William Wheeler Yelf - One Man's Downfall - Part 1

Anyone interested in researching the Yelf family history will at some point or another hope to obtain a copy of "Printers Pride 1816 - 1966" by A.N. Daish. This tells the story of Yelf & Son Printers at Newport, Isle of Wight. It's a good read too, although some of the early family history is a little bit suspect (the author confuses several Robert Yelf's, which is easily done, and also latches on to some incorrect family legends such as the Dutch connection). Of course the sections we can treat with a great deal more respect are those dealing directly with the dynasty of printers themselves. Except, it seems, where there might be a whiff of scandal in the air...

When I first read the book many years ago the following passage concerning the second and third generation of Yelf owners had nothing in it to suggest that anything out of the ordinary

The business plate of William Wheeler Yelf, son of the first William, remains in place today on the front door of Number 15 Holyrood Street. The second W is overstamped with an R recording the succession of William Richard to the business in 1856 on the death of his father. Although William Richard may not have been able to afford a completely new business plate (or was he possessed of a keener sense of historical values?) he appears to have prospered since by the 1880's he was using the imprint Isle of Wight Steam Printing Works

Pretty innocuous really, and not much to raise the suspicion of anything wrong. However the succession from William to Richard took place following William Wheeler's death in a London prison whilst awaiting deportation! The 'keener sense of historical values' takes on a slightly different connotation in this light and suggets to me that the author might well have had some inkling of the traumatic events that rocked the business at this time, although it is now impossible to know for sure. Certainly writing in the '60's he would probably not have had such easy access to the records that we of the internet age enjoy so let's give him the benefit of the doubt.

So who exactly was William Wheeler Yelf? Well, he was born in about 1801, the son of William Yelf who founded the printing business in Newport, Isle of Wight. He married Elizabeth Jane Outridge and they in turn had six children - William, Harold, Elizabeth, Agnes, Gertrude and Clara. Although his main business lay with the printing, he had other interests, as a look through the trade directories of the time shows

Piggots Directory 1831 - Newport Isle of Wight
Savings Bank - Guidhall (open every Monday morning from nine till ten) Wm Yelf, Secretary
Bookbinders - Yelf William W. Holyrood St.
Fire & Office Agent - London Union William W. Yelf Holyrood Street
Printer - William W. Yelf Holyrood Street
Misc. - Willington & Yelf Law Stationers and Stamp distributors, Holyrood Street

The Yelfs were also staunch followers of the Wesleyan movement and the first William Yelf founded the Wesleyan Methodist Sunday School in 1810. In 1816 William Wheeler Yelf became a teacher there and eventually became a superintendent between 1826 to 1839. Not surprisingly he also seems to have attracted more than his fair share of religious printing jobs! William Wheeler was also secretary of the Blue School, a girl's charity school in Newport, subscriber to the relief of the poor and prominent in the list of charitable donations. All in all he seems to have been a respected, religious and successful businessman. In fact as Daish notes

It may be suggested from his prompt payments that W. W. Yelf had a sound business awareness

Sadly that image wasn't to remain untarnished for long as his 'business awareness' was found not only to be sound, but unscrupulous as well!

To be continued

Yelf Family - Publicans!

This post consist of a couple of items from 'Yelf's Taps', Ryde on the Isle of Wight. The first of these consists of some beer bottles that I shamelessly requested when I visited about 20 years ago. I had seen 'Yelf's Taps' in about 1984 and was fascinated by what was obviously a pub that hadn't been touched since the second world war. Trying to get into it was a bit of an adventure as the entrance led on to several corridors that eventually led me to a 'snug' with a coal fire and the walls covered with badges donated by all the units that had passed through Ryde, presumably on their way to Normandy and beyond. By the time I re-visited a few years later this seemed to have been swept away and a new downstairs bar was up and running. This bar had the legend of the two Dutch Yelf brothers and a secret tunnel supposedly joining the Hotel and the Pub! Anyway, I was lucky enough to be given a couple of the old beer bottles that were behind the bar that were embossed with the Yelf name. Very nice mementos they were too!
The second item is one that turned up on ebay recently, but which I wasn't quick enough off the mark to nab. This was a beer-mat that must have graced one of the tables in Yelf's Taps at some point before somehow ending up on ebay for avid beer-mat collectors to fight over. Still, I was able to grab the photo which was a bonus I suppose...
I'll be updating this entry if I come across any more brewery related items in the future.

