John Wheatland (1859-1943) and Mary Coughlan (1855-1931)

John Wheatland (1859-1943) and Mary Coughlan (1855-1931).
My 2nd great-grandparents.

My immediate Wheatland ancestors came from Croydon but earlier generations hailed from Sussex. But my 2nd great-grandfather John Wheatland’s story was more unusual than most.

The mystery surrounds his birth, for no John Wheatland exists who matches the details given in his later life. It’s his parents, William Wheatland and Olive Biggs, who hold the key to the mystery. It’s clear that she was a widow and about 20 years older than William when they married in 1858, her first husband Thomas Biggs having died in 1856.

On 16 January 1859 a John Biggs was baptised at St Mary Magdalene Church in Rusper, Sussex, his mother Olive Biggs. He was illegimate and their home given as Friday Street – a lane to the west of the main village – in the baptism record. This is almost certainly the infant who became John Wheatland, partly because there are no John Biggs in later records who match our man.

So who was his father? Was it Thomas Biggs, even though he died in 1856? It’s perfectly possible that the baptism took place a few years after John’s birth but if this was the case, why wasn’t it made clear at the time? It would’ve been far more socially acceptable for Olive than admitting to having had an illegitimate child. Or was his father William Wheatland? If we take the early census returns as gospel John was born in around 1859, suggesting that he was conceived early on in Olive and William’s relationship. John also listed William as his father on his marriage certificate.

John’s birthdate certainly moved around. Some later census records put his birth in or around 1857 while his marriage record, from 1875, claims he was aged 20 – suggesting he was born when Thomas Biggs was still alive. However, John was more likely upping his age to reduce the gap between his and his new wife’s. To add to the confusion, the 1939 Register has just one John Wheatland who could be our man but he has a middle T initial, which had not appeared elsewhere. His date of birth on this record is 8 August 1859 – months after his baptism if this is the same man. John, by this time a widower, was in a care home in Croydon – the Queens Road Homes – and described as incapacitated. Assuming this was him, perhaps this was his correct birth date, but the year was wrong.

It’s unknown whether John knew the identity of his real father but I’m of the view that William Wheatland is the most likely candidate, based on the shame surrounding illegitimacy, the unexplained gap between birth and baptism, and the majority of records.

Whoever the father was, John was with William and Olive when they moved to Croydon. Why they made the move is unknown. Was it because their unusual relationship had put a few noses out of joint or was it for work? The 1871 census shows them living in Haling Road, South Croydon, where Wheatlands would live for many generations. John – then said to be a greengrocer – married Mary Coughlan on 19 July 1875 at All Saints Church in Upper Norwood. They went to live in Selsdon Road, South Croydon. The 1881 census recorded him as a bricklayer’s labourer but he’s nowhere to be found in 1891 although his daughter Alice was admitted to Brighton Road School in the 1880s when they were said to be living in Sussex Road, South Croydon. Ten years later he and his family were recorded at the Rectory in Sisland, Norfolk, where he was working as a coachman. This was a very odd move and difficult to explain. In addition, his birth location is Croydon but I suspect this was an error by the transcriber because everything else matches him and his family. His son Foster went to school in the area and remained on the register until 1907.

The 1911 census shows the family back in Haling Road, Croydon, this time John working as a carter at a builder’s yard and curiously billed as having been born in Brighton! Despite this, he must be our John because several relations called ‘Coughlan’ were staying with them and other family members match.

The couple had nine children but two did not survive infancy. They received praise in the Notes of the Day column in the Pall Mall Gazette of 12 December 1913: “There is a couple in Croydon who may well be proud and who deserve the grateful recognition of their country. John and Mary Wheatland have given six sons to the Navy. The eldest is a Coastguardsman, the second a petty officer, and the youngest, a lad of 16, is still rated ‘boy’. Of such are the defenders of Britain, for service in the Navy and Army – especially in the Navy – is frequently a family affair. Any mother will understand the heroic mould in which the mother is cast who gives her all in this way to a service which entails frequent and long separations as well as dangers which are really great, and seem to the dwellers inland even greater than they are.”

John died in 1943 after living in the care home.

Mary Coughlan was born in 1855 in Croydon to Irish-born parents Patrick, an agricultural labourer, and Mary. She died in 1931.

Their children were:

