The Story of the Cribbs

By Julian Cribb

Background

The following is a brief account of the direct male lineage of our branch of the Cribb family of
Australia, from their traceable origins in Dorset, England, through London, Yorkshire and Western
Australia. It is intended to be read in conjunction with the family tree CRIBB1 on www.Ancestry.com

at https://www.ancestry.com.au/family-tree/tree/85204788/family?usePUBJs=true

which contains the documentary and photographic evidence for the facts which follow, as well as
the genealogy on the female side of the line. An extensive digital file of documents, photographs and
records exists for family members.

The name Cribb

There are two main theories about the surname Cribb. The first is that it is derived from the Latin
word for curly-haired (crispus) and thus arrived in Britain with either the Romans or the Normans.
Other versions are Cripps, le Crespe, Crippen etc and appear in various old records dating from the
11th Century.

The second, and more likely in the case of our family, is that it is Saxon in origin and comes from the
Old English word for a manger or ox stall, a crib, in which cattle where kept, often in the same
building as their owners. Hence, like many English surnames (eg. smith, fletcher, baker, coward,
shepherd, cooper etc), it describes the occupation of the owner. In this interpretation, the Cribbs
were originally cattle keepers, like most inhabitants of low-lying southern England back to the
Bronze Age.

The most famous person to bear the name is probably Tom Cribb, world heavyweight bare-knuckle
boxing champion of the 1800s, who came from Bristol but has no identifiable connection with our
branch.

Genetic origins

My own DNA (half of

which is Cribb) reveals
the following makeup:

31% England
31% Ireland and Scotland
22% Scandinavia
6% Western Europe (4%
Spain)
2% East Europe
2% Finland/West Russia.
1% South
Europe/Caucasus

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Dorset Origins

The earliest known origins of our branch of the Cribb family are from the town of Wareham near
Poole in Dorset, England, which in mediaeval times was a thriving seaport until its river estuary silted
up. From 1600 onward many Cribbs are recorded as being baptised, married and buried in the
Wareham area, notably at the Holy Trinity Church and Old Meeting House.

Lying between two rivers, The Piddle (or Trent) to the north and the Frome to the south, Wareham
was strategically important as a Channel port from very early times. Archaeological finds from
excavations under the town’s walls show settlement on the site during the Iron Age and Romano-
British periods, though it is the Saxons who first establish Wareham as a town (or ‘burh’). Before
this, it was a stronghold resisting the Saxon invasions for two and a half centuries after the Romans
departed.

Sometime in the 8th century the victorious Saxons claimed the site and fortified it with an earthen
wall on the north, west and east sides (the south being protected by the Frome River). The name
Wareham comes from the Saxon word weir (a small dam or river barrage) and hamm (or home).
Converted to Christianity, its citizens made their burh a centre of the British faith, having links with
the church in Gaul. St Aldhelm, later Bishop of Sherborne, visited Wareham to unify the Roman and
Celtic Christian traditions.

Following the Conquest, the Normans made Wareham Priory a Benedictine cell of Lire Abbey, and
undertook extensive rebuilding in stone around 1100, including strengthening the town’s walls and
building a motte and bailey castle. The castle was raided by the army of King Stephen, an event
which caused Wareham to be caught in the long civil war between the king and the Empress Matilda
who, as daughter to Henry 1, had a better claim to the throne and whom the town supported.
Stephen lost the stronghold to Mathilda’s ally, Robert of Gloucester, who installed Prince Henry
(later Henry II) there until he left for France in 1146, but the conflict pushed Wareham into economic
recession from its position of growing prosperity. The slump was compounded by the gradual silting
up of the harbour, on which the town’s trade depended.

The Holy Trinity Church, where several Cribbs were baptised, married and buried, still stands close to
the South Bridge over the Frome. The Church is no longer a place of worship and has been used as
an information centre and a coffee shop. Before the Norman Conquest there was a chapel to St.
Andrew on the site.

Wareham’s parish church of Lady St.Mary features St. Edward’s Chapel of about 1100, said to have
been his resting place before removal of his body to Shaftesbury. In the north aisle reposes a Nordic-
style stone sarcophagus hinting at the presence of a church on this site as early as 700 as well as
possible occupation by the Vikings i at about the time they were conquering Normandy. The broad,
windowed chancel and the Becket Chapel however, are early 14th century, and the tower was added
about 1500. Lady St. Mary was once attached to the Priory.

