Maud CRACKNELL was initiated into the Golden Dawn at its Amen-Ra temple in Edinburgh on 23 November 1896, taking the Latin motto ‘Tempus omnia revelat’. Later she joined the Isis-Urania temple in London and was initiated into the 2^nd Order there, on 10 October 1898. In 1900 she played a small but important role in the fracas known as ‘the battle of Blythe Road’. Maud was still a member of the GD when it finally split up into several daughter orders, in 1903.

At the time of her original initiation, Maud Cracknell was living at 20 Dublin Street Edinburgh. She was a Londoner by birth, however, the daughter of Charles Cracknell and his wife Sarah Elizabeth. Charles Cracknell was a pharmacist. While I was searching for Maud’s family on the census I noticed the greatest concentration of people called Cracknell was in Essex and East Anglia but Charles had been born in Southwark. His pharmacy shop and business was at 106 Edgeware Road in 1847 and had probably been there for several years already. Later, the family business moved, firstly to 217 Edgeware Road and then to 17 Craven Road in Bayswater. A second shop was opened as well in the new suburb of east Acton.

Charles and Sarah Elizabeth had a large family, beginning with five daughters: Sarah Emily (born 1850); Elizabeth (born 1852); Mary Louisa (born 1854); Susannah (born 1856); and then Maud herself, born in 1858. Then followed twin boys: Henry Watts and Herbert, born 1859; a sixth and last daughter, Alice Lucy (born 1860); and two more boys, Ralph (born 1863); and finally William (born 1866).

On the day of the 1861 census, Charles and Sarah Elizabeth were living near his pharmacy at 107 Junction Terrace and seven of the children that had been born to them so far were at home. Also in the household were three young men who worked in the pharmacy, a cook, a housemaid and two nursemaids. However, three-year-old Maud was away from home visiting Robert and Emy Henderson in Lambeth.

Charles and Sarah Elizabeth Cracknell moved to Knoyle House, Castlebar Road Ealing in time for Ralph and William to be born there. Sarah Elizabeth died there in 1867 aged only 41, worn out, I should think, by having borne ten children in sixteen years. Maud was nine.

All the Cracknell girls were a little too old for their education to have been dictated by the 1870 Education Act. Though Henry Watts and Herbert had been sent away to school in Maidenhead, the presence of a governess in the household on the day of the 1871 census suggests that Susannah, Maud and Alice - all declared still to be in full-time education - were being educated at home. The governess, Annie Wranger, was English; that is, she was not the kind of top-drawer (and very expensive) foreign-born governess that the wealthy tended to employ to teach their daughters to speak French and possibly German too with the correct accent. Miss Wranger was probably teaching the younger boys as well, though they were young enough to go to an 1870 Act school for a few years. The education Maud Cracknell is likely to have got under those circumstances was focused on bible study, sewing, and social skills. The older daughters would have been doing the social round and ordering the house’s three servants - a cook, housemaid and nurse.

Charles Cracknell died, at Knoyle House, in May 1880. I have opted not to pay to see a copy of his Will and I can’t decide just from the doings of his daughters in the years after he died whether Charles left them any income at all, let alone enough to live on comfortably. On the day of the 1881 census Henry, Elizabeth, Susannah, Herbert, Alice and Ralph at least were still living at Knoyle House but I do think that financial belts had had to be tightened: Elizabeth was working as a daily governess (that is, working in someone’s household, not in a school, but not living in that household), and the household was down to one servant while Susannah and Alice - declared by the census official to have no occupation or income - were probably doing the cooking and shopping. I think it’s most likely that Maud was still living at Knoyle House too but once again on census day, she was not at home with the rest of the family. She was staying with Henry and Frances Birch in Norwood. Henry Birch was the owner of a pharmacy and had, perhaps, been one of Charles Cracknell’s apprentices. Mr Birch employed an assistant, and - with a cook and a housemaid - the Birch household had more servants than the Cracknells.

It’s not clear to me exactly when the Cracknells left Knoyle House but by 1891 the old household of siblings was breaking up. Sarah Emily had married in 1874 - I think she was the only one of his children to do so before Charles Cracknell died. Alice had also married. Herbert Cracknell finished his apprenticeship and took over running the family pharmacy; he married Augusta Mary Ford in 1890. Ralph Cracknell went to work in the United States. I can find nothing out after 1871 about Maud’s elder sisters Elizabeth and Susannah but on the day of the 1891 census the household of siblings was down to four members - Henry Watts, William E, Mary Louisa and Maud - and they were all living as lodgers in the household of Philip and Amelia Moon in Hampstead. This was the last sighting I had of William E Cracknell; I don’t know what happened to him after 1891. But the household was broken up further in 1895 when Henry Watts Cracknell married Annie Letitia Collins.

