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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1296
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 26, 2004 - 4:27 pm: |       |
A new cop on the beat:
'George Yeowell, in context then, was growing up in exciting times. He was a poor boy—his father would have made less than 15 to 20 shillings a week—who probably spent much of his time outside his crowded house, in the streets of the largest and most dynamic city in the world.
George’s elder brother Frederick was married in May 1875 when George was sixteen. He became an uncle for the first time just seven months later when Frederick and Rebecca’s son Frederick junior was born. In 1877, George’s twin nieces Florence and Nellie were born.
The New Year 1878 brought tragedy to the household. George’s mother Mary Ann died on the 25th of January of tuberculosis. She had probably been suffering from this highly contagious disease—the symptoms of which include fever, cough, loss of appetite and energy, and weight loss—for several weeks or months. George was nineteen years old. The household now consisted of his father, Charles senior, age 45 or 46, and his brothers and sisters: Caroline (16½), Charles (12½), Emily (10) and Ernest (8½).
Sometime probably in late 1878 or early 1879, George’s father began to see Eliza Eyers, an unmarried woman ten years younger than Charles and originally from Luton.
In 1879, George joined the Metropolitan Police at Great Scotland Yard on 17 February at twenty years of age. While it is not possible to determine exactly why he chose this career, it is certainly possible that his father’s employment as a night watchman influenced his decision. Maybe conversations with Tom Harvey, a policeman who lived across the street, or Tom Dibbs, a constable living down the block, inspired him. George was first assigned to Stepney, but continued for the time being to live in Lorrimore Street, Walworth.
On 19 May 1879, three months after he took the job as a police constable, George married Miss Jane Saunders at St John’s Church in Walworth. It is clear that George and Jane had been seeing each other for at least a few months as Jane was about three months pregnant when the couple were married.
The two had probably known each other for some time, maybe growing up together. Jane lived with her widowed mother Ann and siblings at 40 Lorrimore Street.
At the same time this young couple were anticipating a new arrival, Eliza Eyers and George’s father, Charles Sr., were expecting a baby. In October 1879, Eliza officially became George’s step-mother when she married his father at Emmanuel Church in Camberwell. Charles and Eliza moved to Luton where, in December of the same year, George’s half-brother Archibald was born.
Sometime between May and November 1879, George, Jane and George’s fifteen-year-old brother Charles moved to Mile End Old Town and made their home in Walden Street. George and Jane’s first child, Alice Elizabeth, was born in that home on 25 November.
At 23 years of age George became the father of Sydney George Yeowell in Mile End, 7 February 1882.
At 25 years of age George became the father of Ethel Maud Yeowell in Mile End, 1884.
At 27 years of age George became the father of Nathaniel Leonard Yeowell in Mile End, 7 May 1886.
On 15 December 1887 George was promoted to sergeant and transferred to Bethnal Green. At the time, J Division (Bethnal Green) was situated in Bethnal Green Road. James Keating served as superintendent, overseeing 38 inspectors, 56 sergeants and 522 constables.
The family—by now, George and Jane with four children—moved to Bethnal Green around the time of George’s transfer and made their home in Cyprus Street.
Just two weeks before George's thirtieth birthday in the autumn of 1888, Polly Nichols, a prostitute, became the first—or some say second—victim of the infamous serial killer Jack the Ripper. Her vicious murder and those of several other women over the following two months were known as the Whitechapel murders and struck fear throughout the heart of London. These slayings took place within about a mile of where George was assigned as a police constable.'
Taken from the family web-site.
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