The Priory was built on the east side of Frome Quay (later Wareham’s trading heart) and may have
succeeded a convent on the site. It became a Benedictine house in Norman times. In 1414 the Priory
was taken over by a cell of Carthusian Monks of Sheen, who held it until the dissolution of the
monasteries by Henry VIII in 1536. Today the oldest part of the Priory is Elizabethan, and lies
between St. Mary’s and the Frome.

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The economic diversity of Wareham in the medieval period is reflected especially in the north west
quarter, where there is a Cow Lane, Roper’s Lane, Tinker’s Lane and Mill Lane, which runs up to the
north wall above the Mill House. This mill was powered by the Piddle, upon which sluices were also
constructed to control the irrigation of the water meadows. Comfortable town houses and inns were
built on the main streets, intermixed with many poorer dwellings. Butchers shambles and charnel
houses were crowded on the wider streets near the Cross.

During the Civil War (1642-51) the town’s fortunes again fluctuated widely. The Parliamentarian
commander, Sir Anthony Ashley-Cooper, wanted Wareham razed to the ground to prevent it falling
into the hands of the Royalists. The town started the war as a Royalist stronghold but then was
captured by Cromwell twice and re-captured by the Royalists twice. Parliament ordered the town
walls to be slighted (lowered) to half their original height.

The involvement of the Cribbs in the Civil War is not known, but as nonconformists (ie Puritans) it is
likely their religious sympathies lay with the Parliamentary cause – and as local traders and business
people they undoubtedly found the frequent armed invasions, plundering and economic hard times
mightily inconvenient. Following the Duke of Monmouth’s Rebellion in 1685, some of his followers
were hung, drawn and quartered on the part of the wall known as the Bloody Bank.

In 1703 Queen Anne conferred a charter upon Wareham, heralding a new-found Regency prosperity
won through the Purbeck Marble and stone trades, servicing Corfe Castle, and the wealth of the
merchants. One merchant in particular, Thomas Perkins, found Bestwall outside the town wall an
ideal location for the concealment of contraband from his smuggling operations. Cross-Channel
smuggling was a popular if illicit occupation and it was said that for every Wareham man in business
there was ‘one of independent means’.

Fire selectively destroyed some of the older buildings three times during the 18th century: in 1704,
1742 and in the Great Fire of 1762 when 133 buildings were reduced to ashes. The Kings Arms
survived but the Red Lion had to be rebuilt. After the last fire the roads were widened and the
houses rebuilt in brick and tile, although a few thatched buildings still mark the limit of the disaster.

The Town Hall stands on the site of a church once dedicated to St. Peter, built in 1321 but destroyed
in the 1762 fire. Six years later this was rebuilt as the Town Hall and Jail, and rebuilt again in 1870. It
is now the town’s museum and Tourist Information Centre.

The Old Meeting House, with

which the Cribbs were closely
associated, was built in 1662 as
a Congregationalist Chapel, and
then rebuilt after it was
destroyed in the Great Fire of
1762. This building stands today
and is still used for religious
purposes.

Between 1621 and 1827 many

Cribbs were baptised in
Wareham, especially at the Old
Meeting House and Holy Trinity
Church. http://www.cribb-
bmd.info/Dorset%20Baptisms.html

3
The map shows the town of Wareham and village of Stoborough, where the Cribbs resided and had
their businesses. The larger river, between them, is the Frome which runs into Poole harbour or the
‘Brownsea’. The South Road or South Causeway (B3705) runs to Corfe Castle and the Isle of Purbeck.
The village of Bere Regis lies to the northwest and the village of Steeple the southwest.

This aerial of the modern town shows the Church of the Holy Trinity, where several Cribbs are
buried, (arrowed bottom left), the Frome River and Old Granary (possible location of Phillip Cribb’s
mill), the South Bridge and causeway leading to Stoborough (bottom right) where the Cribbs lived.
The Old Meeting House (arrowed) is on Church street at the top left of the picture.