Maud Cracknell, at 33, seems to have taken the breaking-up of the household as a liberation. She set about correcting, as far as she was able, a lack she seems to have felt in that domestic, governess-led education. She spent the academic year 1893/94 as a student at St Andrew’s University. Maybe that one year was all she could afford at the time, but she returned to the university in 1896 to do its summer session. As a result of that one year and few months, Maud Cracknell became one of the best educated women members of the Golden Dawn. Doesn’t that say a lot about the education of women in general at the time? She also, during 1896, spent some months living in Edinburgh and met some GD members.

Back in London in March 1895, Maud also joined the Theosophical Society. The sponsors of her application were Elsie Goring and Lilian (or Lillian - the sources don’t agree) Lloyd, both very active TS members, involved in a lot of its social work activities. Maud joined Blavatsky Lodge, which met at the TS headquarters in Regent’s Park and had a very busy programme of lectures and discussion groups. She will have met the TS’s most prominent figures there (Annie Besant, the Keightley family); and several people who had been in the GD, though of course she wouldn’t have known them as such. Maud continued as a TS member until November 1899; I think she found the GD’s emphasis on the western esoteric tradition more to her taste.

If people have discovered the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn through an interest in magic, there’s probably one thing they know about Maud Cracknell: she was the 2^nd Order member who refused to let Aleister Crowley into its rooms at 36 Blythe Road in April 1900, precipitating the series of events referred to as the Battle of Blythe Road. The most detailed descriptions of this incident that are in the public domain are based on Crowley’s account of the affair. I’m sure it can’t be trusted as a true description of what went on; there are other sources for parts of what happened that contradict it. However, I’m not going to pursue that line. Instead I will now look at what happened from Maud Cracknell’s point of view.

Maud had been appointed assistant secretary to the 2^nd Order, to help Dorothea Hunter with its administration (Dorothea was busy with two small children). It had been Maud that Crowley had written to a few weeks before, requesting some manuscripts available only to 2^nd Order members. Maud must have replied that, to be allowed read those manuscripts, he must apply to Dorothea as her superior officer. Crowley did so, and received a letter from Dorothea on behalf of the GD’s 2^nd Order, saying that they were not prepared to recognised Crowley as a member. On Saturday 6 April 1900 Crowley went round to 36 Blythe Road, where the 2^nd Order rented some rooms for its rituals. He found Maud Cracknell there, who told him that no one could go into the 2^nd Order’s rooms without the consent of the GD’s ruling Committee. Crowley asked Maud if she had a key to the vault and it seems that Maud deliberately misled him: she said hadn’t got one, she was too new a member to expect to have one. If this was a dig at Crowley, who was an even newer member if he was a member at all, Crowley’s own account doesn’t mention that he noticed. Instead he pressed on with his questions about access, and asked her if she could get into the vault in any case. Maud said no, she couldn’t. She suggested that if he wanted to gain permission to enter the vault he should approach one of three Committee members to take the matter up with them: Florence Farr, Marcus Worsley Blackden or (probably) Edmund Hunter. And Crowley left.

Maud being at 36 Blythe Road when Crowley turned up was not a coincidence: Maud was living there and on the day of the 1901 census she was still living there, with the GD’s landlord Charles Wilkinson, Charles’ wife Annie and their two sons Edgar and Frank, but keeping a separate household of one in the rooms rented by the GD’s 2^nd Order. Was she there as a security guard? Kind-of. The Committee had set itself up to rule the Isis-Urania temple, in opposition to the rule of Samuel Mathers, and they were expecting trouble. But she was also there because it was useful to have a 2^nd Order member on the premises to take in parcels - and to let members in to the vault.

