Jane's Roots

 

 

Edwin Johnson, the third son of John Johnson and Amelia Camburn, was born in 1834.  He became a freeman of the Company of Free Fishers and Dredgers in 1855 and in the same year he married Harriett Kezia Goulden who was a dressmaker. They got married in St Peter's St Wesleyan Chapel in Canterbury.  Edwin was owner of the yawl Beatrice.

The costly and unsuccessful litigation which the Company had entered into in the 1860's seems to have been the start of its decline.  In the second half of the nineteenth century the Free Fishers' guild structure began to creak at the seams, as it acquired more and more dependents: widows and sick pensioners, but primarily sons of Free Fishers who remained entitled to a share of the profits even though they'd chosen another occupation.

Edwin and Harriett had (at least) eight sons, but only one became an oyster fisher.  In total they had 12 children, but I've only traced 11.

The litigation continued, with the Company trying to protect itself against fraudsters passing off foreign oysters as Whitstable Natives.  A typhoid scare deterred customers and involved the Company in further expense proving that their oysters were safe to eat.

"The Company's problems were further compounded in 1886 when the Company treasurer disappeared to America with a large proportion of the Company's funds.  Four years later the sea froze for several weeks and this was the prelude to several severely cold winters."

It fell to Edwin to steer the Company through stormy seas.  The archive papers show that Edwin became Water Bailiff in 1884 and was  bailiff in 1895 (and probably during the intervening years).  He was the last Water Bailiff of the old Company. 

In 1896 the guild structure was abandoned and the Company was reconstituted as a regular limited company under the Companies Act. The existing members were allotted shares, valued at £200, and the existing widows pensions continued as a life interest in the income from shares. Shares could now be bought and sold, and the Company could raise capital.  The Company's directors were now the managers. The post of Water Bailiff continued, but with lesser duties.

In his latter years Edwin had a second career as Whitstable's Registrar of Births and Deaths, and Vaccination Officer.  The Vaccination Officers had been created by the Vaccination Act of 1871 to enforce the law that all children had to be vaccinated against smallpox.

In the 1911 census, when Edwin was 77, he described his occupation as "assistant overseer of the poor" -- that is an official under the Poor Law.  The census return also records that of his 12 children only 7 were still living

Edwin died in 1917.

The photo is one I took of the Free Fishers' building, that I think was built some time in the 1890's.