This website, www.findonvillage.com  created by Valerie Martin, contains scenes from her home village of Findon, West Sussex, U.K.

THE HOUSEKEEPER AND THE TSETSE FLY

Copyright Valerie Martin 2002

First published in Along the Furlong in May 2002.

Emma Jane Hoad was buried in the churchyard at St. John the Baptist Church in April 1921.   Sometimes I find that truth is stranger than fiction.  On other occasions I have discovered that the truth over the years in Findon gets distorted and it is difficult to know where the truth ends and fiction starts.

Tony Goble was living in Guildford in Surrey when he wrote to me.  It was Tony and his sister Aileen who first brought the following story to my notice in August 1996 and I have sat on it until now in the hopes that more information would come to light.

Their mother was a cook at Muntham Court in Findon years ago, but “not for very long” Tony says.  Their great uncle was a plough-boy at North Farm and their Great Aunt Em was a spinster and the housekeeper for the artist Edwin Douglas and witnessed his will as Emma Jane Hoad.

After the artist's death, his home, Fox Down in Findon, was sold to enable the beneficiaries in his will to receive their various legacies.  Great Aunt Em was then employed by Edwin's daughter, Margot, as her housekeeper in her new home built by her brothers, James Sholto and Edwin Ronald.  This was in Honeysuckle Lane at High Salvington and called “The Cottage”.

The story goes that during a trip overseas, Margot fell in love with a hut.  Not just any hut but a game-warden's hut in East Africa.  She promptly had it shipped home and erected near The Cottage.  Tony Goble's sister, Aileen, who knew Margot personally, recalls that the hut was sited in a field near the house and there was a wire fence around it.  It was nothing much to look at and Tony says that some of the local people wondered if it was worth the cost of transportation all the way back to England.

I have not been able to clarify the date when Margot visited the African continent,  but I notice from an interior photograph of Fox Down, there is a lion skin rug and also a tiger skin laying on the floor, which may, or may not, bear witness to expeditions made abroad.  Perhaps I am clutching at straws.

The next part of the tale is even stranger.  Tony has said that one day in 1921, a bloodsucking tsetse fly emerged from the timbers of the said African hut.  After buzzing around, the parasite landed to feed on the 60 year old housekeeper who soon after complained of a headache and drowsiness and took to her bed. 

Margot then (for reasons unknown) transferred her housekeeper to her friend, George Churchill’s house.  This was Hook Lyn, in Findon’s High Street.  George Churchill was the village shoe and bootmaker (a busy business in those days) and Tony described the Churchills' relationship with Margot as “closer than tradesperson and client”. 

He says that his late mother cycled to Hook Lyn from their home at 60 Howard Street in Worthing to nurse Great Aunt Em during her illness.  Tony's sister, Aileen remembers on one occasion being near the pond on Nepcote Green and picking wild raspberries and being warned by a lad “You mustn’t pick they, they’s belong to Colonel Thynne”.  (Colonel Thynne owned Muntham Court at that time).

Great Aunt Em died in the presence of George Churchill the boot shop owner on Tuesday 24th April 1921.  Tony says his mother recalled that three doctors arrived and an autopsy was conducted and Great Aunt Em’s brain was removed and taken away to London for research.   After this gruesome brain extraction was carried out above the boot shop, she recalled that the medical men stitched up the corpse and left an unsightly ridge across the forehead.  She told Tony that this eerily moved when touched.  The scene in the bedroom with one or two ladies bending over the corpse leaves little to the imagination!

The death certificate, signed by William Fulton M.B., and dated two days after the death (26th April, 1921), a copy of which I have, states the cause of death to be Encephalitis Lethargica ¾ inflammation of the brain.   This form of encephalitis reached epidemic proportions shortly after the First World War and was marked by headache and drowsiness, progressing to coma (hence its popular name ¾ sleepy   sickness).  Unless there was a big cover up, it appears that Great Aunt Em did not die from Trypanosomiasis ¾ African Sleeping Sickness caused by the presence of the parasitic tsetse fly after hatching from Margot’s hut.

Great Aunt Em was buried at the south east side of the churchyard of St. John the Baptist Church and a memorial tablet was erected on the spot.

According to Tony, orders were given for the offending hut on the Downs to be burned and the whole story was hushed up from then on.

Continue if you would like to read Take Some Sloes and a Bottle of Gin.

This is Findon — www.findonvillage.com is a continually growing record created by Valerie Martin exclusively for documenting life in Findon.