Frank Jubb was offered initiation into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1890 by members of its Horus temple in Bradford. But he turned it down - probably the only person in the G membership lists who never actually became a member. R A Gilbert in his list of members (see the main Sources section at the end of the file) suggests that Frank might have got as far as signing a pledge form before changing his mind; and so had to be recorded in the archives.

I imagine the normal procedure, if someone refused the chance to join the GD, was to throw away any paperwork involving them; so that except in one case, we now don’t know who they were. The one case is Arthur Conan Doyle. There’s nothing in the GD files to indicate he had the chance of initiation but decided against it; but he wrote about the incident himself many years later.

This is one of my short biographies. They mostly cover GD members who lived in Bradford, Liverpool and Edinburgh though Frank Jubb didn’t live in any of those places, he grew up in Halifax before moving to London. I’ve done what I can with Frank Jubb, using the web and sources in London. I’m sure there’s far more information on him out there, but it will be in the Halifax and south London record offices, the local papers...I’d need to be on the spot to look at them, and I’ve had to admit that life’s too short!

Sally Davis

April 2016

My basic sources for any GD member are in a section at the end of the file. Supplementary sources for this particular member are listed at the end of each section.

This is what I have found on FRANK JUBB.

IN THE GD

Nothing! Frank Jubb didn’t get as far as being initiated. However, unlike with most GD members, I can hazard a guess as to who he knew who might have put his name forward as a possible recruit. Frank had grown up in Halifax. There were two GD members living in Halifax around 1890. One was Lewis Stanley Jastrzebski (pronounced Yast-shemb-ski) who was employed in the Council’s library. Given Frank Jubb’s background, the more likely one was Stanley’s brother, Bogdan Edwards, who was a GP.

ANY OTHER ESOTERIC INTERESTS?

Not that I’ve found; and perhaps this is the point: Frank Jubb didn’t have any interest in the occult.

Sources checked:

Theosophical Society membership registers 1890-1901.

The catalogue of the Freemasons’ Library. Frank Jubb wasn’t in it though that doesn’t necessarily mean he was not a freemason, it might just mean that he kept his involvement very local. My own feeling is that he wasn’t a freemason.

ANY OBITUARIES/BIOGRAPHIES?

There may be some in the Peckham local papers. I haven’t found any elsewhere.

BIRTH/YOUTH/FAMILY BACKGROUND

Frank Jubb was a son of Abraham Jubb and his wife Hannah. Abraham Jubb had been born in Mirfield, between Huddersfield and Dewsbury. He trained as a doctor, qualifying in 1847, by which time he was working as a surgeon in the Halifax Infirmary. He joined the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association to keep up with the latest developments in his profession.

Abraham Jubb was a member of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society and seems to have been particularly interested in fossils: some fern species and shells found by Dr Jubb in the seams of the Halifax coalfield, were donated to the Society’s collection.

Abraham Jubb married a local woman, Hannah Phillis Ambler, in Halifax in 1849. They had a large family. Frank was one of the youngest of their children, born in 1864.

I think that the Jubb family lived on Akeds Road in Halifax for several decades. They may even have lived in the same house. The house numbers are different in different censuses but that may just indicate that the houses were renumbered by the Post Office at some stage. I think the street name is the same in the censuses of 1871 to 1891; but in 1871 in particular, the census official’s handwriting leaves everything to be desire; so I’m not sure.

On the day of the 1871 census, Hannah and two of her daughters were away from home; but the Abrahams, father and eldest son, were at home, with Catherine (11), Frank (7) and the youngest child Ada (aged 2). Abraham senior and Hannah were comfortably off, employing a nursemaid, a cook and a housemaid. By 1881 both their sons had left home. Daughters Emily, Catherine and Beatrice were all still unmarried and living at home; and the Jubbs were employing just a cook and housemaid, the services of a nursemaid no longer being needed.

Hannah Jubb died in 1889 and loosened the family’s ties with Halifax. Abraham Jubb junior was working as a commercial traveller and by census day 1891 he was living in Cheetham in Manchester with his wife Ellen. Abraham Jubb senior was still at Akeds Road in 1891, with daughters Emily, Catherine and Ada who were all still unmarried. By 1901, however, Abraham Jubb senior had retired and had moved to Morecambe with Emily and Ada; where he died in 1906.

Sources for Frank’s family in Yorkshire and Lancashire:

At Familysearch England-ODM GS film number 0990708, 0990757: baptism of Abraham Jubb, 1 June 1823 at Mirfield Yorks. Parents Thomas and Mary; Mary’s surname before her marriage wasn’t given.

General Medical Council registers began in 1859. Abraham Jubb was registered between 1859 and 1903 though census data indicates he had retired a few years before his last entry. He was Licensed to practice by the Society of Apothecaries of London and by the Royal College of Surgeons of England, in 1847.

Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal number 34 1844 issue of 20 November 1844: Abraham Jubb was listed as having gone to Derby Town Hall on 14 November for a meeting of the Association, called to consider a parliamentary bill intended to increase regulation of the medical profession.

Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association 1845 p358: Abraham Jubb as senior surgeon at the Halifax Infirmary.

Leisure:

The Naturalist 1839 p445.

Probate Registry 1906.

