Her Brother, John George (b 21 Sept 1901, d 26 march 1956). i understand he went to sea with his farther once and didn’t like it. He never went to sea again, and became a grocer in Whitby and owned a shop on Newton St off Skinner..
Her, uncle John Walker lived High Brock Rigg, his younger brother lived at Red house Farm Glaisdale . Her father a Master Mariner in the merchant service lived at Osborne Terrace, Whitby and when she was 3 years old and they later moved to 36 Esk Terrace Whitby, a fine row of large 3 story terraced houses over looking the harbour. Nan, as we called her, told me that the majority of these houses were owned by master mariners, marine engineers and other professional people.
Nan was 14 when the the hospital ship, Rohilla, was wrecked on the Scaur at Whitby, October 1914 after it ran ashore in a gale. Her mother had gone down to the scaur and on return home told Nan some of what she’d seen and would not let nan go down there to see for her self!!
In December 1914 she was onboard the SS Carperby, her father being the captain which was mored in Hartlepool docks when the three German cruisers shelled towns along the Yorkshire coast. I remember her saying that she wasn’t particularly frightened as all the shells were passing well over the ship and landing in the docks further inland!! Her father was obviously at sea quite a lot and I know he was on ships sailing between the USA and the UK. She admitted she was, “spoilt rotten”, by him. (The photograph of her above, is from a large framed photo I have, and is printed on silk)
He bought her a motor bike from America, an ‘Indian Chief’ and I recall her telling me she was probably the first woman in Whitby to own a motor bike.!. She also owned a Beardsmore’, motor bike. I remember her saying that her dad once asked her what she would like bringing back from his next trip. She asked for a white mink coat or stole. She was quite upset when he returned with only an ‘ordinary’ stole and not the white one she’d asked for. I remember her telling me about her ‘governess’ cart, pulled by a horse or pony and in which she travelled around the district..
She played the piano at the Coliseum cinema in Whitby at the showing of silent films. Apparently they sent the music to be played to accompany the film beforehand so the pianist could practice if need be. The music sometimes didn’t arrive and Nan told me you simply had to watch the film and make it up as you went along. She also played a mandolin. This of course was in the days before television or the introduction of radio. You made your own entertainment of an evening. She married Walter Masterman Carter, of Fylingthorpe , a Master Mariner, when she was 19 year old and he was 27. in 1919. They lived initially at 1 Fishburn Road.Whitby. Walter had volunteered for duties in WW1 and joined the RN as a navigating officer. His ship was hit several shells as they sailed up the Tigris river and had to be abandoned. He was injured and the only item he had left were the binoculars which were around his neck. (I have these binoculars at home). For more on Her husband see ( https://davidwperry.blogspot.com/2017/06/captain-walter-masterman-carter.html )
Nan was 14 when the the hospital ship, Rohilla, was wrecked on the Scaur at Whitby, October 1914 after it ran ashore in a gale. Her mother had gone down to the scaur and on return home told Nan some of what she’d seen and would not let nan go down there to see for her self!!
In December 1914 she was onboard the SS Carperby, her father being the captain which was mored in Hartlepool docks when the three German cruisers shelled towns along the Yorkshire coast. I remember her saying that she wasn’t particularly frightened as all the shells were passing well over the ship and landing in the docks further inland!! Her father was obviously at sea quite a lot and I know he was on ships sailing between the USA and the UK. She admitted she was, “spoilt rotten”, by him. (The photograph of her above, is from a large framed photo I have, and is printed on silk)
He bought her a motor bike from America, an ‘Indian Chief’ and I recall her telling me she was probably the first woman in Whitby to own a motor bike.!. She also owned a Beardsmore’, motor bike. I remember her saying that her dad once asked her what she would like bringing back from his next trip. She asked for a white mink coat or stole. She was quite upset when he returned with only an ‘ordinary’ stole and not the white one she’d asked for. I remember her telling me about her ‘governess’ cart, pulled by a horse or pony and in which she travelled around the district..
