Family Murder Mystery (part 3)

Updated: Jul 21, 2022

THe Backdrop: Exploring Frederick George Bull's early life

Frederick George Bull grew up between two worlds in London: the ending of the 1800s, a Victorian era overshadowed by Jack the Ripper in 1888 and filthy living conditions, and the early 1900s, which saw a world war, a pandemic, and a compelling door opening for the first-wave feminism movement. The world was changing.

London’s population swelled to over five million people in 1879. Despite becoming a political, financial, and trading capital, millions of people remained in extreme poverty. Human sewage swept into streets and the River Thames. Horse dung lined the streets and the soot and smoke lay thick in the air. Lower class people had few options when it came to maintaining personal hygiene. According to the Museum of the Home website:

“For most of the city's inhabitants, acquiring safe drinking water meant laboriously pulling it from wells, collecting rainwater, or travelling to public conduits and fountains and lugging the water back home.”

Only the wealthy had access to clean running water directly in their home up until the early 1900s, when it became commonplace for the middle and lower classes, too. Around this time, middle-class families also donned the use of servants. In 1900, almost a third of Britain's women between the ages of 15 and 20 took on paid domestic service. Meanwhile, the poor slaved away long hours in mills, factories, mines, and on docks.

(Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Education reform saw an upheaval at this time. In 1870, the Elementary Education Act came into effect, establishing a system of school boards to be put in charge of building and managing schools. Education for children between the ages of five and ten didn’t become compulsory until 1880, raised to eleven in 1893 and then to twelve in 1899.

Life expectancy in this time was low. One in three infants died before their fifth birthdays. For adults, men saw a life expectancy average of forty years, while women could expect to see their forty-second birthday. By the time 1900 hit, this was raised to forty-five years for men and fifty for women. Disease was rampant, due to the city’s blatant filth. The establishment of a central and nationalized water system would go a long ways to redirecting waste away from direct contact with people and for maintaining personal hygiene.

This era of London is oddly fascinating, but I won’t go into extravagant detail. I’ll leave some links at the end of this post if you desire further reading into the city’s history. This is simply the backdrop of the world against which Frederick was born.

His father, John Frederick, is listed on the 1881 census as a church verger (The 1891 census reveals it was for the Trinity Church) while his mother, Mary Ann (maiden name Pigott), was a housewife. Historically, a church verger was basically a building caretaker who took care of furnishings, relics, cleanliness, preparing for church services, and grave-digging responsibilities. It was a very behind-the-scenes job that ensured the church ran smoothly and that participants behaved.

(1881 Census for the Bull Family. Via Ancestry.ca)

The Bulls had a total of eleven children (oldest to youngest): John, Jane, Sarah, Alice, Daisy, Henry, Lily, Frederick, Elizabeth, Herbert and Alfred. Mary and John were both 40-years-old when Frederick was born on February 13, 1879.

I have no real way of knowing exactly what Frederick’s early years looked like or what environment he grew up in beyond the history reading I’ve done. I did get an anecdote or two about his later years, which we’ll get into soon. But his parents had a seemingly normal family for the time. A working father, a housewife, and a large group of kids.

Of course, in Victorian London, children were viewed as cheap labour, spending their childhoods working and contributing to the household income. They worked before or after school hours, often with parents. Income from children’s labour was much needed by families. This was an era where the visions of innocent childhood clashed with the traditions of working children. Whether or not kids should have been made to work their young years away became a great debate by the time Frederick was born. Indeed, in the 1891 census, Frederick’s occupation is listed as “scholar”. It’s hard to know if he, too, worked outside his school hours, or if his father’s income as a verger effectively sustained the family.

(1891 census for the Bull family. Via Ancestry.ca)

In 1901, at 22-years-old, Frederick still lived with his parents. But he likely spent little time at home. He was working at sea by this time. A 1901 Calendar of Prisoners shows him and another man on trial for thefts that occurred at sea. Frederick was found not guilty and released. The other man was found guilty. According to the record, the men were charged with “stealing a watch, a chain, and other articles, the property of Walter Edward Guinness, on the high seas, on the 13th June 1901.”

(1903 Royal Navy Register of Seaman's Services)

In April 1903, Frederick joined the Royal Navy as a cook. According to the Royal Navy Register of Seaman’s Services, at twenty-three-years-old, Frederick was 5’8” tall, had very light brown hair, grey eyes, and an eagle tattoo on his chest. For a reason only listed as “unfit”, he was discharged in November of 1904. This could have been due to sickness or injury, as injuries would plague him later on.

In 1909, I found Frederick in a Seamen’s Hospital and Discharges record, admitted with a hernia. He was discharged on October 15 as “healed”. For the 1911 census, he was working as a carpenter and living with his parents once more.

Somewhere in this time, he met Theresa Agnes Semken, who he’d marry on May 29, 1915. He was thirty-six and she, twenty-four.

He was a dashing, tattooed seaman, surely full of adventurous stories to capture the attention of any woman he fancied. How exactly Theresa caught his eye, no one knows. No one has ever passed down this part of the story. They could have crossed paths anywhere in the London streets. A pub. A market. Through friends. Nor is it known how long they knew each other before marrying. These details are, sadly, lost to time now.

The marriage certificate regarding this union is most curious. On it, Frederick’s father is noted as deceased and a former cab proprietor, which from the census records, we know wasn’t accurate. John Frederick died in 1916. Also, his name is noted as Frederick John. To be fair, it was common to list middle names before first names. But to be safe, I searched Ancestry records for that name with no luck. I could not find a Frederick John Bull of the same age who was a cab proprietor, with a son named Frederick George. So, I am trusting official records over what Frederick noted on his marriage certificate.

The occupation difference could be explained as John having his own cab and making money on the side of his verger job. The 1900s saw the gradual change from horse and buggy “hansom” cabs, to the car versions. It’s possible John owned a hansom cab – a lightweight buggy that only required one horse to pull it.

(Bishopsgate Institute)

John and Mary were also members of the Trinity Church for which he worked. Perhaps Frederick wanted to avoid marrying in the church, or avoid his father. Frederick and Theresa were married “by license” at the register office. Perhaps he put his father’s name down differently, claimed he was dead, and wrote down the side occupation. That’s a decent effort to put in to hide a marriage.

By marrying, Frederick also deemed himself exempt from mandatory conscription that came within the year, as World War I had started in July 1914. According to the UK Parliament website:

“In January 1916 the Military Service Act was passed. This imposed conscription on all single men aged between 18 and 41, but exempted the medically unfit, clergymen, teachers and certain classes of industrial worker.”

However, the UK Parliament website also notes:

“Conscientious objectors – men who objected to fighting on moral grounds– were also exempted, and were in most cases given civilian jobs or non-fighting roles at the front.

A second Act passed in May 1916 extended conscription to married men.”

This could lend itself to speculation. Was Frederick not close with his father at this time? Did they perhaps have a falling out between 1911 and 1915? Did his parents not approve of the union to the younger woman? Was his marriage one of convenience to avoid going to war, remaining in his carpentry job on the ships to assist in the war from home?

It doesn’t appear that Theresa was a pregnant bride, either, since their son, Frederick Jr. wasn’t born until April 1916. However, Frederick and Theresa resided at the same address when they got married. It was just the beginning of the mysterious era of Frederick’s life, to an equally mysterious woman. Her life, I will explore in the next post before leading up to Frederick’s death.

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