The History Section

Minutes of the meeting held Tuesday April 18th 2000 at 5.15pm

Members' Room

1. Members present :

Jean Arthur, Marie-Louise Backhurst, Mary Billot (Secretary), Francis Corbet, Frank Falle, Geraint Jennings, Nicolas Jouault, Mary Jupp, Sally Knight, David Le Maistre (Chairman), Georgia Le Maistre.

Apologies : Yvonne Aston, Anne Corbet, Roger de Carteret (Correspondence Secretary), Nelson Fauvel, Alec Podger.

2. Minutes of the meeting of March 21st 2000, and amendments

These were signed as a correct record. There were no amendments.

David Le Maistre thanked Roger de Carteret for chairing the meeting in his absence; he also thanked everyone who signed the greetings card sent to Anne and him in Southampton.

3. Matters arising from the minutes, not covered by the agenda

4.1 The SJ Spring 2000 Newsletter included the History Section contribution from Georgia Le Maistre and David Le Maistre has submitted the Section's annual report for the 2000 Bulletin.

4.2 Geraint Jennings attended the seminar 'Getting the hell out of St Helier' on March 24th 2000 in the Members' Room; he said that there were interesting presentations and good brainstorming but that it needed more publicity.

5.1 David Le Maistre thanked Georgia Le Maistre for representing the Section at the successful New Members' reception on March 2nd 2000.

5.2 Geraint Jennings has added the Guy Fawkes material to the Section's pages on the SJ website.

5.3 History Section lunch time lectures Autumn 2000 : November 15, 22, 29, December 6

Jean Arthur; Brains Trust (?)

Frank Falle on Dr Latham's theories on the colonization of Jersey.

Individual dates to be arranged.

5.4 Frank Falle gave a very well attended talk on the Vikings at the Members' Meeting on March 29th 2000.

4. Chairman's announcements

Dates for your diary :

April 30-May 1, 2000 : CIFHS Family History Millennium Fair, Highlands College

May 24 : Stuart Fell on 'Jersey's image in the new millennium', Members' meeting, 8pm

5. Members' presentations

5.1 Marie-Louise Backhurst reported on a Channel 4 project 'Black history on the Map'; local history

societies are to record the history of their Black and Asian communities (by October 2000). Jersey

topics : slave trade; Pompey/Battle of Jersey; parish registers; Prof. Gordon Luce's Burmese wife.

She has also found a friendly societies group on the Web. She reported that a project to input civil registrations of births, marriages and deaths from 1842 has started at the Office of the Superintendent Registrar. It will take at least twenty years. Current registrations are also being input. Robin Clapham is inputting St Helier burials into a specialized database. A database of cremations is also necessary.

5.2 Sally Knight asked about a World War I lottery football, property of 'Pop' Fitzsimmons. The item is in The Tweed River Historical Museum in New South Wales, Australia, which wants information.

She has also found a poem about the attempted murder of Thomas Nicolle by John Seward, a rowdy innkeeper in the Royal Square (1846). (Hotels box, item 9; *841 HUR, page 72)

5.3 Jean Arthur wishes to find the location of a garden maze created at the time of the French Revolution possibly by an emigré French gardener. Suggestions : St Ouen? (try Max Lucas and Peter Bisson); The Grove, St Lawrence; Les Fontaines, Pontac (a labyrinth).

5.4 Nicolas Jouault is researching wrecks of the Polka and the Superb. The master and mate of the Superb were charged with culpable imprudence (manslaughter) in 1850. Both ships hit the same rock, La Pontu de Blanche Roche off the Minquiers.

5.5 Mary Jupp said that after 1945 Bernard Jackson called his café Janvrin's Farm. The original name of the farm is not yet known.

5.6 Georgia Le Maistre is in contact with Judith Genders, a Grandin descendant. She attended the Vingtaine de la Ville (St Helier) meeting on April 19th; the Francis St pump is deteriorating and needs repair. Dr Lilian Grandin's tomb has been located in Ch'aotong, Yunan Province, China; an appeal for restoration is being planned by Dr Tsui and Mr Yang. [See previous minutes].

5.7 Geraint Jennings reported that a 19th century chequered Guernsey flag appeared on Goss crested china. Marek Kohn complimented Geraint on his SJ Jerriais pages in The Independent on Sunday (article, 2/4/2000); he found them whilst surfing the Web. Geraint wants to be told of Jerriais house names.

5.8 David Le Maistre took his display of castles postcards to the Southampton Postcard Collectors Club. He circulated his display of the wreck of the Hilda postcards (wrecked 19/11/1905 off St Malo with 128 deaths); some images were for sale four days after the tragedy on 23/11/1905.

6. Date of next meeting

Tuesday May 16th 2000 at 5.15 pm, Members' Room, Société Jersiaise.

Mary Billot is away; a volunteer is needed to take the minutes.