THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE ― These Findon Chronicles are created by Valerie Martin and are progressively growing to be the only record of life around Findon, West Sussex, England.  Everyday stories about real people..... in fact, a potted history of the village.  The topics today, are the history of tomorrow.

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 commences.

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 2002 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 signing herself 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 for her 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.    Not with a man but with a hut.  Not just any old hut but a game-warden's hut in East Africa.  It is reputed that 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.   From all accounts, 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 Sussex.

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.   With the distance of time clarification is now difficult.  

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

Margot then (for reasons now lost in the mists of time) bustled Great Aunt Em off to her friend, George Churchill’s house.  This was a property named 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”.      Any story I have run across concerning George Church has some odd content.    More of this Findon bootmaker can be read in my article entitled The Mystery of the Bootmaker's Death

Tony relates that his late mother cycled to Hook Lyn all the way from their home at 60 Howard Street in Worthing to nurse Great Aunt Em during her grave 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 confirms that his mother recalled that three doctors subsequently arrived and an autopsy was conducted on the spot.  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 leaving an unsightly ridge across the forehead.  She told Tony that this crease eerily moved when touched.  The scene in the bedroom with one or two ladies bending over the corpse experimenting with the stitching 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).   It would be interesting to have sight of the written results of the autopsy... that is if there were any that have not been destroyed.    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 by someone unknown for the offending hut on the Downs to be burned to the ground and the whole story was hushed up from then on.

If you would like to learn how to make Findon Sloe Gin Liqueur, click on Take Some Sloes and a Bottle of Gin