• John Wheatland (1876-1952), my great-grand uncle. John served in the Royal Navy and the Coastguard but there is a mystery surrounding his wife Fanny.
• William Albert Wheatland (1877-1964), my great-grandfather, who served for many years in the Royal Navy.
• Alice Mary Wheatland (1880-1958), my great-grand aunt. Her first husband died during the First World War while she was pregnant with their second child.
• Henry Wheatland (1884-1884), my great-grand uncle. Henry was born on 13 April 1884, the twin of Emma Ellen. They were baptised on 25 May at St Peter’s Church in Croydon but both were dead before year-end.
• Emma Ellen Wheatland (1884-1884), my great-grand aunt. Emma was born on 13 April 1884, the twin of Henry. They were baptised on 25 May at St Peter’s Church in Croydon but both were dead before year-end.
• Arthur Sydney Wheatland (1885-1925), my great-grand uncle. Arthur was baptised on 22 November 1885 at St Augustine’s Church, South Croydon. Like his surviving brothers he served in the Royal Navy, and his papers give his birth date as 8 October 1883. I suspect that he’d added two years to his age…. At the 1901 census he was working as a butcher and lodging at 79 Sussex Road, Croydon. Later that year he followed his brothers into the Navy, serving through to the end of the First World War as a stoker on a range of ships. The 1911 census records him as a leading stoker on HMS Lancaster, a cruiser then moored in Malta, but during the war he served on a depot ship, HMS Bonaventure, providing support services to other vessels. The medal record lists his rank as SPO, which stands for Stoker Petty Officer. Arthur was also a champion hornpipe dancer, carrying on a venerable naval tradition. A letter to the Hampshire Chronicle of 21 October 1927 written by an R J Sharp of Chichester featured his recollections of Arthur dancing while serving on the Bonaventure and moored in Gibraltar during 1918. Sharp believed Arthur was the champion of the navy and recalled him attempting to teach the famous Spanish dancer La Argentenita the intricacies of the hornpipe. During his service Arthur joined the Freemasons, being initiated into the Lodge of St Hilda in South Shields on 10 July 1916. His naval papers record that he was invalided out of the service with syphilis, which caused both physical and mental illness in its victims. The place of his death shows how it affected Arthur for he died at Croydon Mental Hospital in Warlingham Park on 28 September 1925. He left effects valued at around £305.
• Alfred Wheatland (1891-1976), my great-grand uncle. Alfred spent much of his life at sea and finally settled in New York.
• George Wheatland (1894-1979), my great-grand uncle. George was born on 3 February 1894 and baptised on 11 March at St Peter’s Church in Croydon, Surrey. He is listed on the 1901 census living with his parents and some of his siblings in Sisland, Norfolk, where his father had gone to work. By 1911 they were back in Croydon, at 6 Haling Road, and George was working as a fitter at an iron foundry. Two years later he followed his brothers into the Royal Navy, signing up for 12 years of service. The record shows he was about 5ft 5ins tall, had brown hair, grey eyes and a fresh complexion. He served as Armourer’s Crew and then as an Armourer’s Mate on a variety of vessels during the First World War, including the battleship Hannibal and the corvette Colleen. He was mentioned in despatches, as recorded in The London Gazette of 11 November 1919, and left the Navy in 1923. The following year he married Ethel May Aylwin in Croydon and had a number of children. All the births were registered in Croydon. George Snr and Ethel were living at 246a Sydenham Road, Croydon, at the time of the 1939 Register but only with Kenneth, a shop assistant. George was a fitter (steel casements). I suspect that George and Ethel were divorced or separated after this as the Register notes that she changed her name by deed poll to Taylor. I’ve not found any reference to a divorce in the archives or newspapers. George died in 1979 and his death was registered in Croydon. Their children were:
  • Kenneth George Wheatland was born in Croydon in 1924 and the Croydon Times of 24 March 1945 reported that he had been serving as an able seaman in the Royal Navy during the war, along with others in the Wheatland family. He married Mary Florence Garner in 1952 but she died in 1979. Kenneth died in Croydon in 2004.
  • Betty Elsie Wheatland was born in 1925 in Croydon and married Harry Moulding in 1945. She died in 1994. He followed in 2001.
  • George Wheatland was born in Croydon in 1927 and the Croydon Times of 24 March 1945 reported that he had been serving as an able seaman in the Royal Navy during the war, along with his brother Kenneth. He married Dorothy Sales in 1948. The Croydon Advertiser of 6 March 1959 reported that he and his brother Jack, a demolition worker, had been sentenced to six months in prison for hiring tape recorders but then selling them on – all theft offences. George, a decorator with seven children and previous convictions, said he’d been ill and unemployed and had fallen into debt. Jack, who had three children, told a similar story. George died in 2001. Dorothy died in 1992.
  • Jack Wheatland was born in Croydon in 1928 and married Iris Doreen Derosa in 1949. He was in trouble with the law on several occasions, as the report above notes. The Croydon Times of 21 June 1952 also reported that he’d been sentenced to a month in prison for stealing a gold watch while working as a window cleaner. Jack said he was in debt and had been suffering from pleurisy. Other reports mention him using insulting words in 1946, getting a fine for stealing coal in 1951, stealing from an electricity meter in 1953 that earned him three months in prison and stealing wire from an employer that earned him four months inside. In his statements to the various court hearings Jack often mentioned the illnesses he and his wife suffered and on some occasions he avoided prison because of his three children. Jack died in 1961, Iris in 2004.
  • Dorothy May Wheatland, born in 1934.
• Foster Wheatland (1897-1983), my great-grand uncle. Foster was born on 17 April 1897 and baptised on 13 June at St Peter’s Church in Croydon, Surrey. His parents then moved to Sisland in Norfolk – where the family is shown in the 1901 census – and Foster was admitted to nearby Loddon School in May of 1900. He remained there until 1907. By 1911 the family were back in Croydon, at 6 Haling Road and a report in the Croydon Chronicle and East Surrey Advertiser of 13 May 1911 shows that Foster went to Dering Place Council School. Like all of his brothers, Foster served in the Royal Navy, beginning in 1912 as a Boy 2nd Class. He signed up to a 12-year engagement in 1915, after the start of the First World War. He served as a signalman and then a leading signalman, responsible for communications between vessels, on such vessels as the sloop HMS Iris and the depot ship HMS Blake, assigned to the 11th Destroyer Flotilla of the Grand Fleet. He served on other depot ships, such as Hecla and Dido after the war but left the navy in 1920. He became a porter with the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway based at Mitcham Junction station on 26 February that year, earning a princely 18s per week, and married Winifred Mary Power in Croydon in 1924. She was a native of Carshalton in Surrey and was born in 1897. By 1939 they were living in Chilmead Cottages in Godstone, Surrey, and Foster was working as a plasterer. During the war he changed his job again and began working for the postal service, serving for a time as a postman in Redhill and Reigate. Winifred died in 1965 and Foster in 1983. The couple had at least one child:
  • Leslie Foster Wheatland (1925-2007). He married Beatrice Harman in 1967.

Sources: RootsChat discussion. BMDs, census and other records at Ancestry.co.uk, Findmypast.co.uk, Familysearch.org. Family memories. British Newspaper Archive (titles in text). Naval records at National Archives.