The One That Got Away – Robert Edward Burnet Yelf

Medals seem to be a re-occurring theme at the moment as does Ebay, and it was interesting that the two came together over the weekend. I had been alerted to the fact that a WW1 medal and ribbon was up for sale engraved with the name of Lieut. R. E. B. Yelf. I had a look and already there was a bid for £5, just to get the ball rolling. The bidder seemed to be a medal collector so I was confident that I would be willing to go the extra to obtain it and I decided to leave it for a day or two as the auction had only just begun. The next day there was a new leader and then a third a couple of days after that. Judging by their recent purchases all three seemed to be either collectors or dealers and as I would be prone to forget to bid I decided to put in a maximum reserve of £25. This type of medal seemed to go for about £20 so I hoped that should be enough. Then I had an email from my brother telling me that I was bidding against him… Ooops! Anyway he crashed out at £16 so I hoped that would be that.

Sadly on Sunday and just before the end of the auction a new bidder took the price up to £25. I took it up a bit further – and so did they… In fact the bidding war finally went up to about £80 before I thought ‘enough is enough’ and sadly backed out, loosing the medal.

I then contacted the vendor and asked them if it was at all possible for them to send me some photos of the medal before they sent it off to the new owner. They very kindly replied, sending me some pictures and remarked that they were amazed that the medal went for so much – I guess I was unlucky in getting a competitor who hated to loose at auctions!

As you can see the photos are of very high definition and show up the detailing really well. Robert Edward Burnet Yelf was in the Royal Army Medical Corps and was a surgeon aboard the Hospital Ship HS Valdiva which was present at Gallipoli, so maybe the collector had a special interest in this campaign. Ah well, guess I’ll never know but it was interesting to get so close. Better luck next time!

The Cheques of Robert Yelf Jnr (1797 -1882)

Last year my brother was fortunate to spot someone on e-bay selling a cheque issued by Robert Yelf in 1838. After successfully winning the auction he was talking to the previous owner about where they had acquired it and found that it was part of a stash that had been dumped when Kirkpatricks Bank (or rather it's eventual successor) was having a clear out. As it happened they had a few more and would my brother be interested? As a result my brother bought a handful of very well preserved documents, all apparently from around 1838, which show that Robert Yelf was regularly dealing with considerable sums of money. I believe that this particular Yelf was Robert Yelf Jnr (1797-1882) and were in relation to his businesses, notably in the Wine Trade. I have scanned the twelve cheques and include images below with basic information beside them. I'm not to good at deciphering the copper-plate writing so if you are interested I would suggest you CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO SEE A CLOSER VIEW. Maybe you'll have better eyesight than I do! I seems that Kirkpatricks were a Newport Bank and would be interested to discover if any of the payees are known, either as local big-wigs in the business world or as tax collectors (at least one mentions payment of tax)
Cheque 1 - August 30th 1838 Mr Gordon Knight £41- 17-6d
Cheque 2 - October 25th 1838 Pay J. Chippes or bearer the sum of £123-11-0
Cheque 3 - December 13th 1838 'A bill at ten days after the date payable to Mr/s? Rogers to the order of Messrs George Hathorn for £60'
Cheque 4 - January 18th 1838 Payments to several individuals - Geo Ridell or Riddett £32-15-6d, Edn Harrington £14-14-6d, J. Dempster £22, Waldo Silthorp £25 and cash £25. Also a bill after that dat to J G Ramsay for £51-0-09d
Cheque 5 - May 5th 1838 Pay Robert Baker for assorted? taxes £46-16-11d
Cheque 6 - 23rd June 1838 Southampton. Mr Robert Yelf Wine Merchant (payee indecipherable by myself, but might be ??? of the exchequer) £2-1-0. Cheque is also crossed but I can't read that either.Cheque 7 - September 13th 1838 Mr J. King or bearer £99-2-0d (interesting note that might say 'West Dean Solicitors' but obviously doesn't. The cheques is also crossed with the name of ' Something Hector'. Any ideas?)
Cheque 8 - August 28th 1838 Mr Robinson or bearer £7-3-6dCheque 9 - November 30th 1838 Gordon Knight £42-6-0d
Cheque 10 - Undated Jos. Prestwich £69-8-0d (check name for spelling)

