FAMILY MATTERS

Late last year I lost my only sister, aged 87, one of the consequences being that a large cardboard box containing family history records came into my care. I had seen some of the material before, and had copies of much of it, but a lot was new because my sister, even though she did not use a computer, had done much research herself.
It took me several months to sort it all and compile new family trees, but I found it a worthwhile experience. What I have now is a still incomplete picture, but the good news is that we seem to have been a fairly steady lot. Farmers, brewers, carpenters, shopkeepers, teachers, housekeepers, and so on. And while perhaps half a dozen left for the far horizons of Canada, America and Australia, the remainder seem to have been well-rooted, largely in Oxfordshire and thereabouts.
There are one or two stand-out characters - and some who overcame hard times during the various economic depressions - including a former curator of the Shakespeare Birthplace Museum and a lay member of the Cowley Fathers. But the man who interested me most was Henry Baker, who married into the maternal side of the family in 1897.
According to my sister's notes, he was a 'wholesale grocer in Canterbury, and circus owner.' The reason this chimed with me is that, some years' later, my paternal grandfather actually ran away with Baker's circus - for a very short time, I hasten to add - and because the lure of the circus ring has persuaded me, for some reason, to keep and preserve some Bertram Mills circus programmes dating from the late 1940s and 1950s.
But there is a puzzle. I cannot fit Henry into the history of Baker's circus. I know the circus itself closed in the late 1930s when the Bakers were offered a contract by Bertram Mills, and I know the Bakers formed a horse-riding act called The Cumberlands. Indeed, as a lad and at the time unaware of family connections, I saw them perform several times. But the mystery deepens, because most histories suggest a Baker's circus lineage leading back through William (Bill) Baker and his father Thomas (Tom) Baker, who died in 1932. So far I have not been able to establish any link between Henry and Tom.
I recently managed to acquire a copy of Circus Company (Putnam), written by the artist Edward Seago and published in 1933. He spent some time travelling with Baker's circus, although he calls it Bevins in the book, and he actually dedicated the volume to Tommy Baker. It is a fascinating tale, but Seago makes no reference to the history of the show.
It would be interesting to know more, and one day I would like to discover how 'our' Henry fits into the scheme of things. Or not, as the case may be.
Purely as a sideshow, there was also an interesting detail about the book, for between pages 148 and 149 I found a small tissue-thin ticket tucked carefully away which turned out to be a sweepstake voucher for the Irish Baldoyle Chase. The sweepstake was run for the benefit of Irish Hospitals, and a 'subscription' cost five shillings. The draw was to be made by the Commissioner of Police in Dublin three days before the actual race, and the number of the ticket was AV31748.
Someone bought it and then hid it, or forgot about it, and there it stayed all those long years. Alas, I can only think it was a loser, a non-winner, because the Baldoyle Chase on this particular ticket was actually run on February 12, 1944.