August 2014 – Edition 113

A photograph of the amazing interior of the Church with its vaulted ceiling is shown at the top of this article. Editors note: Please take another look at the detailed coloration.

Surely it is time to remind you of it! I will do this briefly.

The original medieval Church of All Saints fell into disrepair after the Civil War, and in 1736 it was demolished to make way for a new church. The new Parish Church was completed in 1748, all that remains of the Medieval church is the west tower, 90 feet high, and housing eight bells. The church seats 1100 people.

The Church played an important part in the lives of Big Bill and his family for at least 50 years, from the time Big Bill moved from the village of Willingham in the late 1700s to set up shop in Gainsborough until a new church (Trinity Church) was constructed in the 1840s not far from Jerrems Street where he lived.

In addition to being the venue for the usual array of Jerrems family weddings, baptisms and funerals, the Church played the part (through the Church Council) of electing Big Bill to the honorary position of Bailiff of the Gainsborough Magistrates Court in 1829, and the following year electing him to the honorary position of Burgess Constable for Gainsborough. This was the start of a long period of public office for Big Bill.

I mention the weekday particularly because these days weddings tend to take place on the weekends. I have noticed that later weddings in the Jerrems family in the 19th Century took place during the week also.

At least Elizabeth and William were married in Spring, when the weather was starting to warm up (comparatively speaking).

It is probable that the Minister was Reverend George Dodds, who had married Elizabeth’s older sister Ann and Samuel Gutteridge at the church three years previously.

But I also hear you say, how can you visualise the ceremony unless you know who else was there?

Firstly I will approach the people at the wedding from the bride’s perspective.

An obvious starter is Big Bill, who would have given the bride away. Big Bill, as my nickname would suggest, cut an imposing figure at the age of fifty and could already have reached 18 stone. He would have been smartly dressed, as behoved the town’s Burgess Constable.

Clearly the bride’s mother Elizabeth would have been at the wedding, making sure that my great great grandfather Thomas aged 18 was respectably dressed as befitted a young grocer, and trying to control her three younger sons. These sons were 14 year old John (later a pharmacist, and also to be Alan Fitzpatrick’s great great grandfather???), 12 year old William (later a publican), and 9 year old Robert (later an auctioneer and photographer). Aunt Mary (her mother’s sister) would also have been there because she lived with Big Bill’s family.

It is very likely that Elizabeth’s eldest sister Ann was her Matron of Honour. Four years older than Elizabeth, she had married Samuel Gutteridge (a grocer) in 1830. They had three children, Samuel (1831-2), Robert (1832-?) and William Jerrems Gutteridge, born in 1833. All children were born in Boston, making it likely that the Gutteridges would have travelled from Boston for the wedding. They could have travelled by road or boat, something I will talk about in a later article.

Also swelling the ranks in the church would have been the descendants of Big Bill’s Aunt Ann, who lived in Gainsborough. Aunt Ann’s granddaughter Ann Slack had married Timothy Whitton (a sailor) and they had eight children.

Some of the Willingham crowd would also have been at the wedding. For instance Big Bill’s brother John (born in 1874) and his wife Jane, who had been married the year before, would have come over from their farm at Willingham, not knowing at that stage that they would soon have two daughters (Jane and Mary) and that Jane’s descendants (the Binghams) still live in Willingham.

Many of the Church congregation (including members of the Church Council) would have attended, as might some of Big Bill’s publican friends, not normally known for attending church.

If I am correct that William Small had been apprenticed to George Jepson, then George would have attended as William’s former mentor. However it is possible that George would have attended anyway as a strong supporter of All Saints Church. After all his father was a minister, his grandfather had been a church court official, and two of his brothers and his eldest son (also named George) were ministers. It was only a short trip from Lord Street, where George lived, to the church.

Nor would Elizabeth have known that the elopers would be my great great grandparents.

Digressing from the wedding for a moment, Thomas and Elizabeth may have eloped because George Jepson had refused his consent. Perhaps this was explicable by the different backgrounds of Big Bill and George Jepson. Big Bill and his sons had a commercial background, whilst George had a professional background. He was a surgeon, two of his sons became surgeons, one became a minister with an MA, and one became a solicitor.

The wedding ceremony

I would like readers to visualise Elizabeth and William standing in front of the church altar watched by numerous friends and relatives. But surely to do this you need to know how they were dressed. For instance would Elizabeth have been dressed in a flowing white wedding dress with a long train? Would the groom have been wearing tails and a bow tie? Very unlikely on both counts, as you will see.

Regarding the colour of wedding dresses, long before the early 19th century, brides traditionally wore gowns in a variety of colours. This changed when the virginal Queen Victoria wore a white gown for her wedding in 1840, and thereafter every bride (virginal or otherwise) followed suit.

Obviously I could not find photographs of dresses used in the 1830s, however I found the above photo from the 1990s television series “Pride and Prejudice”. This television series was very well researched and the photo at least gives a good idea of the style of the bridal dresses used at the time, allowing for the fact that the Pride and Prejudice wedding took place in summer, whereas Elizabeth Jerrems’s dress would have had a higher neckline in Spring.

Also, Elizabeth Jerrems may have worn a bonnet.

Charles Mander’s portrait (see earlier portrait) shows him wearing a similar high collared coat, and an ornate cravat, demonstrating the popularity of this type of formal attire.

Cravats preceded the introduction of the necktie.

It is likely that, like Darcy and Bingley, William also wore a waistcoat, particularly for a March wedding.

The trousers of Darcy and Bingley do not have a belt. In fact men started wearing belts in the 1920s, as trouser waists fell to a lower line. Before the 1920s, belts served mostly a decorative purpose, and were associated with the military. I remember my grandfathers wore braces rather than belts.

Our readers probably recall that their children had the quite “English” given names of William, Alice, Ann and Mary and, despite the fact that the surname of their parents was listed on their birth records as “Jerom”, the childrens’ surname was shown as “Jerrems”. (JJ September 2005).

I wonder how many wedding and elopements we covered in the Jerrems Journal? We need to take stock of those wonderful events…maybe a recap and pictorial issue.

Perhaps, some of our readers would like to share wedding photos. Let’s find those old picture albums!