She played the piano at the Coliseum cinema in Whitby at the showing of silent films. Apparently they sent the music to be played to accompany the film beforehand so the pianist could practice if need be. The music sometimes didn’t arrive and Nan told me you simply had to watch the film and make it up as you went along. She also played a mandolin. This of course was in the days before television or the introduction of radio. You made your own entertainment of an evening. She married Walter Masterman Carter, of Fylingthorpe , a Master Mariner, when she was 19 year old and he was 27. in 1919. They lived initially at 1 Fishburn Road.Whitby. Walter had volunteered for duties in WW1 and joined the RN as a navigating officer. His ship was hit several shells as they sailed up the Tigris river and had to be abandoned. He was injured and the only item he had left were the binoculars which were around his neck. (I have these binoculars at home). For more on Her husband see ( https://davidwperry.blogspot.com/2017/06/captain-walter-masterman-carter.html )
This photo (above) is of Nan in the centre, the three children are, William on the right, Freda, far left and Jeanne in the middle. The woman on the left is believed to be Nan’s mother and the man on the right is thought to be Walter. (I’m not 100% certain about those last two !!)
They had 3 children, William George** b 1920, d.17.03/1973: Freda, b 19.03 1923 (d ?) and Jeanne, B.1926, d 2006.
At one stage Nan was not very well - (i’ve got no idea what with), so they moved to one of her father’s cottages at Crete Cottage, Hawsker, - This is next door to the pub In Hawsker - the Hare & Hounds. My other Jeanne was born there, she They later went to live in RHB - Coast Guard Houses. My mother Jeanne was then 4 year old.
In March 1929 she had gone to Glasgow to stay with Walter who was alongside in Queen’s Dock, on his ship, the City of Carlisle. (I often wondered who looked after her children ) He had not been well and during the night he said he’d not been able to sleep. Waking up in the morning he decided to get ‘ A sleeping draught’. This would be laudanum - an opium based drug. Captains would have had access to this as ships carried medicines etc. He returned and fell asleep, but when the steward bought their early morning tea, Nan noticed his lips were blue and he was unresponsive. Nan asked one of the stewards for help and later a doctor was sent for and he was taken to Hospital. He died 28th March 1929, leaving Nan with three children, William George, Freda and Jeanne. The original death certificate stated he died by suicide. Nan objected to this and complained, eventually getting it changed to ‘poisoning (accidental)
In March 1929 she had gone to Glasgow to stay with Walter who was alongside in Queen’s Dock, on his ship, the City of Carlisle. (I often wondered who looked after her children ) He had not been well and during the night he said he’d not been able to sleep. Waking up in the morning he decided to get ‘ A sleeping draught’. This would be laudanum - an opium based drug. Captains would have had access to this as ships carried medicines etc. He returned and fell asleep, but when the steward bought their early morning tea, Nan noticed his lips were blue and he was unresponsive. Nan asked one of the stewards for help and later a doctor was sent for and he was taken to Hospital. He died 28th March 1929, leaving Nan with three children, William George, Freda and Jeanne. The original death certificate stated he died by suicide. Nan objected to this and complained, eventually getting it changed to ‘poisoning (accidental)
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Walter Masterman Carter is buried in St Stephen's Church Robin Hoods Bay.
She later moved to 28 Esk Terrace and took in lodgers - no pensions in those days. and she needed money to look after her self and her three young children. She later sold this house to a Mr Cartwright - Postmaster General of Whitby for £500.
Her father had retired and like many ex sailors dreamed of running a pub and bought the Hare & Hounds pub in Hawsker. in 1918.
Previously owned by Mr Lacy, a retired school master, father of the late, Major Lacy. who I believe was the oldest man to reach both the North and South Poles. When Nan went to visit the pub one time she found Mr Lacy senior flat on his back drunk in the bar. On a later visit, she found her father fast asleep at the bar and another customer, I believe Mr Lacy, again asleep in one of the lounge bar chairs long after the pub had closed. It was this that made her decide to take over the pub as she thought it wasn’t being run properly.
The pub at that time had a clay kitchen floor. It still had outside ‘dry’, toilets until Nan sold it around 1962. I can still remember our visits in the 1950s, and discovering them, much to my disgust, as I’d never encountered them before.
They kept goats and we had to get used to the different taste of goats’ milk when we visited them.
