Extracts from his Autobiography
Published in Windlesora 10 (1991)
© WLHG
Joseph Ryder (1816-1892) spent his early life in Windsor before moving to Wales and finally emigrating to Australia. His autobiography — written for his children — is now the property of his descendant Mr. L. G. Ryder of Floreat Park, Western Australia, who has kindly donated a copy of the Windsor section to the Royal Borough Collection. The following extracts are taken from Joseph’s account of his early life in Windsor.
‘I was born in the village of Chalvey in the parish of Upton cum Chalvey, Buckinghamshire, England, on the 31st day of July 1816. That village is about one mile from Eton College and nearly two miles from Windsor Bridge over the Thames, which divides Eton from Windsor.’
‘My father, William Ryder, was a shoemaker. My mother, whose maiden name was Bond, was, I believe, a native of Devonshire, but removed to the neighbourhood of Windsor at an early age.’
Ryder’s father married when he was 30, his wife being some years younger and Joseph was the youngest of their ‘7 or 8 children’. His mother had been ‘a servant in the household of HRH Princess Amelia [1783-1810] at the LowerLodge, Windsor, for 9 years. The Princess was the favourite daughter of King George III ……. ‘I have heard that the Princess was very fond of my mother, and my brother has a water-colour portrait of our mother taken by a noted French artist of the period by command of the Princess and afterwards presented to her’.
‘I have heard from my father and mother the tale of their marriage, how they went quietly one morning, she from Buckingham Palace and he from his lodgings, met at St James’s Church, Piccadilly, and were quietly married, each going back to their respective homes. Nor did they formally come together until the usual circumstances obliged them to…..We must have removed from Chalvey to Windsor when I was between 2 and 3 years old, for I have no remembrance whatever of living in Chalvey.’
‘The first thing that I can distinctly call to mind was the tolling of the great bell of the Castle one Saturday at midnight. We had been washed and stowed away in bed that night, and about midnight were awoke by the loud booming of the bell, which is never tolled except for the Royal Family. I know I was in a great fright but my father came up and told us the reason of it, viz. the King was dead — I think that occured in December 1820,” so that I must have been about 3’/2 years old. (1) We lived in Bier Lane,[River Street] running out of Thames Street to the River Thames which flowed at the bottom of the street. At the time it was inhabited by fairly respectable working people, and the Wesleyan Chapel was in it, but now I am informed it is peopled by fallen women and their associates alone.’
“When about 5 years old I was entered as a scholar in the Independent Sunday School, High Street, my father and mother being members of that church, the Pastor being the Rev. Alexander Redford, father of Dr Redford of Worcester, and grandfather of the Rev. R. W. Redford, M.A. now of London. About the same time, too, I was taken with my brother and sisters who attended the School by my mother to the National School. The master placed me on a form, put a Bible into my hands, and I read with fluency a chapter before the entire school. The master was very pleased, and would gladly have taken me into the school, but the Rules did not allow admission under the age of 7, so I had to be kept at home for two years, when I got admitted and was there until 12.”
Ryder goes on to admit that he cannot remember how it was that he had learnt to read with such fluency before the age of seven: ‘but it was a fact that from my earliest remembrance I could read the Bible, Hymn Book, and the Pilgrim’s Progress, which books were the chief books of my father’s library’.
‘At 7 years of age I was admitted into the School, and was at once put into a good position. There were 200 boys and the same number of girls in a distinct schoolroom. Our master was Mr Robertson a Scotchman… The school was decidedly a Church school, and the Catechism, Collects etc. were duly taught to all the children, but as some of the wealthy Dissenters subscribed to the school, the children of bona fide Dissenters were allowed to attend their parents’ place of worship on the Sundays, as all the rest of the school were duly marched from school to church every Sunday twice. I was, however, compelled to attend church with the school twice a year, viz., on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and as a curious reminiscence I may state that I remember that on I think every Good Friday the Vicar, the Rev. Isaac Gossett, preached the same sermon, or at least took the same text.’
“The curriculum of the school was not very high, and comprised the three Rs, the two former chiefly from the Bible and the arithmetic, consisting of the first four rules, simple and compound, nothing further. No geography, no grammar, no history, no attempt to open up the mind to the wonders of the world in which we lived, but Bible reading and explanation the year through.’
‘Nor were we very much indebted to our teacher for this, but to the numerous clergymen of Windsor and Eton, of whom it may be said that their number was legion, comprising as it did the Canons and Minor Canons of St George’s Chapel, Windsor, and the parochial clergymen and the Fellows and Tutors of Eton College. We were very seldom a day without a clerical visit, and 1 here bear grateful testimony to the great interest taken by many of them in our Biblical instruction,
especially those in the highest class, in which I very soon obtained a place. The clergyman who took the greatest interest in our progress was the Rev. Mr Short, a private tutor at Eton College, and who, I was afterwards informed, was made a bishop. (2) Many a sixpence have I got from him — his custom was to put a sixpence on his knee at the commencement of the lesson, and whoever was the first boy at the class won the prize. Oh, what struggling and excitement there was, in our endeavour to answer his questions on the facts and history of the Bible, and truly I have been often very thankful to the Lord for the scriptural knowledge I thus obtained. It has been of great benefit to me.’