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William Cribb d 1697
William is the earliest known ancestor of our branch
of the Cribbs. He lived and died in Stoborough ii,
Dorset in 1697 leaving a detailed will bequeathing his
possessions to his children. William was a clothier – a
retailer of garments, hats and shoes. He may have
been married to Ann Parmiter, and was in business
with her brother Nicholas. As his will shows, he was
modestly well-off man and had probably already
gifted the clothing business to his oldest son Phillip,
(as was customary at the time), before making his
will, and left only a token 1 shilling bequest to Phillip
and to his daughter Frances who was already married
to John Compton. The bulk of his wealth he left to his two youngest children, William and Richard,
fifty pounds each plus equal shares of his goods and chattels to all four children. The will was signed
and witnessed by Ann, Richard and Nicholas Parmiter, an indication of how close the two families
were at this time. The Parmiters come from Owermoigne in Dorset which is 16 kms from Wareham,
and have an extensive family tree which is well-documenting at this period. It is possible that this
Ann Parmiter is William’s sister, married to a Parmiter.

(William may possibly have been born in Martock, Somerset, which is 60 kms from Wareham, in
1652, as there is a baptismal record in the same name from this time – but it is by no means certain
the two were the same person. If they were, then his father was also William Cribb and his mother,
Thomasin. However, he would have had to have fathered his first child at 15...)

William states he is in good physical and mental health at the time the will is drafted – 17 June 1696
– but since the will was then ‘proved’ (executed) on 17 August 1697, it is probable he died between
May and July of 1697. The will reads:

In the name of God Amen. The seaventeenth day of June Anno Domini 1696 I William
Cribb the elder of Warham in the County of Dorsett Clothier Calling to mind the frayelty
and sudden change of man’s life being willing to settle & dispose my worldly Estate
wherewith God in his mercy hath blessed me now in my perfect health and strength of
body and mind beseeching God to direct me therein the best way that my Children and
Legatees herein after named after my decease may with love and peace quietly enjoy
theire severall parts & porcons respectively herein given & bequeathed unto them, I
therefore hereby revoking all former & other Wills & Testaments whatsoever by me
made Doe hereby make & ordaine this my Last Will & Testament in manner and form
following
First & principally I comitt my Soule into the hands of Almighty God my Creator And my
body to the Earth from whence it came to be buried in such decent manner as my
Executors hereinafter named shall thinke fitt & convenient
Item. I give & bequeath unto my Sonne Philipp Cribb one shilling
Item. I give & bequeath unto my Daughter Frances Compton the Wife of John
Compton of Stoburrough one shilling to be paid unto them severally within one moneth
next after my decease
Item. I give & bequeath unto my Sonne William Cribb the summe of fifty poundes of
good and lawfull money of England to be paid unto him within the span of [three]

5
moneths next after my decease
Item. I give & bequeath unto my Sonne Richard Cribb the summe of fifty poundes of
good and lawfull money of England to be paid unto him within the span of three
moneths next after my decease
Item. My Will and pleasure is and I doe hereby ordaine and appoint and hereby declare
and … the afore mencioned summes of money amounting in all to the summe of one
hundred poundes and two shillings given and hereby ordered to be paid to my severall
Legatees in manner & … shalbe fully to every & each of them paid according to the
severall Lymittacons & appoyntments … after my debts & Legacies shalbe paid and my
funeral expences shall be discharged that whatsoever moneyes goods or chattels
moveable & immoveable shalbe or remayne over & above the before mentioned severall
Legacies before mencioned given & bequeathed shall remayne & be to the use &
behoofes of my said fower Children Philipp Cribb Frances Compton William Cribb
and Richard Cribb and to be equally & evenly divided given and delivered unto them
to every & each of them theire just & equall part & pporcon within the span of three
moneths next after my decease by my Overseers & friends in Trust herein after named
Which said Philipp Cribb Frances Compton William Cribb & Richard Cribb my said
fower Children I doe hereby make & ordaine constitute & appoint to be joint & co-
Executors of this my last Will & Testament
And I doe hereby desire nominate & appoint my Brother in Law Mr Nicholas Parmiter
and John Cribb to be Overseers & friends in Trust of this my last Will & Testament
desireing them to be ayding & assisting my said Executors in the just & due performance
thereof And for theire care & paines therein to be taken I give to each of them one
shilling
And in witness that this is my last Will & Testament I the said William Cribb the elder
have hereunto sett my hand & seale the day & yeare first above Written.
William Cribb
Signed sealed published & declared to be the last Will & Testament of the said William
Cribb the elder in the presence of
Ann Parmitor
Richard Parmiter
Nicholas Parmiter
August 17th 1697 Phillip Cribb, Frances Cribb [sic] and William Cribb were sworn
before Benjamin Derby, Surrogate, with the like power reserved to Richard Cribb