EDUCATION

What schooling Frank Jubb had I do not know; I would presume he went to a school in Halifax. Unlike his elder brother, Frank went into his father’s profession. He’s not on the census in England in 1881 so I guess he was already in Ireland, studying medicine. In 1881 he passed the English Royal College of Surgeons’ exams but he didn’t get licenced to practice until 1888, by the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland.

Source:

GMC Registers 1891 to 1932.

Medical Times and Gazette: A Journal of Medical Science, Literature, Criticism and News 1881. London: J and A Churchill of 11 New Bond Street. 1881 volume 2 p425 issue of 1 October 1881.

WORK/PROFESSION

Frank’s GMC registration for 1891 lists him at his father’s address - 28 Akeds Road Halifax - but his census return for that year shows that he had his own household, of which he was sole member, at 4 Hopwood Lane. He was working as a physician. He was probably gaining some GP experience in his father’s practice though he might have been working at a hospital instead or aswell - I haven’t been able to discover whether he was employed elsewhere. Abraham Jubb senior was likely to retire quite soon and Frank could just have inherited his father’s patients and stayed in Halifax. He chose otherwise, moving south to establish himself in the relatively new London suburb of Peckham. Though he moved house several times, he remained in practice as a GP in Peckham for the rest of his life.

Frank was 50 when the first World War broke out; rather old to volunteer and of course he had his family and his patients to think of. However, he was able to contribute to the war effort. In April 1915 he and a large number of other men - all presumably qualified doctors although the list doesn’t specifically say so - were given military rank in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Frank was made a lieutenant. As more and more casualties were brought back to England for treatment, these men spent time working for the Home Hospitals Reserve in addition to their normal work.

Sources:

GMC Registers. Frank’s listed for the first time in 1891 at 28 Akeds Road Halifax. Unfortunately there are then a few Registers in which he isn’t listed, until he reappears in 1899 at

35 Nunhead Crescent Peckham Rye. In the Registers of 1903 and 1907 he’s at 125 Evelina Road Nunhead. By 1911 he’d moved to 135 The Rye Peckham. The next Register available at Ancestry is that of 1923. In that issue, and throughout the 1920s, Frank’s at 241 Peckham Rye SE15 which might be the 1911 address renumbered. His last appearance in the Registers is in 1931, still at 241 Peckham Rye.

125 Evelina Road and 135 The Rye Peckham are Frank’s home addresses on the relevant census: his medical practice was based in his own house.

The Lancet 1915 volume 1 January-June p1255 issue of 12 June 1915.

ANY PUBLIC LIFE/EVIDENCE FOR LEISURE TIME? Bearing in mind, of course, that most leisure activities leave no trace behind them.

No, though this is because the evidence is lacking. On the web, membership of such societies as the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society is better covered in the mid-19th century than later. The activities of local groups like choirs, friendly societies, sports or social clubs are covered by the local papers and haven’t made it onto the web as yet.

FAMILY

In 1897, Frank Jubb married a woman called Lucy Donovan.

I haven’t been able to identify Lucy Donovan on a census before her marriage to Frank; so I know nothing about her background except that her family was probably Irish. Even her name has been a bit of a problem: she was registered as Lucy Donovan in Greenwich in 1873; but her marriage registration has her as Violet Lucy A R Donovan. I wasn’t quite sure what name to look for on census returns so I searched using both her forenames; but I couldn’t find her.

Frank and Lucy had one child, a daughter born in 1898 and named Phyllis after Frank’s mother. On the day of the 1901 census they were living at 125 Evelina Road in Peckham where they employed just the one, live-in servant girl. They had moved to 135 Peckham Rye by 1911. Phyllis was at school, of course. And the Jubbs were still being cautious with their expenditure, employing one general servant.

I found a marriage registration in Camberwell for a woman transcribed as Phyllis O (sic) Jubb in 1920. Jubb is not a common surname especially in south London and I think the bride may have been Frank’s daughter, whose birth was registered as Phyllis Dorothy. If so, she married Robert Comrie.

DEATH

Frank Jubb died in King’s College Hospital in May 1932. Lucy Jubb acted as his executor; and after that she disappears from view. Perhaps I should have searched freebmd further than 1960, but I couldn’t find a death registration for her before then. I checked 1932-40 but she didn’t remarry in England during those years.

DESCENDANTS? AND WHAT (IF ANYTHING) HAPPENED NEXT.

If it was Frank’s daughter who married Robert Comrie in 1920, he may have descendants. I wasn’t sufficiently confident that it was her in that marriage registration to check that out.

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. Please note, though, that the records of the Amen-Ra Temple in Edinburgh were destroyed in 1900/01. I have recently (July 2014) discovered that some records of the Horus Temple at Bradford have survived, though most have not; however those that have survived are not yet accessible to the public.

For the history of the GD during the 1890s I usually use Ellic Howe’s The Magicians of the Golden Dawn: A Documentary History of a Magical Order 1887-1923. Published Routledge and Kegan Paul 1972. Foreword by Gerald Yorke. Howe is a historian of printing rather than of magic; he also makes no claims to be a magician himself, or even an occultist. He has no axe to grind.

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.

Useful source for business and legal information: London Gazette and its Scottish counterpart Edinburgh Gazette. Now easy to find (with the right search information) on the web.

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.

Copyright SALLY DAVIS

10 April 2016

Email me at

Find the web pages of Roger Wright and Sally Davis, including my list of people initiated into the Order of the Golden Dawn between 1888 and 1901, at:

www.wrightanddavis.co.uk

***