As soon as Crowley was gone Maud sat down and wrote a letter to the third person whose name she’d suggested to Crowley, warning him or her to expect a visit from Crowley in which he would be demanding to be treated as a 2^nd Order member. The name of the person Maud wrote to isn’t known for sure but Ellic Howe thinks it was most likely to be Edmund Hunter, who lived quite nearby and was certainly involved later in the sequence of events. The letter shows that Maud had used her relatively lowly status in the 2^nd Order to be rid of Crowley and buy a bit of time. She told him she “had never had a private key” and Crowley swallowed the inference she was making. But the letter shows that she she did have A key - surely it would be pointless her living on the premises if she didn’t. In the letter she said she had felt uncomfortable about leading Crowley astray. However, she had stuck to her instructions: Crowley did not have the Committee’s permission to enter the 2^nd Order rooms, so she was not going to let him in.

I hope that Maud never found out that, in reward for these prevarications, Crowley was to describe her as “an ancient Sapphic Crack, unlikely to be filled”. Though it was written in a letter to a follower, Crowley’s spiteful jibe has nevertheless made it into the public domain and has become the second thing most people know about Maud Cracknell. If she DID hear of it, and it hurt at all, she could have reflected that it’s just the sort of thing men do say about a woman who has said no to them.

Of course, Maud had correctly judged that the matter wouldn’t end there. Crowley went to Paris, was initiated into the 2^nd Order by Mathers and returned as Mathers’ champion, intending to take over the Isis-Urania temple on Mathers’ behalf. On Tuesday 17 April, he made a second visit to 36 Blythe Road with Elaine Simpson, who was a 2^nd Order member whose loyalties lay with Mathers. Mr Wilkinson wasn’t in - presumably, Crowley waited until he was out - and Crowley and Elaine Simpson went upstairs. Once again, he found Maud Cracknell there, and duly suspended her from the GD. Maud offered no resistance when Elaine Simpson used her key to get into the 2^nd Order rooms, but went out to get some back-up by sending a telegram to Edmund Hunter, to come at once. Either Maud or Edmund Hunter also summoned Florence Farr, as the GD’s Chief Adept in England.

Edmund Hunter reached Blythe Road before Florence Farr and returned to the 2^nd Order rooms with Maud. Crowley told Maud to leave, but Hunter took her part, saying that she didn’t have to go on Crowley’s orders. However, Hunter was confused himself about whether Crowley had any right to be in the rooms, and the situation wasn’t made any better when Florence Farr arrived because she hadn’t got any papers with her to show who was the legal tenant. Crowley was left in possession of the 2^nd Order rooms for a day or two and I presume Maud went to stay with friends or relatives. However on Thursday 19 April Edmund Hunter was able to go round to 36 Blythe Road again to speak to Mr Wilkinson, who confirmed that Florence Farr was his tenant, as she paid the rent.

Florence Farr and Edmund Hunter seem to have decided that Maud Cracknell had endured enough unpleasantness by now. Perhaps, as Crowley’s attitude had been threatening, they also agreed that - next time he called - he should meet an all-male reception committee. Because it was W B Yeats who went upstairs with Hunter to oversee the installation of a new set of locks on the doors to the 2^nd Order rooms. And when Crowley turned up, it was those two who met him at street level and told him he had no authority to enter. It was Mr Wilkinson who summoned a policeman. Hunter’s report to the 2^nd Order Committee doesn’t mention it, but there was some sort of fracas, in which he knocked Crowley down, but Crowley did then leave peacefully. Just in case he tried to stage a come-back, W B Yeats stayed in the 2^nd Order rooms until 25 April, but at some point after that date, Maud was able to return to them and she was not bothered by any more such trouble.

Maud Cracknell continued to be a member of the Golden Dawn through the traumatic years 1901-03, though she did not play a large part in all the debates and arguments about who was to be in charge, and what kind of organisation it should be. However when - finally - the GD split into two, she was obliged to make a choice, which daughter order to go with. She chose to become a member of A E Waite’s new order, which was intending to move away from the magical tradition as represented by Samuel Mathers. It’s possible that with Mathers living in Paris and coming to London less and less often, Maud may known him slightly, if at all, and thus did not have the conflict of loyalties longer-serving GD members were suffering from. Maud must have attended a the meeting at which Waite’s group compiled the new order’s manifesto (on 24 July 1903) as she was one of those who signed it. However, at the first formal meeting of the Independent and Rectified Order RR et AC (usually referred to as the Independent Rite or Order) she was not named as one of its officers.