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Phillip Cribb 1670-1751
Phillip Cribb was born in Poole, Dorset, close to
Wareham in 1670 and, as the oldest son, carried on
his father’s successful clothing and hat retail business
from the late 1690s. In November 1686 he married
Elizabeth Battrick who came from Bere Regis, a little
village eight miles to the northwest of Wareham,
when he was just 16 years old and she was 17. They
had three sons, Robert, William and Phillip.

Phillip is described as a ’rigid nonconformist’ – a protestant who did not conform to the rules and
teachings of the established Church of England. With his younger brother William (the baker and
Mayor) he was a prominent member of the Old Meeting House, Wareham (above), built in 1662 and
rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1762 and which still stands in Church Street to this day.

Nonconformists were also known as dissenters or congregationalists, and their beliefs gave rise to
the Presbyterian, Methodist, Quaker, Baptist, Unitarian and Salvation Army movements, among
others. Nonconformism grew out of the Puritan movement during the English Civil War, and took it
in fresh directions. Their beliefs were influenced by a strong moral code, rather than by Church rules.
They were also known as ‘freethinkers’ for the freedom with which they explored and debated
religious ideas in their meetings, which could at times turn heated and result in schisms such as the
one which divided the Old Meeting House in the mid-C18th.

In July 1697 a deed is recorded between a Thomas Budden (of Bere Regis) and Philip Cribb of
Wareham for a fulling mill, at a yearly rent of 30 shillings. Fulling is the process of scouring (washing)
and milling (pounding) the cloth to remove natural oils and impurities and render it soft for use in
clothing. It is therefore quite consistent with his business as a clothing maker and retailer. A fulling
mill is a water-powered mill operating on an industrial scale instead of the centuries old and highly
laborious process of tramping the cloth by foot. This mill was probably located on the River Frome,
south of Wareham and north of Stoborough.

A grist (flour) mill on the ‘north side of the river’ is

also recorded as owned by Budden and Cribb and
suggesting his business interests were quite
diverse. This may have been on the site of the Old
Granary, Wareham (left), which was rebuilt after
the Great Fire of 1762.

Phillip’s brother William (1672-1751), who was

two years younger, was a baker by trade but rose
to prominence as an Alderman and held the
position of Mayor of the Borough of Wareham in
the years 1706, 1713, 1719, 1724 and 1729 (or 31). iii He appears to have remained a bachelor and
left money to all of Philip’s sons when he died in 1752, a year after his brother Philip. He was buried
at Holy Trinity (see below) on 7 January, 1752

Robert Cribb 1697-1768

7
Robert was the oldest son of Philip Cribb and was born in 1697 in Wareham, Dorset. He married
Sarah Zebedee on 26 May 1715 in Ringwood, Hampshire, when he was 17 and she was 22 years old.
The Zebedee family came from Fordingbridge, Hampshire. They had four children during their
marriage – Robert, Richard, Frances and William.

Robert was a beneficiary in the will of his uncle, William Cribb the Mayor: “Also I give unto Robert
CRIBB another son of my said Brother Philip CRIBB and to his Heirs for ever All that my Messuage or
Tenement and Garden with the Hereditaments and Appurtenances thereto belonging situate and
being on the East Side of a Lane called Church Lane in Wareham aforesaid which I purchased of
Walter PARMINTER. Also I give unto the said Robert CRIBB Son of my said Brother Philip CRIBB the
Sum of five pounds and I do moreover forgive him the said Robert CRIBB all such Sum or Sums of
Money as he shall owe to me on Bill Bond or otherwise at the time of my decease and I do hereby
will and direct that my Executor hereinafter named shall deliver up unto the said Robert CRIBB his
Heirs Executors and Administrators all such Bills Bonds and other Securitys as I shall have against him
at the time of my death cancelled within six Months after my decease without any reward it being
my Will that the same be hereby discharged.”

Robert died in January 1768 in his hometown at the age of 71, and his widow Sarah followed him
two years later. They were both buried in the graveyard of the Holy Trinity Church, Wareham (left),
which has now been built over.

