1940: Over 500 men between the ages of 20 and 23 registered for 'call-up' at the Peterborough Labour Exchange on this Saturday. Of these only five registered a conscientious objection. In the end 490 actually signed up. 64 with the Navy and 130 with the RAF. The rest offered no definite preference. Not surprisingly, bearing in mind the industrial landscape of Peterborough, there was more than the usual number of recruits who were in reserved occupations - mainly engineering. (Gray, David, Peterborough at War 1939-1945, David Gray, 2011)
Taken from The Peterborough Book of Days by Brian Jones, The History Press, 2014.
There is an old adage that spending time with children keeps you young: Mary Higby is the perfect example of this. Born in 1701, Mary lived in Yaxley with her husband Samuel Higby. He was a farmer and would have provided a comfortable living for his family, which was fortunate because there were a lot of them!
Mary and Samuel had 14 children christened, with only 4 dying as infants and one as a child, which is an excellent survival rate for the time. Sadly, two of the infants to die were Johnathon and Sarah, who were twins born in 1740. Jonathan died after only a couple of months, with Sarah following him a month after. To compound their grief, their next child Peter died after only a few days and their last child Eleanour, born in 1844 died after only a few months. Thankfully, Alice was born in between Peter and Eleanour in 1743 and was their 9th surviving child. Their daughter Elinor (not to be confused with Eleanour) had died had the age of nine. In order, their surviving children were Elizabeth, Judith, Anne, Mary, Diana, William, Samuel, Isabell and Alice.
The most extraordinary part of this story is Mary's legacy. She successfully raised nine children who also successfully raised large families and so did their children. Being surrounded by a constant tide of new children must have suited Mary and she lived to be 90. Her death was recorded anecdotally in The Gentleman's Magazine who claimed 'She retained her faculties until the last hour of her life, and had been the mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother of 250 children.' Grab a cup of coffee and a pencil and paper to work out how many children her children had...
References
S., Urban, The Gentleman's Magazine, Part 1, (John Nichols, 1791), p568
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