How active a member of the Independent and Rectified Rite (IRR) Maud was I do not know. She moved to Worthing. Of course it was easy enough to come up to London from Sussex for the IRR’s meetings, but Worthing became her home, probably by 1911 when on the day of the census, she was staying with sisters Margaret and Mellona Heale at a house in the town. Later Maud lived with her sister Mary Louisa Cracknell in Christchurch Road Worthing. Mary Louisa died in 1928, but Maud herself lived on until she was 92, becoming one of the last GD members to die. She died in 1950 and was buried in the same grave as Mary Louisa in Worthing’s Broadwater Cemetery.

MAUD CRACKNELL’S SIBLINGS

Despite searching the censuses and b/m/d registrations I can’t find out what happened to Maud’s sisters Elizabeth and Susannah, and her brother William.

Although Maud joined the GD through contacts in Edinburgh she might have already unwittingly known GD members living in London, through her family’s interest in modern arts and crafts. Maud’s father had been a member of the Art Union of London where, for a small yearly subscription, you were entitled to receive an engraving of a famous work of art, and to have your name in a draw, the winner of which was bought an original modern art work. This willingness to fund modern art continued through Maud’s sister Sarah Emily.

Sarah Emily Cracknell married Edward Penton in 1874. Her husband was the proprietor of the large shoe and boot making firm, Edward Penton and Sons Limited, which was based in Mortimer Street London W1. The connection between the two families was reinforced later, when Maud and Sarah Emily’s brother Henry Watts Cracknell joined the firm as its accountant. The Pentons had artist friends: on the day of the 1901 census, although her husband was away from home, Sarah Emily had visitors, amongst them Caroline Gotch, artist wife of Thomas Cooper Gotch, and their daughter Phyllis. T C Gotch himself was staying a few streets away at the Arts Club, 40 Dover Street. I can’t tell from accounts of T C Gotch’s life how long he and Caroline had known the Pentons, and how well they knew them; but T C and Caroline had been at Heatherley Art School in the 1870s with Henry Marriott Paget and Henrietta Farr, Florence Farr’s sister. Henry Marriott and Henrietta had later married; and were long-serving GD members.

The Pentons were wealthy: they lived at 9 Cavendish Square, just off Oxford Street, and could afford to commission works of art. I think that it was Sarah Emily’s son (another Edward) and her daughter-in-law Eleanor who asked T C Gotch to draw their children. In 1907 the art journal The Studio showed a photograph of a triptych called Stephen and Two Attendant Figures, with the attendants on side panels framing a picture of a child’s head. The triptych was shown “By permission of Mrs Penton”. The little boy in the central panel is her son Denys Stephen Penton. In 1913 T C Gotch did another drawing of one of the Penton boys, this time of Christopher.

On the day of the 1871 census, twins Henry Watts Cracknell and Herbert Cracknell were at the same small boarding school in Maidenhead. Later, however, their educational paths diverged. Henry Watts was sent to University College School in Hampstead, and then trained as an accountant. At least by 1901, if not long before, he was working for his brother-in-law Edward Penton. He had married Annie Letitia Collins in 1895. Annie Letitia had been a widow with two children, Charles and Nora. Henry Watts adopted Charles and Nora, and had one daughter of his own - Ursula. Henry seems to have preferred Hampstead to Ealing; and it would have been easier, on the new tube system, for him to get to Edward Penton and Son’s premises from Hampstead. I have said above that he and Maud were living in that area in 1891. On the day of the 1901 census, Henry and his family were living at 40 Belsize Road Hampstead. By 1911 they had moved to 2 Netherhall Gardens; and when Henry died in 1932 they were living at 48 Greencroft Gardens.

Herbert Cracknell, meanwhile, trained to follow his and Maud’s father into the family’s pharmacy business; and by 1886 he was listed in the Registers of Pharmaceutical Chemists. It was under his leadership that the pharmacy also began selling photographical equipment. Herbert also moved it to new premises in the Paddington area and took on a second shop in Messaline Avenue in the new suburbs between Acton and Kensal Green. He married Augusta Ford, whom he knew from Ealing, in 1890. The family business is still listed in the latest Quarterly Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology that I could find on the web: the issue for 1939.