8
Richard Cribb 1718-1774
Richard Cribb was Robert’s second son and was born in
Wareham, Dorset, in 1718. However, on becoming an adult he
decided to move to London where, in the family tradition of
other Cribbs before him, he became a baker. He married Abigail
Stock on June 25, 1740, at St And(rews), Holborn (right) in a
‘clandestine’ marriage when they were both 22.

Clandestine marriages were common among nonconformists at the time – they were a marriage
carried out at the family church with consent of both bride and groom, but without observing all the
restrictions then imposed by the Church of England, such as banns, an officiating priest and
witnesses.

Richard’s home is given as Fleet, the area around the river Fleet, in London, that gave its name to
Fleet Street and joins the Thames on its north bank at Blackfriars. In those days this was a
notoriously poor area, the Fleet being foul with waste iv, while poverty and disease were rife.
Alexander Pope vividly captures its horrors in the Dunciad:

“To where Fleet-ditch with disemboguing streams

Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames
The king of dykes! than whom no sluice of mud
with deeper sable blots the silver flood".

Life must have been a struggle for Richard and Abigail. However, they managed to successfully raise
eight children in 15 years, seven of whom survived them.

Richard died in 1774 at the age of 56 while Abigail outlived him by another 18 years in the village of
Leytonstone. She was buried in Bunhill Fields Burial Ground (below), City Road, London on Dec 15,
1792, where many nonconformists lie alongside luminaries such as John Bunyan, William Defoe and
William Blake.

9
Robert Cribb 1755-1827

Robert Cribb was born in 1755, the seventh child (out of 8) of Richard and Abigail. On Feb 2, 1777 he
married Elizabeth Osborne who came from the London parish of St Mary Woolnoth. They had seven
children together.

Elizabeth died in 1810 and, at the age of 59, Robert then re-married, to Temperance Matyear, on 26
November 1814 in Fulham, Middlesex.

He died in 1827 at the age of 72 leaving a detailed will. Like his mother, he was buried at Bunhill
Fields Burial Ground, City Road, on Nov 7, 1827.

Robert was a carver/gilder in the furniture trade, the first Cribb to establish himself in this
profession, and had his home, workshop and shop at 228 High Holborn, Middlesex. (At the corner of
High Holborn and Kingsway, London). He left the business to his son Robert Samuel Cribb.

10
Robert Samuel Cribb 1777-1829
Robert Samuel Cribb was born on October 28, 1777, the eldest child of seven born to Robert and
Elizabeth. He was baptised at St George’s Bloomsbury. He took over his father’s business, working as
a carver, gilder and print seller at 288 High Holborn, London. He married Maria Swain on August 9,
1804, in St-Giles-in-the-Fields, London, England and they had six children during their marriage.

Robert was one of the lay overseers of the celebrated

mediaeval Parish of St Giles-in-the-Fields, and several of his
children were baptised there. The Church itself dates back to
1101 but was rebuilt in 1733. It has a somewhat ominous name
in history, for thousands of victims of the plague of 1666 were
interred in the pits in its grounds, and the church also stands
on the ‘road to Tyburn’ and often afforded condemned
criminals their last drink. In the time of Robert Samuel, it was
at the heart of one of the poorest parts of London, the
infamous ‘St Giles’ Rookery’.

Robert’s life was marred by misfortune, starting with the death

of his one-year-old son William in 1806, his first daughter, Ann,
in 1809 and his infant son Alfred in 1812. In 1824 Robert was
involved – through no fault of his own – as a key witness in a major lawsuit over copyright of some
prints of a celebrated murder that had taken place in Hertfordshire. The owner of the copyright had
authorised Robert to reproduce and sell them in London, however a competing printer struck copies
and sold them illegally and was sued by the owner. It is possible the stress of the legal battle, among
other influences – discussed below – affected Robert, who, five years later in 1829 in a fit of extreme
depression, took his own life. He is buried at Piece 3998: Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, City Road, on
December 23, 1829.

This harrowing event is described in the Morning Chronicle, Morning Post and Evening Standard:

MELANCHOLY SUICIDE

“We regret to state that Mr Robert Samuel Cribb, the carver and gilder and print seller of
288 High Holborn put an end to his existence, in a fit of temporary delirium, on Friday last.

