Charles Hostick and the incident of the carrier-cycle

Just a quick post tonight as it’s the final episode of Inside Men tonight and I’m tired.

Since my last post, I’ve been in contact with a lovely guy named Tony Cousins who has done some one name studies research into the Austwick/Ostick/Hosticks in the past. We have been sharing information backwards and forwards about what each of us has on the Hosticks and he has really provided some great information and leads.

Tonight I came home to another email, with a couple of attached pdfs. One a Yorkshire Gazette story about the sad suicide of a William Hostick in Driffield in 1881. The other a Daily Mail article about a carriage cycle accident in Hull in 1929. The latter was particularly exciting to receive – it’s about my Granddad. And it’s a story neither my father nor I have ever heard. It is – The Hull Oilmiller’s Injury:

Charles Hostick (26), an oilmiller, of George’s-place, Carr Street, Hull, was knocked down by a carrier-cycle on Anlaby-road on Saturday and suffered a bruised left thigh and shock. He was attended at the Royal Infirmary.

And here’s the man himself, 61 years on and just days before his death in 1990 – Charles William Hostick.

Dorothy’s story: He ran like an ape

Dorothy telling her story

After my Auntie Jean had shared her story on jumping that gate on Christmas Day (see my previous post), Auntie Dorothy, My Dad’s and Jean’s sister-in-law – wife to my Uncle Charles – told us about her and her peers’ experiences of dancing in Hull City Hall and the dates that followed in Hull in the 1950s.

So here’s Dorothy’s story. Turn up the volume, click the link, press play and read along below. Enjoy.

Dancing in Hull

Dorothy: “You used to meet some strange people… we used to go dancing at City Hall every Saturday. Well there was no bar, you know it was just drinks, like soft drinks. So we used to go in Black Boy first, down High Street, then we used to all traipse to… [Maurice: “City Hall”]…Well, some of the people, you used to meet them dancing and they were ok, you know, you think they’re nice, you know. But if you had a date with them and you saw them in the daylight – is that who I was dancing with last night? Well I remember me sister, she said, she was meeting him outside City Hall the next night, and as she was coming up she said there was this bloke standing there with his scarf, you know, right down to the ground, like they used to wear them these… college types. And she said he was standing there picking his nose, so she just turned round and went home”

Jeffrey: “He was waiting for a date and he was picking his nose? Aw, I feel sorry for him”

Maurice: “He might have been a real nice fella”

Jeffrey: “He might have been a really nice guy, yeah”

Maurice: “He might have had a nose problem”

Dorothy: “yeah he was standing there picking his nose, so she went home”

Dorothy: “I said, by that was a quick date. She said oooh… she said…”

Dorothy and Jean in unison: “…‘you don’t want to know’ ”

Jeffrey: “Picking his nose. Aww”

Dorothy: “And June, was one as well. She used to pick some strange people. And she said this bloke that she met was real nice. And then she went on this date, and she said he was up there and I was walking towards him. So she said, ‘he waved’, and she said, ‘he came running towards me and he ran like an ape.’ He didn’t, he didn’t last long.”

Jeffrey: “Awww”

Maurice: “The things they used to choose the fellas for in those days”

Jeffrey: “I’m telling you. These poor men. These poor boys”

Leo: “He ran like an ape!”

Dorothy: “These poor men. I know, I know. But maybe they thought the same”

Jean’s story: I could jump that gate…

So I’ve been researching my family tree for a while now. Of course, the first step to this is getting everything you know on paper, so I started off busily inputting a lot of dates and names on to my tree on Ancestry. I’ve since started delving a bit deeper, finding records to verify relatives, and have ventured into the Scottish side to find out more about the famous Scot turned Dane Thomas Kingo. It’s filling out nicely and currently the tree goes back 0ver 200 years to 1801 on my Dad’s side and a whopping 470 odd years to 1550 on my Mum’s side.

But there are a lot of my great aunts and uncles on my Dad’s side that I just can’t seem to find many records for. We know my Grandma had 13 siblings, but finding records for people with such common names as Violet Morgan in the early 1900s has been proving quite the challenge.

But Christmas came at just the right time. Every year our Christmas involves a Danish Christmas Eve with just the immediate family (typically the four of us and the son-in-law and son-out-of-law), and an English Christmas Day with my aunts Jean and Dorothy and Uncle Charles. So I borrowed the brother-out-of-law’s iPhone to record the conversations as my Dad kicked off the family history discussion.

Jean telling her story

Today I listened to the recordings as I managed to find a couple of great aunts I’d been struggling with for some time, thanks to just getting married surnames off Charles and Jean. While I transcribed I remembered what a great day we’d had and what some gems of stories we got.

I just had to share the three personal stories for other family members to hear. So I have edited them down on the husband’s Cool Edit Pro and am posting them here.

First, Jean’s story. Turn up the volume, click the link, press play and read along below. Enjoy.

I could jump that gate…

Dorothy: “She was always in trouble, weren’t you Jean?”

Jean: “Yeah I was. Mind of me own… I could jump that gate”

Maurice: “I remember when she took me on dates”

Dorothy: “she used to take you on dates? Is that where you learnt everything?”

Jean: “Well, if me Dad knew…

Dorothy: “She used to go on a date and take him”

Jean: “…You know. But if we took him out…

Dorothy: “Did he used to sit between you both?”

Jean: “…He didn’t know then, me Dad”

Jeffrey: “I see. So it was all part of a kind of ruse? It was a scam?”

Sophie: “So it was so your Dad didn’t know about your boyfriends, not because you had to look after him.”

Maurice: “I was being used all my life”

Jeffrey: “He was a decoy”

Jean: “Yeah”

Maurice:”I thought she was taking me out for a little walk ‘cause she liked me.”

Sophie: “I thought it was because she had to babysit him”

Jean: “Well no, not really”

Maurice: “That’s craft isn’t it…”

Jeffrey: “That is crafty”

Maurice: “…I’ll take Maurice for a walk”

Jean: “Yeah”

Jeffrey: “Off you go to the cinema with some guy”

Maurice: “I thought I was meeting one of me uncles”

Dorothy: “I never knew that”

Jean: “Shopping in Hull”

Jean: “I tell you what, I could run that path and over the gate… and the door would go bang”

Maurice: “It was open and she used to jump it”

Jeffrey: “Straight over the gate”

Dorothy: “Then you daren’t go back in”

Jean: “No”

Sophie: “What did you used to do wrong?”

Jeffrey: “She was out, with lads and stuff”

Jean: “Er, no!” [laugh]

Jeffrey: “Sorry, that sounded wrong”

Jean: “No, I just had a mind of me own”

Dorothy: “She had one at a time, Jeffrey. Didn’t have a load at once did you?”

Jean: “No. No.”

Jeffrey: “Sorry, that came out wrong. I didn’t mean you were out with lads”