Here is one theory about the life of AH Scott:
We discovered that AH Scott appears in the London Gazette August 9th 1910 as:
Trading as Magnussen & Co, Priorton Mill, Sandford and also Mortehoe, Devon (Corn, meal and cake merchant), filing for a bankruptcy order at Exeter Court on 4th August 1910. And having a public meeting at Exeter Castle on August 25th that year to go into receivership.
This was four months before he married Kate Maxwell/Wood, ho hum. By December of that year (on the marriage cert) he describes himself as a ‘farmer.’
My theory?
Arthur Henry Scott enters the family tree picture for certain in April 1908, when he registers the birth of his daughter, Kate Marjory. But let’s go back a little way…
The woman he is ‘with’ at this time is Kate Wood (nee Maxwell), she is recently widowed and in fact, became a widow early in 1906. Her husband, Frank Wood, died in the Crediton area at Aish House, Morchard Bishop on 5th February, 1906 aged 54 and was a retired cotton spinner.
This gives us a possible link, or two, between AH Scott and Kate when she was married. Scott, we know, ran a company called Magnussen & Co. and was trading out of Priorton House and Mortehoe, both in Devon, when the company went bankrupt in 1910.
He could have met Kate while she was in Morchard Bishop, or earlier through his business. (Morchard Bishop and Sandford are five miles distant.) Kate and Frank were in Chester in 1901 where Frank was still working and where they had two servants – suggests money. So Frank retired between 1901 and 1906, possibly due to ill health. Frank dealt in cotton and AH Scott’s company dealt in corn, meal and cake. We know that Kate ‘preferred horses to children’ and that, in Chester, one of the servants was a ‘horseman.’ (It could be houseman actually.) The point being that it’s possible that Scott had dealings with Kate when they were in Morchard Bishop, perhaps providing them with corn/meal/cake for horse fodder. Just a thought.
But what we do know is that Kate and AH had a child and she was born in 1908, April. Assuming a nine month pregnancy this would put the time of their liaison around July 1907.
It is September 1907 and Kate realises she is pregnant. What does she do? She goes to Scott and tells him and they decide that they will have the child, but Scott has his own company. (We don’t know where he was living at this time.) Kate is wealthy and recently a widow; being pregnant and unmarried, and so soon after her husband’s death, does not look good. The child was an accident for sure.
But still they decide to do the decent thing and have the baby. But where?
Scott’s company is trading at Mortehoe, which isn’t too far away from Priorton but far enough, and it is fairly remote. He arranges for Kate to live with at Culver Park Lodge. Perhaps he knows the people there (possibly a Mrs. Dyer) and calls in a favour; perhaps this is known locally as a ‘safe house’ for unmarried mothers. Either way, Kate moves into Culver Park Lodge in Mortehoe, a place where Scott is also trading from. This gives him easy and legitimate access to the area to keep an eye on things.
The child is born in April 1908 and Scott is ‘of independent means.’ He has his own business still and has just bought Priorton Mill/House in Sandford. Kate the mother is named as Kate Scott on the certificate and Scotts’ address is incorrectly noted as Culver Park Lodge. This suggests that the registrar assumed they were married and living at the property, or else the couple told the registrar this. Ether way we know that they were not yet married and that Scott was living at Priorton – well, he owned it and may have been in the process of moving in as the birth is only two months after the purchase. The later certificates show us that Scott was at Priorton at this time, as the address for Scott was changed to read Priorton, Sandford.
At some time between April 1908 and 2nd April 1911, Kate and her daughter move to Priorton.
And Kate and Scott get married…
In August 1910 Scott’s company is in trouble and is going bankrupt. On 4th August that year there is an adjudication in the courts at Exeter, there is a Summary Administration Order made on 6th of that month, the first meeting on 19th and the public examination on 25th. The company goes bust in late August 1910 leaving Scott with his large house, farm, illegitimate child and Kate to worry about.
Why doesn’t Kate bail him out? She is reputed to be a wealthy widow. Perhaps the company was ‘Limited’ and so Priorton was left out of the Scott bankruptcy. We may know more about this if and when Companies House locates the company papers, if they still exist. (They eventually said there was no record of Magnussen & Co…)
Kate has her daughter, which she is not too thrilled about but she knows she has done the right thing. She has also spoken to her mother, Mary Maxwell, who until recently (1901) was up in Salford, living on her own means and sharing a house opposite Albert Park with one Ellen Cave. It looks like Ellen was offered the chance to move down to Devon, perhaps to help with the new baby, or perhaps as companion for Mary Maxwell, who in 1910 would have been 77. (She lived to be 87 by which time she was ‘home’ in Bolton, we think.)
Meanwhile, Scott’s business has gone and he still has the illegitimate child to consider; as well as his lifestyle which, it appears, was all about farming (smallholding really, a few animals), and living in Crediton society. Did he offer to ‘make an honest woman’ of Kate in return for sharing her wealth? Did she offer to allow him to live on his house and lifestyle as long as he married her? Either way it doesn’t really look as if it was a marriage made by Cupid. If they were in love they would have married as soon as Kate found out she was pregnant, or as soon after the birth as possible, wouldn’t they? Why wait two years and eight months after the birth, which is probably about three years since Kate realised she was pregnant? It suggests to me that the marriage was convenient for Scott; to maintain his independent means and his lifestyle, and convenient for Kate as she could legitimately call herself Kate Scott and not be an unmarried mother. Wealthy or not, that was still not the done thing in those days.
