children and by his second wife, Elizabeth Reed, of Cookham, two daughters (and one who died about three weeks old). All four children of his first marriage went to Australia. One daughter, Lavinia, seems to have died out there in 1855, aged 26, and the fortunes of the others were chequered. The other daughter, Mary Ann, married Leopold Cobion at the Melbourne Independent Church in December 1852 only to discover that he had a wife already, in England. However she subsequently married Henry W Martell of Geelong, a school teacher, and had a large family by him, including two sons called Frederick and Charley [presumably Charles]. These two sons seem to have followed their father into teaching – Frederick as drawing master in Ballarat in 1875. Frederick seems to have been a bit of a prig and is quite prepared to lecture his Uncle on his treatment of his wife. Even more surprising his Uncle accepts his strictures and thanks him! However in his turn the uncle cautions his nephew against women. This uncle was Octavius, who had gone out to Australia in 1863. Having served an apprenticeship as a printer in England he gained employment on the Geelong Chronicle in 1864. However in the summer he had tried his hand at the 'diggings' presumably for gold. When he had money he spent it – on fast horses and fashionable carriages. He then decided to switch to teaching as a job which would ultimately be better paid. However by 1875 he was £150 in debt although making £8 per week. In that year he moved to Auckland in New Zealand and was working there as a compositor on a paper, although he had had ideas of starting his own. However his restless nature led him to become a Lieutenant in the New Zealand Volunteer Corps and to wish for a war with the Maoris. By 1882, though, he had come back to Australia and was living in Victoria. His long-suffering wife, whose name is spelt variously as Margurette or Marguriette, but is usually known as Maggie, had a lot to put up with. While in New Zealand he met up with a woman called Marie ' a thoroughly bad woman..' He had pictures of himself taken in uniform in New Zealand but his brother in law did not forward them to England for him, as expected, because (he was informed) his father wished to consider him dead. However when John Perring Field made his will in 1881 he was aware that Octavius was alive and he treated him no differently from the rest of the family.
The son who communicated most with his father, though, was John who went out to Australia in 1867 with his wife, Emily, and children. John intended to follow his father’s trade as gunsmith – but he had his father’s lack of luck. The guns he took out with him to Australia were damaged by salt water on the voyage and had to be sold off when he arrived, in job lots. What he had not realised, though, was that a lack of gentlemen and 'preserves' (and, therefore, presumably, game keepers) in Australia, would have restricted the work of a gunmaker, anyway. When after a few years guns were wanted (especially cheap guns) to shoot vermin, and sparrows, after the law on this subject was changed, he had involved himself in another job, although he still seems to hanker after gunmaking and often in his letters home, mentions the large profits earned by the few successful gun makers in the Colony. The job he did go into, though, after various attempts at selling fruit, oysters, pies and vegetables was saw sharpening. His main customers were the meat firms and as many of them at this time were finding it difficult to keep in business, his fortunes varied. However he consoled himself that it was a job in which (unlike gunmaking) he could find employment for his son. John was apparently a drinker which added to his distress and problems in Australia. However in 1870 he informed his family at home that he had been a total abstainer since 12 March of that year and in his letters regularly tells his father that this state of affairs continues. Indeed it may have been to procure such a change that he went to Australia as he thanks his father for thinking of Australia as his future home and considered that if he had stayed in England he would have continued in his old courses.
The two daughters of John Perring Field’s second marriage stayed with their parents in England. Elizabeth Field, the mother, apparently died before her husband, although she was still alive in 1876 as in that year FrederickMartell addresses his letters to both of them. One of these daughters, Jessie Evans Field, was a friend of Maud Sprague, who went to live with her at ' Glenlossie', High Street South, Dunstable, perhaps after the death of Ellen Elizabeth, the sister, in about 1912. Indeed Maud Sprague was the residuary legatee in her friend’s will, and seems to have inherited 'Glenlossie' which was sold for £600 in 1920. The collection of documents includes some Sprague family items (including the will of Mary Jane Sprague, 1927) and it is due to the fact that the documents descended to the Sprague family that they have been preserved and retained.