Ralph Cracknell had begun his working life as so many young men did in the 1870s, as a clerk for a firm in the City. However, by the late 1880s he had given that up for journalism. I think, perhaps, that he couldn’t get a job as a reporter in England; though he might just have wanted to travel - because I can’t find any evidence of his having worked for an English newspaper. In 1888 or 1889 he moved to Boston Massachusetts and worked for various papers there, particularly the Boston Globe, as a sports reporter, covering the new sports of lawn tennis and golf, and - cricket! And playing cricket too, in various ad hoc teams around Boston. On a very different note, Ralph became involved in the movement originally called the Bellamy Clubs, but later changed to the Nationalist Clubs. These clubs were founded to bring about in contemporary America the ideas put forward in the Utopian novel Looking Backward, written by newspaper proprietor Edward Bellamy and published in 1888. The book, and the clubs, promulgated a type of Christian socialism, involving the nationalisation of all American industry, full employment and retirement at 45. The Bellamy Club of Boston was the first to be founded, in December 1888; some of its members were also members of the Theosophical Society. The movement never took any real hold on American society (as one might expect) and folded around 1896.

He doesn’t seem to have married. He died in Boston in 1913, aged 53.

BASIC SOURCES I USED for all Golden Dawn members.

Membership of the Golden Dawn: The Golden Dawn Companion by R A Gilbert. Northampton: The Aquarian Press 1986. Between pages 125 and 175, Gilbert lists the names, initiation dates and addresses of all those people who became members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn or its many daughter Orders between 1888 and 1914. The list is based on the Golden Dawn’s administrative records and its Members’ Roll - the large piece of parchment on which all new members signed their name at their initiation. All this information had been inherited by Gilbert but it’s now in the Freemasons’ Library at the United Grand Lodge of England building on Great Queen Street Covent Garden.

Family history: freebmd; ancestry.co.uk (census and probate); findmypast.co.uk; familysearch; Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage; Burke’s Landed Gentry; Armorial Families; thepeerage.com; and a wide variety of family trees on the web.

Famous-people sources: mostly about men, of course, but very useful even for the female members of GD. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Who Was Who. Times Digital Archive.

Catalogues: British Library; Freemasons’ Library.

Wikipedia; Google; Google Books - my three best resources. I also used other web pages, but with some caution, as - from the historian’s point of view - they vary in quality a great deal.

SOURCES FOR MAUD CRACKNELL:

St Andrew’s University: Matriculation Roll of the University of St Andrew’s 1747-1897, published 1905, edited by James M Anderson. Maud is listed on p305 and on p316. Further information on matriculation in general: pxxiii and pxxv.

Theosophical Society: TS Membership Registers 1889-1901 held at the TS Library at its headquarters, 50 Gloucester Place London.

About Elsie Goring: Theosophical Review volume 36 1905 and volume 40 1907 have articles by her.

Lillian or Lilian Lloyd: a modern source The Divine Feminine: Theosophy and Feminism by Joy Dixon. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press 2001. There’s a reference on p133 to Lloyd having founded the TS’s Match Girls’ Club, active during the 1890s in East London.

Both of them played imp roles at the TS European Section congress of 1907: see Transactions of the 2^nd Congress of the European Sections of the Theosophical Society published by the TS’s European Section 1907. P7 it took place from Saturday 8 July [1907] to p10 Monday 10 July [1907] p7 at the Empress Rooms in Kensington, and 600 people attended. P12 in the section Meetings of Departments there is a report of a meeting of Department F which dealt with Administration, Propaganda and Methods. Elsie Goring was unable to attend this meeting so in her absence, Fraulein von Sivers explained a scheme being set up by a group of TS members to explore the connections between modern science and the works of Blavatksy. Miss Goring was an important member of this new group. On P12 there’s a report of the meeting of Department E - Art, at which Lillian (sic and I think this is the correct spelling) Lloyd read a paper: The Modern Symbolist Movement.

Via www.worthing.gov.uk’s Burial Register Search: Maud Cracknell is buried in Broadwater Cemetery, South Farm Road Worthing: Section C22, Row 3, Grave number 2 - the same grave as Mary Louisa.

Maud’s father Charles Cracknell the pharmacist

Annual Report of the Art Union of London, volumes 11-12 1847. Seen via googlebooks: p54 alphabetical list, probably of subscribers but I couldn’t see from the snippet. Includes C Cracknell of 106 Edgeware Road. Via website www.victorianlondon.org/entertainment: entry for the Art Union of London. Established 1836, existed for 75 years; at 444 West Strand. Founded with the intention of encouraging new art and design. A yearly sub of 1 guinea would entitle the subscriber to receive an engraving to that value of a well-known painting. Their name would also go into a draw, done every April. The winner of the draw would be bought an art work of value anything from £10 to £200. By 1867 the Art Union had spent £10000 buying art works.