Ellen Cave was in the area for the wedding of Kate and Scott, which took place on 7th December 1910, in the Bristol registry office. The other witness were an L Richards, possibly Richard Lee the owner/tenant of Priorton Barton, the next farm along Priorton Hill to Priorton House/Mill where AH Scott lived. (If so, the swapping around of his names suggests he wasn’t happy about being a witness and wanted to remain slightly anonymous – or else this L Richard was someone else entirely.)
This suggests that both Ellen, mother Mary and L Richards knew that daughter Kate was illegitimate. Presumably no one else in the area did, otherwise why not have the wedding locally? On the certificate Kate’s address is given as The Ferns, Whatley Road, Clifton. Looking at the 1901 census results for that street there are no obvious connections (though there may have been in 1910), so we must assume the Ferns was a guest house of some sort and Kate was there for convenience or necessity of being in Bristol for the marriage.
So, 1911 starts with Kate, Scott and the baby back at Priorton and life continues as it did before – but now they are married and don’t need to pretend any more. In April, when the census is carried out, Ellen Cave and Mary Maxwell are with them. Scott is now a rather vague ‘commissions dealer’ and states that he has one child, which he does, and that he has been married for one year (actually only four months but the form asks for years). This is proof, if we needed it, which we don’t, that Kate Marjory was born out of wedlock.
Then what happens? Kate and Scott are married, they have Priorton house and it’s a fairly substantial property. In 1911 they re-register their daughter’s birth, presumably having noticed that the first one was inaccurate due to putting Scott in Mortehoe rather than Priorton, and also because now they are legitimately married it tidies things up.
1912. Looking at some photos that show Kate Marjory aged about four, we see a scene of pleasant country life at Priorton. Daughter Kate is well dressed and well presented, mother Kate is elegantly dressed, Scott wears his cap and his Edwardian moustache as the family, with a servant (who could be Ellen Cave, though she looks far too young) and a farm hand, are photographed with a horse, donkey, pigs and chickens in front of the house.
In 1914, Scott has himself listed in Kelly’s Directory as Captain Arthur Henry Scott, Priorton, Devon. There is no ‘captain’ on any of the other documents so far, even though officers appear on census with their rank stated. (He was actually calling himself Captain Scott back in 1908 as the Sandford diarist refers to him as such when talking about the sale of Priorton House.)
1916, Kate Scott is buying things for her dogs and her beloved horses from the local stores.
In 1918 Captain AH Scott is on the Sandford World War One war memorial, fund raising committee.
The 1919 Kelly’s directory also lists him in the same way. And up at Culver Park Lodge a Mrs Mary Ann Dyer is listed as having ‘apartments’ there. The same woman appears in the directory of 1902, so we can assume she is established there during this period. Interestingly there is no record of Priorton on the 1902 edition, other than for Priorton Barton where Lee Richards is living, as he is in 1919.
1921 Mary Maxwell, Kate’s mother, dies in Bolton (possibly).
1923, there is an entry in Kelly’s Directory, stating Scott as living at Priorton and a Mrs Scott visiting Culver Park Lodge. Another link between the two properties. Who was at Culver Park Lodge in 1908 and 1923 we wonder? Or maybe Kate was visiting friends she made while she was living there, and there is no connection other than that.
In 1925 a book is published, ‘Records of the Cheriton otter hounds.’ This book is about the otter hunts and in it Captain and Mrs Scott are mentioned: ‘Thence under Dowrish to Priorton, where the old Mill has been converted into a most charming house, and Captain and Mrs Scott are always ready to dispense hospitality to the hunt.’ Indeed, and there is a photo in the book showing the hunt at Priorton.
1929 and Kate Marjory is to be married. She is 21 and her husband to be, Dennis Lionel Cozens is 27. The Scotts re-register her birth again; this time putting Scott’s address as Priorton.
Kate Marjory and Dennis move into a house that his mother has had built for them, in Taunton and there, eight years later, their first daughter is born; the second is born two years after this. But then, in 1942/43, the couple divorce and the children are sent to live with a guardian, their great uncle’s son John Knill, in Herne Bay.
So, why not send them to Priorton which is not far away and where they can be with their grandparents? Possibly because Scott and Kate would have been in their late 70’s, and Scott may already have died. My mother thinks he died before she was six (before 1943). We’re still not sure when Kate died but it must have been after 1937/38 as there is a photo of her holding her granddaughter who is about one year old, possibly slightly older.
What we do know though is that Kate Marjory’s mother in law (Maud Avis Knill) was not a happy woman. She doted on her children Dennis and Marion. When Marion died at the age of 30, in 1935, Maud put even more time and energy into her son. When her daughter in law, Kate Marjory, did the dreadful thing and left the home in around 1942, Maud could not have been happy.
What is interesting here is that my aunt thinks that Scott died before his daughter divorced and that Kate Marjory must have inherited the property at Priorton. She reasons this because the property ended up in the Cozens portfolio. She remembers Scott coming to live with them for a while before the divorce so the property must have been let. Bear in mind that my aunt was born in 1939 and the divorce happened around 1942/43, and this information probably came to her from her mother, Kate Marjory. But putting those pieces together and we can figure out that Scott was still around until the early 1940’s, but it still doesn’t help us fix his death date.
But Judi also says the property, Priorton, passed to Kate Marjory before 1942 and then on to the Cozens family before the divorce, and then stayed in the family until 1952.
So AH Scott enters for definite in 1908 (Daughter’s birth certificate) and we lose sight of him after July 10th 1929, when he is on his daughter’s marriage certificate. It’s possible that he was around in 1942, it’s possible he died around 1943, but where?
That’s just my first theory. I am sure you will have your own. |
