Samuel Symonds (1836-1909).
My 3rd great grand uncle.
Samuel was born to Charles Robinson Witchingham Symonds and Susannah Waters in 1836 and baptised on 20 July that year at St Nicholas’s Church in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. He lived with his family until his marriage on 28 December 1856 to Ann Maria Masterson. She was also a Yarmouth native, born in 1836, and sometimes went by the name Maria in the census records.
Samuel is harder to pin down because there are several men by the name in the town at the time. However, he’s probably the Samuel Symonds who was at sea at the time of the 1861 census, on board the William & Benjamin and listed as a married seaman aged 24. His wife was recorded at home in Napoleon Place, Great Yarmouth, with two of her children. But did he then become a beachman and get caught up in a case reported in the Norfolk News of 24 September 1864? Judging by subsequent census records, he did.
Beachmen were a mix of lifeboat men, salvage experts and ferrymen, employed at Yarmouth to bring fish from trawler to shore. It was often a dangerous job, especially when the men went out in severe weather. The court heard that Symonds was among a group of men found guilty of stealing 33 pairs of sole and three haddock as they worked to unload a vessel, spotted through binoculars by the owners. They were each sentenced to 21 days hard labour – rather than the usual six months – after calls for leniency by both the prosecuting and defence lawyers. The court was told that the men were of good character. It emerged during the hearing before Yarmouth magistrates that the trawler’s captain had not objected to the men putting away a small piece of his catch and the men claimed that in fact this was a widely accepted perk of the beachman’s job.
By 1871 Samuel was living with his family at Back Crown Place in Yarmouth. The Norwich Mercury of 26 July 1876 reported on Samuel’s life-saving heroics on Yarmouth’s North Beach. He was the attendant there when a gentleman took a bathing machine out into the water, but about 100 yards offshore he was seized with the cramp, began sinking and started shouting for help. Samuel grabbed a lifebelt, rushed into the water and rescued him. His bravery earned him a “handsome testimonial on vellum” from the Royal Humane Society. The Norfolk News of 30 September 1876 reported that “on several previous occasions, Symonds had been instrumental in saving the lives of men who but for his courage and promptitude would have drowned”.
The Norfolk News of 10 February 1877 carried a report of the presentation of the testimonial at the Police Court. The Yarmouth Mayor described how Samuel was employed during the summer by Pestell’s bathing machines and over three years had saved six lives, a seventh attempt being unsuccessful. Samuel thanked the magistrates for paying to have the testimonial framed for him. The 1881 and 1891 censuses show the family living in Tyrolean Place in Great Yarmouth, the former listing Samuel as a general labourer, the latter as a boatman. In 1901 they were living at 8 Nettle Hill East, close to the beach, with Samuel once again described as a beachman. Samuel died on 29 March 1909, his address given as Nelson Road. He was buried on 3 April. Ann Maria died in January 1912 and was buried on the 31st of the month.
They had a large family including:
- Samuel Benjamin Symonds. Born in 1857 in Great Yarmouth, he married Ellen Bloom and over the course of his life worked as a labourer, fisherman and maltster at a brewery. He and Ellen raised a family, for many years while living at the oddly named ‘Laughing Image Corner’ in Yarmouth. He died in 1935.
- Agnes Caroline Symonds. Born in 1859 in Great Yarmouth, Caroline married Joseph William White in the town in 1892 and raised a family in Gorleston. The 1901 census listed Joseph as a port missionary in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, and in 1911 Agnes and her family were in Grimsby. Agnes was widowed in 1928 but she survived until 1941 having moved to Watford in Hertfordshire.
- Benjamin Charles Symonds. Benjamin was born in Great Yarmouth in 1862 and married in 1886, but died 10 years later in 1896).
- Henry John Symonds was born in Great Yarmouth in 1865 and stayed in the town the whole of his life. He married Eleanor Tillyer in 1887, raised a family and worked as a labourer. He died in 1931.
- Alice Elizabeth Symonds. Born in 1868, Alice married James Dunton Eastoe in Great Yarmouth in 1988. He worked variously as a shoemaker and a newsagent & tobacconist. She died in 1947 in Yarmouth.
- Albert Clement Symonds was born in Great Yarmouth in 1870 and married Rose Ellen White in town in 1894. They raised a family before moving to Newcastle Upon Tyne, where he worked in a steelworks. He died in 1942.
- Ethel May Symonds. Ethel was born in 1879 and married John Logdon Bartram in Great Yarmouth in 1902. He worked as a labourer. Ethel died in 1928.
Sources: All BMD and census data has been gathered from Ancestry.co.uk, FindMyPast.co.uk, FamilySearch.org and the British Newspaper Archive. David Higgins book on The Beachmen (published by Terence Dalton, 1987).