A romantic mystery from the Archive
For Valentine’s Day I set myself the task of trying to identify the lucky couple who received good wishes on their wedding in 1880 from the staff of the Norwich Union Fire Society.
The wedding congratulation note is particularly important because it was signed by so many members of staff and dates from a time when we have no surviving registers listing those who worked for the company. Several people who signed it didn’t stay with the company for very long and we only know that they ever worked for us because their names were signed on the wedding card.
Until now the names of the ‘Happy Pair’ it was sent to have remained a mystery. I tried to identify the man who received it by using the list of staff I have compiled from other records in the Archive. I found the names of people who didn’t sign the card, although they were working for the company in 1880, and then looked up the dates of their weddings as recorded in parish registers to see if they had married on 21 September that year. When this approach failed, I tried searching the British Newspaper Archive on the off chance that a marriage on the right date was recorded in one of the local papers which have been digitized. Amazingly, it worked! I found a notice that George Clark married Jane Elizabeth Gosnold on 21 September 1880 in the now demolished church of St Philip Heigham in Norwich.
George worked for Norwich Union Life Insurance Society so my plan to look for members of Norwich Union Fire Society staff who hadn’t signed the wedding card was destined to fail. It would also have been scuppered by the fact that the date of his marriage is incorrectly recorded on Ancestry as 11 September 1880. Nevertheless, we now know that George and Jane received the good wishes of 47 members the Norwich Union Fire staff for their big day.
George had joined Norwich Union Life Society in December 1871 when he was 15 and was put on a salary of £20 a year. When he was appointed, he had to sign an agreement which was recorded in the board minute book, promising that he “shall diligently attend to such duties as may from time to time be assigned to him and shall conduct himself properly and to the satisfaction of the said Sir Samuel Bignold as the Secretary of the said Society.” The agreement also had to be signed by his father, George Oliver Clark, who worked for the Norwich Union Fire Society and had been on the staff there since 1848. George Clark senior had followed in the footsteps of his uncle, James Clark, who had worked for Norwich Union for 36 years when he died, aged 50, in 1847.
George Clark junior retired from Norwich Union in 1921 after 50 years’ service. He later wrote an article for the staff magazine looking back on his earliest days with the company and remembering the smell of the stuffy air in the office after the gas lights had been burning for some hours. He also recalled that quill pens were still in use and that the clerks all sat at high, sloped desks. His duties as office junior had included going out to fill up the snuff boxes of the other members of staff and collecting boiled beef, sardines, bread, and Guinness for their lunch.
George and Jane went on to have 7 children and, just as his colleagues had hoped for them, they got to see their children’s children. They both died in 1937 only three days apart; George on 7th June and Jane on the 10th.
