WELLS, CUTHBERT ERNEST
"Bert" was my maternal grandfather.
He married Annie Crawford.
They had two children, Hugh, my uncle and Pamela Mary, my mother.
His parents were Ernest William Wells (See his own section) and Mary Ness. His siblings were Mont (Montague) H Well and Ernestine May Wells (known as Nesta).
We understand that he qualified as an electrical engineer in England. He lost a hand which is believed to be from an electrical accident.
We do not know what attracted him to South Africa. His father Ernest had lived there and had a succesful chemist business in Grahamstown, but Cuthbert was born in 1881 (?) in Norfolk.
There is a record on the outward bound passenger lists (1890 - 1960) of Cuthbert Wells departing London for the Cape in 1910 and again in 1921.
The South African government was keen to attract skills from the UK and he was probably one of many who were attracted in this way. He found employment in Natal and we understand had a small holding for a while. It was at this time that he met and married Annie Crawford and the children were born.
It was also during this period that he became a police reservist. He wore either a heavy prosethetic glove hand or a hook. When we were young we heard stories of how he shocked the local kids on the farms that he visited when he shook his hook at them.
The picture below shows him fitted out in police reservist uniform armed with his moustache, cigar, knife in his belt, hook and revolver. He looks quite wild. We had better explain.
The photo is labelled :
“Father (C.E.) Wells – Tati Concessions – 190?”. On the back it reads, presumably by Cuthbert himself, “On this day Sam had a fit. I managed to get him while at his worst”.
enacademic.com tells us :
The Tati Concessions Land was a concession created in the borderlands of the Matabele kingdom and the Bechuanaland Protectorate. The concession was originally made by the Matabele King to Sir John Swinburne. It was administered from the Bechuanaland Protectorate after 1893, but after 1911 was formally annexed to it. It was locally administered by a Justice of the Peace. The chief town of this region is Francistown, now one of Botswana's major settlements.
CHRONOLOGY ::* 1864: Gold is discovered in Tati River area, then part of the Matabele kingdom. :* 1872: Concession granted to Sir John Swinburne (b. 1831 - d. 1914), he later acquires most other concessions. :* 1893: Tati Land detached from Matabeleland and placed under the jurisdiction of the British Resident Commissioner of the Bechuanaland Protectorate. :* January 21,1911: Annexed to Bechuanaland (now Botswana) via the "Tati Concessions Land Act", with a special agreement to preserve rights of access for Rhodesian Railways (now the National Railways of Zimbabwe).
The Tati Concessions, Limited was formed by Swinburne and given the right by the British Government to isssue its own Revenue Stamps in the 1890s for use on legal instruments.
I still have that hook See below. And I remember my parents handing in that revolver to a perplexed policeman at a local police station.
I remember my grandfather, "Da", driving us around. Perhaps my memories are embellilshed with time, but I have a memory of him driving us around the block when we were pre-teens, sitting astride the curved mudguards of his blue car and clinging onto the bulbous lamps. Do our memories change? Or did this really happen? I can't imagine us getting away with it these days.
Years later we went to a local am-dram performance of Peter Pan with a young friend of our daughters in the starring role (actually everything went awry when his flying scene support rope got jammed in mid flight) but our girls were to get great kudos when they were to later show him a "real" Captain Hook hook.
Da was to spend his later days bed-ridden or in a heavy wooden chair that he had made himself. By this time we all lived in Pembroke Place in Nahoon in East London.
One day a large leguaan (monitor lizard) wandered in. The maid disturbed it and it scuttled up the chimney. Attempts by the local zoo manager to oust it only made it sick on my father's desk after which it simply went back up. But one day it had had enough and wandered down the passage. The maid again disturbed it and it wandered into Da's bedroom. She had the presence of mind to try to chase it out, but ti hid in the built-in cupboard. Da spent the day with a leguaan in his cupboard until the zoo staff returned and bundled it up in a blanket and off to the zoo where it spent the rest of its days.
Annie Wells (nee Crawford)
More on her is available under her own section.
We know that she came to South Africa and met Cuthbert here, very likely through their shared religion of Christian Science. He became better known as Bert and she as Annie or Pat (a reference to her Irish origins).
My grandparents, Bert / Da and Annie / Nana all dressed up. Note his heavy prosthetic glove hand.
Travel to and from England was always by ship. South Africa was well served by the Union Castle mail ships which combined some cargo with passengers. I do not know the ocassion, (it may have been a local trip up the coast), but my mother and I have come to see them off. And of course my nanny came too. She was known as Tiny. I spent much of my early youth tied in a blanket to her back.
Death Notice :
Wells, Cuthbert Ernest. 1 Pembroke Place, Nahoon Mouth, East London, Cape Province, South Africa. Electrical Engineer. 11th November 1963.
