FAMILY LIVES
TALES FROM THE CENSUS
& OTHER RECORDS
EDGAR AUGUSTUS LOCK 1871 - 1944
Edgar Augustus Lock is not directly related to me but his sisters Annie Elsie & Lillian Clara were married to two of my Great Uncles, Albert & George Lake. His is such a bizarre story that I think it was worth telling on these pages.
George Augustus Lock (a shoemaker) & his wife Anne Bienvenu lived in Guernsey and had 8 children George, Arthur, Edgar, Herbert, Lillian, Annie, Frederick & Reginald. The 3rd child, Edgar Augustus Lock was born on 20 March 1871 at which time the family lived in Bouet, St Peter Port. Bouet was a street inhabited by the working population of the town, stone masons, labourers, etc.
At the age of 20 in 1891 Edgar was working as a gardener and a stone pitcher maker.
Stone pitching is concrete layers embedded with rocks used on embankments and culverts to break up the flow of storm water and stop erosion. The family by this time had moved from Bouet and were living at La Hutte, Route de la Ramee, St Peter Port.
On 31st March 1896 he married dressmaker, Agnes Elizabeth Bailey, at the Greffe in St Peter Port. The Greffe is the Royal Court House and Registry office This is managed by the clerk called the Greffier, who is the Registrar General of Births, Marriages and Deaths in Guernsey.
Following their marriage in 1896 their first child, also called Edgar, was born a year later, followed by Horace 1899, Clifford 1901 (died aged 3 months), Percy 1902 and Gwendoline 1905. Clifford, Percy & Gwendoline were all born at 1 Milestone Terrace, Les Banques, St Sampson which is where the family were found on the 1911 census.
The year before in 1910 three of Edgar Augustus Lock's siblings, Annie Elsie & Lillian Clara Lake (both nee Lock) and Frederick de Carteret Lock, their younger brother, had all left Guernsey for America, in a party consisting members of the Lake, Lock & Gallienne families.
Bouet, St Peter Port where many of the Lake and Lock families lived between 1860's - 1890's.
Photo taken during our visit 2001
The Greffe St Peter Port Guernsey
In 1921, Edgar and his family also left Guernsey, not for America to be with his siblings, but they set off on an 11,933 mile trip to New Zealand. This would have started at Plymouth Devon, one of only 3 places in the UK where sailings departed for New Zealand. The journey would have taken up to 3 months and they could have sailed down the Atlantic possibly calling in at the Canary Islands, round the Cape of Good Hope and past the roaring forties or they could have taken the new route through the Panama Canal, which had opened in 1914. In the 1920’s assisted emigration to New Zealand had resumed and many were making the voyage following world war one. This was no luxury cruise it would have been rough and probably very basic.
After this long and arduous voyage they arrived in Auckland on 16th July 1921. Agnes along with her 4 children, Edgar, Horace, Percy and Gwendoline, disembarked but bizarrely Edgar Augustus refused to leave the ship, “The Ruahine”. Leaving behind his wife and children in this new unfamiliar land, Edgar sailed back to the UK. Quite why he did this no one knows, it must have been a huge shock for Agnes to try and come to terms with this action by her husband.
The family, minus their husband and father seemed to establish themselves in New Zealand and by 1930 all the four children had married but in that same year, Agnes, was diagnosed with Brights Disease (a kidney disease now known as Nephritis).
Then in another bizarre twist on 18 Nov 1936, Edgar Augustus Lock now aged 65, once again left the UK and emigrated to New Zealand. This time he got off the ship and settled in Palmerston North, Manawatu Wanganuri, where most of his family were living.
I wonder what they thought of his latest action?.
Agnes died 7 Nov 1941, with Edgar Augustus dying on 9 Oct 1944, at the home of his son Horace. The Lock family live on in New Zealand today, the four children had 13 offspring between them and the lines continue.
Some questions though will remained unanswered:
Why did they go to New Zealand when he had family in America?
Why did he sail home leaving his wife and children in a strange land?
Why did he then decide to go back again 15 years later?
In a final strange twist to this story, when I was a manager in Aberdeen, one of my staff had the surname Grubb and one year she visited New Zealand to meet relatives she had never met before. Gwendoline Lock had married Walter Frederick Grubb and had two children, now I wonder?
ABOVE: A scene at Plymouth Docks in the 1920's
BELOW: The SS Ruahine the ship they went on.
Palmerston North Manawatu Wanganuri
New Zealand
Aberdeen Harbour 1980's