The Spectator volume 20 1847 p956 Charles Cracknell of 106 Edgeware Road is mentioned but I can’t see in what connection from the snippet.

The Economist volume 8 part 2 1850 p1090 Charles Cracknell with address 107 Junction Terrace. NB I’m inclined to think that 107 Edgeware Road and 107 Junction Terrace are actually the same house.

Proceedings of the British Pharmaceutical Conference 1869 pvii in a list of members: C Cracknell of 107 Edgeware Road. P2 he appears again in a list of men elected since its last meeting. From the snippet I’m not quite sure what it is these men have been elected to: perhaps it is the British Pharmaceutical Society.

ABOUT THE BATTLE OF BLYTHE ROAD

I used Ellic Howe’s The Magicians of the Golden Dawn as the basis for my account. Routledge and Kegan Paul 1972. Pages 219-232. Howe’s main source (see p205) is a typescript in the Gerald Yorke Collection of Crowley’s The Book of the Operation of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. However, Howe did use other sources. He doesn’t say where the letter to Maud wrote to the unnamed GD member is but I suppose it was in the Private Collection and is now at the FML. The reference to Maud as a lesbian is on p207. Another account of what happened on Tuesday 17 April 1900 is by Edmund Hunter; I’m not quite sure where Howe found the account - presumably it too was in Gerald Yorke’s papers.

Gerald Yorke’s occult library and other papers are now at the Warburg Institute Library, University of London.

Other accounts of the battle:

A short one is the web at www.tomegatherion.co.uk/gd.htm seen June 2012. Crowley’s diary for the period (seen June 2012) is at www.beyondweird.com/crowley/crowleys_diary.htm. Darcy Kuntz of the Golden Dawn Trust has written a book on it: The Battle of Blythe Road: A Golden Dawn Affair, Golden Dawn Studies Series number 14, published August 1987.

For Yeats’ part, see W B Yeats, A Life: Volume 1: The Apprentice Mage by R F Foster. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press 1998: pp231-32.

The Independent and Rectified Rite

About the different paths taken by Waite, and by Robert Felkin, after the break-up of the Golden Dawn: Ellic Howe op cit p255.

A E Waite: A Magician of Many Parts by R A Gilbert. Wellingborough: Crucible Press 1987.

Appendix C p178-79 has the full wording of the declaration arrived at by those at a meeting held on 24 July 1903. It announces their intention of founding a new order along freemasonry lines but with the intention of including women as members and holders of office. The signatories were (in the order they appear in the book and presumably on the original announcement): William Ayton; Marcus Worsley Blackden; A E Waite; Helen Rand; Harriet Butler; Pamela Bullock; Julian Baker; Helen Fulham Hughes; Kate E Broomhead; Isabelle de Steiger; Maud Cracknell; and Ada Blackden. P180 reproduces its constitution, formulated at a meeting on 7 November 1903; there are no signatures attached to it so it’s not possible to know whether Maud Cracknell was there. The new order would meet four times a year, on the first Saturday of January, April, July and September. On 1 July 2012 I found the full text of the book on the web at www.scribd.com/doc/78917542/A-E-Waite-a-Magician-of-Many-Parts-R-A-Gilbert; it’s available for download.

Maud Cracknell’s siblings: Sarah Emily Penton.

Kelly’s Directory of the Leather Trades issued 1880 p14 couldn’t see the whole of it from google’s snippet but it was a large and coloured (that is, more expensive) advert for Edward Penton and Son, established 1833.

Kelly’s Directory of London 1895 has Edward Penton and Son at 1-3 Mortimer Street W1; manufacturer of sewn boots and shoes, and of dancing pumps and shoes.

Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England volume 81 1920 p154 advert from Edward Penton and Son for leather leggings for agricultural workers. The firm’s address is now 1-11 Mortimer Street.

Journal of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) volume 74 1926 p418 short obituary of Mr Edward Penton (Sarah Cracknell’s husband) who had died at home in Cavendish Square on 5 March [1926] aged 80. The obituary describes him (I think, wrongly, I think he’s the son of the founder) as founder of the firm of Edward Penton and Son, now of Mortimer St and Newman St. He was made a Fellow of the RSA in 1897. He had retired from active involvement in the firm by the outbreak of World War 1, but took up the reins again so that his son could concentrate on his job as Superintendent of the Boot Section, Royal Army Clothing Department.