Cheque 11 - December 13th 1838 Self or Bearer £100


Cheque 12 and 12a - June 30th 1838 Mr Evans £21-15-3d ( the obverse side mentions Mr Evans and Southampton but is very difficult to read.

Yelf's Hotel

You might overlook any obvious Yelf connection in this postcard but if you click on the photo to increase the size you might be able to make out the legend 'Yelf's Hotel' on the front of the barrow being pushed up the hill. The Hotel itself would be on the left of the picture as we look at it and I would assume that the two porters are returning after having dropped luggage off at Ryde Pier in the background. There was a regular steamer between Ryde and Southampton which put Yelf's Hotel in an ideal position to capitalise on the booming holiday trade. It looks as though the pavements are covered in snow but being hand-tinted it's a little difficult to tell!

Frederick Yelf and the Imperial Yeomanry

This particular piece of research was triggered by one of my periodic googlings of the name YELF. A chance search had revealed a new reference to a site that seemed to consist of names of soldiers, including one referring to Frederick Yelf. This site was owned by Kevin Asplin and seemed to focus on the IY (whatever that was…) However, of more immediate interest was the entry for ‘Yelf, Frederick 4673, Trooper 41st Coy., 12th Bn. I.Y.’

Now I have a couple of Frederick Yelfs on the file, in fact recent articles have dealt with Freddie Yelf and Frederick Steane Yelf, but I wasn’t aware of any regular army service from any of them, so at first I was rather intrigued as to what sort of dates I was looking at in this particular instance. Trooper meant he was in a cavalry regiment, but the initials IY didn’t ring any obvious bells. Looking at the rest of the site though, especially the home page and it was soon obvious that IY stood for Imperial Yeomanry, units of mounted infantry that served during the Boer War in South Africa from about 1899 to 1908. They were disbanded soon after the conclusion of that particular war so their history was a short, although fascinating one.

I was able to do some background reading on the Imperial Yeomanry on Wikipedia and other specialist sites and found out that they were initially a response to the obvious lack of mounted, mobile infantry required to campaign across the veldt of South Africa. The British government turned to the local units of Cavalry Yeomanry, a sort of 19^th century Territorial or part-time local militia, as a means of raising troops quickly. These Yeomanry units had tended to attract the reasonably well-off sons of the middle-class who had undergone some basic military training and turned out for shooting competitions and parades. In the heady atmosphere of patriotic fervour large numbers volunteered for service in South Africa but their terms and conditions of service were not the same as their regular army compatriots. In the first place they only signed on for a year and in the second place they supplied both their own horse and their own uniform! No doubt they hoped that a year would be enough to see off the Boers, serve the Queen and have a bit of an adventure at the same time and they signed up in large numbers.

The different Companies of the Imperial Yeomanry were drawn from specific Yeomanry regiments. The 41^st Company of the 12^th Battalion Imperial Yeomanry, Frederick’s company, were drawn from the Hampshire Carabiniers (a carbine being a shortened musket for use by mounted troops) and they seem to have been based in Southampton, but who no doubt had sections over the rest of the county as well). As it turned out, the Frederick in question was Frederick Yelf, son of Richard Yelf, wine-merchant of Sandown, Isle of Wight. Frederick was born in Brading in 1878 and was 22 years and 9 months old when he signed his short–term Attestation papers in Newport on 8^th January 1900. This document is preserved in the National Archive Office along with those of Frederick’s colleagues, and gives information about Frederick at the beginning and end, of his service. From the document we know that Frederick was 5’8” tall and weighed 144lbs, of fair complexion with blue eyes and brown hair and was declared fit for service by Lt. Col. Will Woods following his successful medical. The attestation documents broke Frederick’s service down into three sections; 24 days in England, 1 year 23 days in South Africa and a further 36 days back in England before his final discharge on 31-3-1901. His conduct over this period was described as ‘very good’ and his campaigns were recorded as ‘S. Africa, Senekal, Biddulphsberg’