In 1932 she married again, this time to Thomas Pattison Frank, (b. 1895,d 1984) a 35 years old bachelor originally from Staithes and petty officer in the merchant navy. Their marriage certificate gives his previous address as ‘Ras Dara‘, Whitby. I discovered recently that Ras Dara still exists in town, but I’ve not yet gone to see it. Nan had a child with him called Pat, but I can hardly remember him as we were living in Hayes Middlesex by then.
I”m not sure when Nan & Pop took over the Hare & Hounds, but they were running it during WW2 as she recalls the very bad winter of 1947 and her father lived in one of the adjoining cottages to the pub, until he died in 1954.
We did visit Nan a number of times,, but ‘uncle pat‘ I really can’t remember except he married a Whitby woman, Maureen Kelly (there are some of her relatives still living in Whitby) They moved to Vancouver, Canada, where he owned and ran a garage with a friend of his. He did come back to visit once or twice and I remember Nan going to stay with him in Vancouver. She must have been in her 80s then.
One or two Hawsker folk remembered Nan, as a strict , no nonsense landlady. One person I spoke to who could remember drinking in the pub as a young man, told me that nan’s eyes were always, ‘following you around the room’. I’m not surprised as I’ve seen a photo of him with a donkey in the pub….!!. Many of their customers were farmers and if they’d been to the market in Ruswarp and ended up with money in their pocket, some ended up drunk. Horses were still used in those days and Nan would get the farmer up on his horse or cart, smack the horse on its backside and the horse would take the helpless farmer back home!
Nan was no shrinking violet and didn’t mince her words.
None the less it didn’t stop current village hall from being built and that was opened in 1949 and is still in use. The ‘Wedgwood Hall’, was then underused, if at all. Their son Pat, a mechanic then used it to repair/service vehicles. At least one Hawsker resident can remember it being used for this purpose.
Pop, was often called upon to do jobs around the village, and had returned from his service in the navy with some ‘surplus’ ship’s paint. He painted the pub with it. A couple of other locals told pop it looked smashing and could he paint their paintwork with the same paint too. Eventually many of the window frames, doors gutters and pipework in the village were all the same colour.
He was an extremely skilled engineer and I’ve seen some things he’d made, such as a brass and steel, Archimede’s screw driver (you’ll have to look that one up!)
In those days farmers wives‘ often looked after the off sales of geese, chickens, eggs, milk and so on. Nancy Smith of Swan Farm opposite the Pub. was one of those and once asked Pop to do some job for her. Having completed the work, Nancy brought Pop into one of the outbuildings where she looked after the ducks, geese and various other off-sales from the farm. “How much do I owe you Mr Frank?” she asked. “£5 Please Nancy”. She took the lid of one of the several milk-churns. As she did so, a pile of £10 notes banknotes rose to the top. Quickly pushing them down again, she announced to pop that, “That were wrong churn Mr.Frank”, she went to another milk churn opened it, reached in and pulled out one of the £5 bank notes to Pop. “You shouldn’t be keeping that kind of money here”, Pop said to Nancy. “But Mr Frank, no one knows - not even me husband, so don’t you be telling anyone”. Her husband was a regular in the pub and when Nancy eventually died, her husband visited the pub for his regular half a pint of beer, shook his head and said to Pop, “Eh Mr Frank, when our Nancy died, she didn’t leave hundreds. She left thousands, and I didn’t know a thing about it” 
Eventually Nan and Pop decided to sell the pub and retire. The pub was sold in in 1961 for £7,000 (I still have the estate agent’s brochure for this). They then moved to Westgate, Stakesby Road in 1962.
After Pop died she moved to Canterbury Close and it was whilst she was living there, and I was living in Kirkella, Hull and later Ireland that I started to record Nan’s family history. She had an amazing memory and over a number of visits years of visits to see my mother I slowly gathered information and family trees from Nan, who never lost her memory My mother looked after her at home until eventually my mother couldn’t manage the extra care Nan needed and Nan went to a care home in Whitby where I saw her for the final time a year or so before she died.
I have the sea chest belonging to John Wedgwood, dated 1869 who was her grandfather, making him your Great Great, Great , Great (?) grandfather.
I also have many other family items, such as his Apprenticeship Certificates, discharge papers, master mariner’s certificates and much more. ** William George, Nan's eldest sone, or Bill as he was known, I know little about and cannot remember him. Gail told me he had at least two children, one called David, and Marylin - they may have had another) . He served in the army during the war and left Whitby soon after - he married a Violet Shipp, in Grimsby and died in Cleethorpes. Mum & him never really kept in contact.. I cannot remember ever meeting him.
