Alfred Campbell, tour guide
Alfred Campbell, tour guide
Alfred Campbell was a very popular tour guide during the 19th century, accompanying holidaymakers' excursions on horse-drawn charabancs
Early history
Alfred Campbell (also known as 'Campbell the Guide') was born in 1840 in Manchester, England, to a Scottish father, James. James married Eliza Norton and they had two children: Alfred and a younger daughter, Mary Ann, who was born in 1844. Eliza died in 1849, and James remarried to a Jane whose surname remains unknown. [1]
Sometime between 1851 and 1860 James and Alfred moved to East London, but without Jane. James began as a 'cotton spinner' before becoming a 'calico printer', but both he and Alfred were also musicians. Several newspaper references exist for Alfred's performances, both in London and Jersey. James died in July 1860, and Alfred married Eliza Jane Hulme the following November. Of their five children born while living in London, the first two died young, leaving Annie, Katie and Ada surviving.
Jersey years
In about 1875-76 Alfred and Eliza moved to Jersey, possibly to escape the squalor of East London at that time. It is not clear whether Katie ever came to Jersey, as she was still in London in 1881, and eventually married there. Alfred and Eliza had another five children in Jersey, but both Annie and Maud also died young there.
Alfred was a Freemason in Jersey: Yarborough Lodge, No 244. He was initiated on 7 June 1875, passed on 5 July 1875, and raised on 2 August 1875, aged 35. His address at that time was 17 Garden Lane, occupation Musician. The lodge closed in October 1890 and there is no further record of his membership.
Alfred and Eliza's youngest children, Ernest and Clifford, were admitted to Haut de la Garenne home for boys on 1 July 1890, and discharged on 6 January 1894. From the headmaster's diaries: “Father was a guide in Jersey for many years and kept a tobacconist shop in New Street. Deserted his wife and children. Boys had been sent to National School and have a very good character”. Also from those diaries, Clifford lost two fingers while playing with turnip cutter in the stable. On discharge, Ernest stayed with his mother, and Clifford was elected to the Royal Freemasons School, London.
Alfred died on 18 July 1892 at the Union Workhouse, St Austell, Cornwall, having been admitted from St Austell. He is remembered on the gravestone of the family plot at Mont à l'Abbé, Jersey.
Ernest left Jersey to go to Ireland in about 1904. In 1910 he married Margaret Crowley, while he was working as a waiter at the Imperial Hotel, Cork.
Eliza died on 17 January 1909 aged 64 at 10 York St, St Helier. [2]
Clifford left to become a hotel waiter at the White Hart Hotel, Bromley, Kent. He married Rose Pitt there in 1911. She died in 1916 aged only 23. Clifford also died young, in 1921, aged 36, and their only daughter, Dorothy, was sent to Jersey to be raised by her two aunts: Ada and Edith.
Ada married Charles Philip Fauvel of the 18th Royal Hussars (Queen Mary's Own) on 11 October 1916 at the Office of the Superintendent Registrar, St Helier.
Dorothy married into the Langlois family on Jersey in 1933, leaving the only remaining Campbell line in Cork, Ireland.