I spent some time looking up these campaigns and found a very informative and descriptive set of accounts of the battle of Biddulphsberg as well as another showing the battlefield as it is today (complete with Boer anthem!). It is impossible to know what experiences Frederick had in the campaign but the note of his medals and clasps on the Attestation papers – namely the Queens South African medal and four clasps (the bars with names on attached to the ribbon) pinpoint exactly when and where he served. The following information is taken from the North-East Medals website where I was able to find out just what these clasps refer to. Frederick’s four clasps consisted one campaign clasp, two regional clasps and one date clasp, namely;

Wittebergen : All troops who were inside a line drawn from Harrismith to Bethlehem, thence to Senekal and Clocolan, along the Basuto border, and back to Harrismith, between lst and 29th July, 1900, both dates inclusive.
Cape Colony : All troops in Cape Colony at any time between 11th October, 1899, and 31st May, 1902, inclusive, who had not received a clasp for a specific action in the Cape Colony, or the " Natal " clasp.
Orange Free State : All troops in Orange River Colony at any time between 28th February, 1900 and 31st May, 1902, inclusive who had not received a clasp for a specific action in the Orange River Colony.
South Africa 1901 : All troops who served in South Africa between 1st January, 1901, and 31st December, 1901, both dates inclusive, who were not eligible for the King's South Africa Medal.

By all accounts the Boer’s choice of guerrilla tactics left many of the Imperial Yeomanry with only routine and boredom for much of the time and when their time was up they either applied for release or a transfer to the more exciting life of a mounted policeman. Frederick seems to have preferred to return to his life in the wine-trade and his documentation notes that he was

“Discharged at his own request from further service in connection with the War in South Africa”

He was finally paid-off on the 31-03-1901 having attained the rank of corporal after one year and eighty-three days of service. Fredericks’s South African adventure was over, but the war was to drag on for a further eight years.

Yelf Service Medals from the First World War

(Picture shows the 1914 Star, British War medal and the Victory medal)

There were a number of Yelfs who served in the forces during the First World War, including a number of Canadians, one of whom was killed. These however are the service medals awarded to those serving in the British forces. The abbreviations are as recorded.

YELF Alfred Robert
Labour Corps - 2^nd Lt. / Capt.
Victory Star, British War Medal and Emblems

YELF Francis William
D of Cum.L.I. - 2 Lt./Capt.
Victory Star, British War Medal France

YELF Norman
6^th Lond. Rifles
Victory Star, British War Medal, 1914-1915 Star France
No. 1320320115

YELF Robert Herve
L.N.Lan.R. - 2Lt./Lieut.
Victory Star, British War Medal, 1914 Star France

YELF A.L.
6^th London Rifles - C.S.Maj.
Victory Star, British War Medal, 1914-1915 Star
(also D.C.M.) France

YELF Frederick C.
Hampshire Rgt. / M. G. C. - Cpl.
Victory Star, British War Medal, 1914 Star

YELF Jack Robert
R.E./ Comm. & Staff - Lieut./Capt./Maj./Lt. Col.
Victory Star, British War Medal/1914-1915 Star

YELF Robert H.
Northn. R./ Y. and L. R. - Pte.
Victory Star, British War Medal Killed 1916

YELF Albert V.
Hampshire Regt. / M.G.C.* - Pte.
British War Medal

(*IND. GS.A?GN. NWFF. 1919 [Roll 17917-183])

YELF Geo. Henry
R.D.C. - Lieut

YELF Robert Edward Burnet
R.A.M.C. - Lieut
Victory Star, British War Medal H.S. Valdivia

(Valdivia was a hospital ship present at Gallipoli, amongst other places)