//lat.bookmaps/org/g/e/gen_30.html has a list of footwear, rubbers, leather goods etc issued by Edward Penton and Son Ltd 1932-33. Also a centenary list dated 1832-1932.

Sarah Emily Penton’s son is Sir Edward Penton KBE:

Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society volume 24 no 1 1937 inside front page: a list of current officers. Sir Edward Penton KBE is the Society’s current honorary secretary.

Website www.greywall.demon.co.uk/genealogy/WynnHall/tim.html is a family tree of the descendents of the Rev Timothy Kenrick 1759-1804 of Wynn Hall, Ruabon, Denbighshire. A daughter of his married into the Sharpe family and one of her daughters married into the Courtauld family. Eleanor Sharpe 1878-1951 married 1902 (Sarah Emily’s son) Edward Penton (later made KBE) 1875-1967, born 9 Cavendish Square London W1; they had a large family, there are lots of descendants.

The Studio: an Illustrated Magazine of Fine and Applied Art volume 42 no 175 issue of 15 October 1907 p55 in the Studio Talk column: a reproduction of a triptych by T C Gotch called Stephen and Two Attendant Figures, shown “By permission of Mrs Penton”. The triptych was an elaboration of an original which was just the picture of a child’s head, exhibited by T C Gotch “last year”. The triptych has the child’s head in the middle panel with two angel-like creatures, one on either side. The item in The Studio describes the triptych as a triumph by T C Gotch in difficult art of combining one central panel with two side panels to make a whole.

Henry Watts Cracknell:

Alphabetical and Chronological Register of University College School 1831-91, published by the College in 1892. Henry W Cracknell appears on p92 with “73-76" which seems rather too late to denote his years at the school. He’s in a list alphabetical by surname; Herbert Cracknell is not in the list.

Herbert Cracknell and the family pharmacy:

Registers of Pharmaceutical Chemists 1886 p7 has him in it.

Druggists’ Circular and Chemical Gazette volume 43 1898 p214 Herbert is in a list of honorary local secretaries; but I couldn’t see what they were secretaries of.

Photographic Dealer and D&P (sic and I don’t know what it stands for - Druggist and Pharmacy?) Trade Review volume 16 1904 p153 lists Herbert Cracknell at 17 Craven Road and 2 Messaline Avenue Acton.

Pharmaceutical Journal 1904 p729 has Herbert Cracknell with business addresses Craven Road Paddington and Messaline Avenue Acton: “pharmaceutical chemist”.

Yearbook of Pharmacy 1925 p326 Herbert’s still being listed.

Quarterly Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology 1939 p831 he’s still listed.

Ralph Cracknell:

Physical Education volume 1 1892 p7 contents list, I suppose for this issue; the list includes a book review or (more likely) an article by Ralph: Cricket as Played in America.

The Bookseller and Newsman volume 10 1893 p6 has short report on a farewell dinner given by the local guild of newspaper reporters for Ralph as he was abt to return to England after 4 years working for various newspapers in and around Boston. Perhaps he was hoping that, now he had some experience, a job on an English newspaper would be forthcoming; it wasn’t, and he seems to have returned to the USA.

Outing (I think this is an American journal) volume 28 1896 p154 describes Ralph as a “phenomenal cricket-player”.

American Lawn Tennis volume 1 published by the US Lawn Tennis Association 1898 p131 Ralph is a member of the Association. Wikipedia’s article on the Association gives the date of its founding as 1881.

American Review of Reviews volume 48 1913 p166 a notice of Ralph’s death, which had occurred on 24 June [1913]; he was 53. He’s described as “journalist and authority on golf matters”.

The Nationalist: A Monthly Magazine volume 1 1968 p19 in an article covering the early years of the Bellamy Club; Ralph was elected its first Secretary.

At www.cricketarchive.com/Archive/Players/78/78732/78732.html, the Cricket Archive players’ section includes Ralph Cracknell. Born 27 May 1863; died 24 June 1913 Boston Mass. This is where I found the reference to his working for the Boston Globe; no dates were given for his time there. The database says that Ralph played for several cricket teams in the Boston area between 1890 and 1894.

Cricket in America 1700-2000 by P David Sentance 2006 p63 says Ralph was known especially as a bowler.

Copyright SALLY DAVIS

1 July 2012