‘Our schoolmaster was a cruel, harsh and unfeeling man, ruling entirely by the power of the cane, and we all I believe cordially hated him….He was a very tiger for cruelty.” At the age of 12 Joseph tells how, on some trumped up charge, he was flogged by the schoolmaster until he was unconscious. He recalls how he ‘dragged my aching and bleeding body home’ resolved never to go back. When his father saw his state he too resolved to take the boy away. He took him to the
school ‘and severely rebuked the the schoolmaster, showed the weals on my back, and threatened to take me to some of the Governors of the school, at which the master was really frightened, and abjectly begged him not to do so, and promised how very good he would be to me in the future, but my father would not allow me to stay any longer in the school, so he sent me the same day to a middle-class school kept by a gentleman named Binfield, a distant relative of my future wife. There I improved very much in arithmetic, grammar and history. I stayed there about a year and drank in knowledge.’
Joseph spent a further year as monitor at a school in Chalvey, where his elder brother William was the teacher. At the age of fourteen he left school and his parents apprenticed him to a tailor. He continues his story: ‘I was apprenticed to Mr Richard Cobden, Tailor, Thames Street Windsor, out of doors, till the day I was 21. My master was a very respectable man. He was first cousin to the famous Richard Cobden, the father and founder of Free Trade and the Repeal of the Corn Laws, but whose greatness had not yet begun to dawn. He employed from 8 to 12 men according to the season, and I was placed under the care of his brother Ben, who worked for him. I soon began to pick up a knowledge of the trade, and liked it pretty well, having the first and second year a great deal of out door employment in taking clothes home, running errands, etc. Afterwards, as I became more useful at the trade, I was kept at work, and he took another apprentice…..I think I was about 16 years old when I was admitted as a Junior Teacher into the Congregational Sunday School at Windsor. I had left the school as a scholar some two years before, and afterwards used sometimes to accompany Mr John Harvey to a branch school at Oakley Green about 4 miles off, but at 16 I was regularly admitted into the main school at Windsor, of which I was not a little proud.’
‘About the date of my apprenticeship our old minister, Mr Redford, who had been for more than 40 years our Pastor, was assisted by a young man from Highbury College named John Stoughton, (3) and was chosen by the church as co-pastor. His beautiful preaching soon filled our old chapel in High Street, which might have held 500 people, to overflowing, and speedily a grand new chapel was built in William Street, holding more than double, with spacious schoolrooms under one half, and strange to say a mausoleum for the dead under the other half’. It was here that Joseph met his future wife, a Miss Hill, who was admitted as a teacher in the girls’ department. He courted her for five years before they were married.
“Time went on, the years went past, with happiness for me in the society of your dear mother, until the day when I became of age and was free from my apprenticeship. I cannot omit to mention that my master, a week or two before I was of age, came into the workshop and before them men, said that he has never had an apprentice who had fulfilled his obligations like me before, and that in token of his esteem he would give me the best suit of clothes the shop could furnish, to be made by the men, and that so long as there was a job of work in the shop I should have it as his journeyman. The day of my freedom arrived. I not only had a suit of clothes, which were black, as my brother William had died shortly before; but he gave a supper to all the men, at which many kind things were said with regard to me. I became a journeyman at a good time financially, for the King, William IV, died (4) just as I was released, and it was the custom in the trade in Windsor for double wages to be paid to tailors from the time of King’s death to that of his burial, which was about 3 weeks, consquently I earned a great deal of money.’
“After more than a year was past I began to think about marrying, as I had put away nearly £50 since my freedom. We took a 5-roomed house in William Street, Windsor, and your mother, who never would tell me whether she had any money, said she would find all the bed linen and other linen required, but that I was to furnish the house. This I managed to do, though it brought me very low in finances, and the all-important day arrived. We had decided to be married on Monday 8th October 1838, and as the Act’ allowing marriages to be performed in Dissenting chapels had become law just before, we could not but be married in our chapel and by our own Minister.’ (5)
‘I continued working for my apprentice master for a year or two afterwards, but I grieve to say he did not fulfill his promise to give me full work, and often in the slack times I did not earn a pound per week. But your mother commenced business as a milliner and dressmaker, and was largely patronised by the upper servants of the Castle and other ladies, so that she soon began to have work people to help her. I think at one time she employed three young women, and was highly esteemed by her customers for her good honest work, and for the taste she exhibited in dress. It was on the advice of one of her customers, the lady of one of the King’s’ pages, (6) that I began business for myself as a tailor, and soon got enough work to keep me employed, principally among the upper servants of the Castle.’
The couple had two daughters, Mary and Susanna, born in 1839 and 1841. In August 1842, Joseph gave up the trade of tailor and was admitted into the British and Foreign Bible Society’s Training College in Borough Road, London to train as a teacher. After 5 months training he was appointed to a school in Wrexham, North Wales and he and his family left Windsor.
Notes
- King George IV died 29th January 1820. The bell to which he refers was probably the
great bell of the Curfew or Clewer Tower since the Sebastopol Bell normally associated
with the death of the sovereign was not installed until 1868. - Probably the Rev. T. V. Short who became Bishop of Sodor and Man in 1841 and
Bishop of St Asaph (Wales) in 1846. - The Rev. John Stoughton was author of Windsor: A History and Description of the Castle
and Town, 1862. - King William died on 20th June 1937 at Windsor Castle.
- The Marriage Act of 1836 authorising marriages without a religious ceremony, by
registrar’s certificate, or in a dissenting chapel. - Unless this is a reference to the late King, Ryder made a slip here since at this date it
would have been the Queen’s page.
Windsor Local History Group 