The Wedgwood Hall (above)
Nan had this built outside the pub which she hired out for various events, activities and so on. This was known as the Wedgwood Hall and Hawsker folk still know it as the Wedgwood Hall. Nan found out that one group of users were raising money to build their own village hall. Thinking this would take away income from ‘her‘ hall or pub, she refused permission for ‘her’ village hall to be used to raise money for any other village hall. This included putting a notice stating as much in the Whitby Gazette..
If you look carefully at the photograph, you can see Wedgwood Hall written on gable ends. The car on the right belonged to Nan. Its an Austin car, the model of which I have no idea. Nan did drive fast when she could and I think her last car was a Ford Pilot V8 - a big 3 ltr engined car with a very luxurious padded interior. She sold it in the 1950s when she decided she should no longer drive and she told me the new owner - a “young man,’ crashed it soon afterwards - she was upset !!
Their son, ‘uncle’ Pat used the building as his garage/workshop until he and his wife moved to Vancouver, Canada.
None the less it didn’t stop current village hall from being built and that was opened in 1949 and is still in use. The ‘Wedgwood Hall’, was then underused, if at all. Their son Pat, a mechanic then used it to repair/service vehicles. At least one Hawsker resident can remember it being used for this purpose.
Pop, was often called upon to do jobs around the village, and had returned from his service in the navy with some ‘surplus’ ship’s paint. He painted the pub with it. A couple of other locals told pop it looked smashing and could he paint their paintwork with the same paint too. Eventually many of the window frames, doors gutters and pipework in the village were all the same colour.
He was an extremely skilled engineer and I’ve seen some things he’d made, such as a brass and steel, Archimede’s screw driver (you’ll have to look that one up!)
In those days farmers wives‘ often looked after the off sales of geese, chickens, eggs, milk and so on. Nancy Smith of Swan Farm opposite the Pub. was one of those and once asked Pop to do some job for her. Having completed the work, Nancy brought Pop into one of the outbuildings where she looked after the ducks, geese and various other off-sales from the farm. “How much do I owe you Mr Frank?” she asked. “£5 Please Nancy”. She took the lid of one of the several milk-churns. As she did so, a pile of £10 notes banknotes rose to the top. Quickly pushing them down again, she announced to pop that, “That were wrong churn Mr.Frank”, she went to another milk churn opened it, reached in and pulled out one of the £5 bank notes to Pop. “You shouldn’t be keeping that kind of money here”, Pop said to Nancy. “But Mr Frank, no one knows - not even me husband, so don’t you be telling anyone”. Her husband was a regular in the pub and when Nancy eventually died, her husband visited the pub for his regular half a pint of beer, shook his head and said to Pop, “Eh Mr Frank, when our Nancy died, she didn’t leave hundreds. She left thousands, and I didn’t know a thing about it” 
Eventually Nan and Pop decided to sell the pub and retire. The pub was sold in in 1961 for £7,000 (I still have the estate agent’s brochure for this). They then moved to Westgate, Stakesby Road in 1962.
After Pop died she moved to Canterbury Close and it was whilst she was living there, and I was living in Kirkella, Hull and later Ireland that I started to record Nan’s family history. She had an amazing memory and over a number of visits years of visits to see my mother I slowly gathered information and family trees from Nan, who never lost her memory My mother looked after her at home until eventually my mother couldn’t manage the extra care Nan needed and Nan went to a care home in Whitby where I saw her for the final time a year or so before she died.
I have the sea chest belonging to John Wedgwood, dated 1869 who was her grandfather, making him your Great Great, Great , Great (?) grandfather.
I also have many other family items, such as his Apprenticeship Certificates, discharge papers, master mariner’s certificates and much more. ** William George, Nan's eldest sone, or Bill as he was known, I know little about and cannot remember him. Gail told me he had at least two children, one called David, and Marylin - they may have had another) . He served in the army during the war and left Whitby soon after - he married a Violet Shipp, in Grimsby and died in Cleethorpes. Mum & him never really kept in contact.. I cannot remember ever meeting him.
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