11
 Mr Cribb was one of the overseers of St-Giles-in-the-Fields and was very much respected by
his fellow parishioners. The deplorable circumstance has thrown his family into a state of
grief the most inconsolable. Yesterday afternoon a Coroner’s Inquest was held upon the
body of the deceased, at his late residence in Holborn. Mr Wakely, the churchwarden of the
parish, and several of the other parish officers were present, and the Jury consisted of the
most respectable inhabitants of the neighbourhood.

“Mr Robert M’Dunnoth Cribb v, a young gentleman about twenty years of age, was
examined. His feelings were much excited by the shocking event and his narrative was
frequently interrupted by bursts of agony. He stated he is the son of the deceased. His father
has for a considerable period been so much disordered in his mind that it was thought
proper to place him under restraint, and he was seldom left alone. He frequently complained
of violent pains in his head and, when speaking of his business, he appeared to be quite
deranged. On Friday morning about ten o’clock, witness heard a loud shriek. He ran upstairs
and saw his mother, who was calling for assistance, and the body of his father was
suspended by a piece of cord from the banisters of the stairs. He took a knife from his
pocket and cut the cord, which he removed from his father’s neck. The body was still warm
and the deceased had not been left alone about a quarter of an hour. He went to Mr
Andrews, a neighbour, and the deceased was carried into his bedroom. Mr Wood and Mr
Vincent, surgeons, were sent for and they used every effort to restore animation.

“Mr Andrews of 287 High Holborn, stated that he had known the deceased for some years;
he was called in by Mr Cribb, junior, on Friday morning, who said that his father had hanged
himself. He found the deceased supported by Mrs Cribb; and Mr Wood, the surgeon,
attempted to bleed the deceased. He (the witness) saw the deceased on Thursday, and he
appeared to be quite deranged. He placed his hands to his head and exclaimed “I am quite
lost”. He afterwards mentioned the name of his son in terms of endearment and, in a state
of distraction, again exclaimed “I am lost.” He understood the deceased’s circumstances
were embarrassed vi, which had caused the affection of his mind. He had no doubt the
deceased was insane.

“Mr Wood, a surgeon, stated that he had attempted to bleed the deceased. Very little blood
issued from the vein; the deceased was quite dead although the body was still warm and he
(witness) should not have attempted to bleed the deceased but for the satisfaction of his
relatives, as the circulation of the blood had entirely ceased. He had attended the deceased
and knew that we has subject to pains in the head, and was bled repeatedly.

“Mr Wakely: “Pray sir, how long do you believe he has been in a deranged state?” Witness:
“I believe he has been so for twelve months or more.”

A gentleman stated to the Coroner that he had seen the deceased during the present week
and he was at the time quite lunatic and declared he could not live; he wished he could die
that instant.

“Mr Stirling said it was a decided case of insanity, and the Jury returned a verdict to that
effect, after taking a view of the body of the deceased.”

While the Coroner’s court undoubtedly reached a safe verdict as to the immediate cause of the
suicide, the limits of the medical knowledge of the day did not allow it to explore the deeper causes.
As a maker of furniture and prints, Robert Cribb had grown up amidst the solvents, lacquers,
varnishes, spirits and thinners commonly used in that industry. He had undoubtedly been exposed to

12
them daily for most of his 52 years, without any form of protection. These vapours are now known
to be nerve poisons and to affect the brains of workers who use them constantly (in much the same
way as do petrol and glue sniffing), causing loss of memory and cognitive ability along with ‘clinically
significant depression, anxiety and disturbances in thinking’ vii. While there may have been other
factors in his life conducive to depression, it is more than likely that the neurotoxicity of the
materials of his trade caused brain damage and the physical pain and depression which brought
about his demise. If his business did not prosper, this too may have been partly due to his impaired
mental state.

After his father’s death Robert McDonough Cribb married Arabella French, 20, who later died at the
tender age of just 25, leaving him a childless widower. He too died young, at just 36.

The furniture business then

passed into the hands of
Robert Samuel’s sixth and
youngest child and only
surviving son, Arthur, who
was just 16 at the time his
father died.

13
Arthur Cribb 1813-1897
Arthur Cribb was born in 1813 in Clerkenwell, Middlesex, the youngest son of Maria and Robert
Samuel Cribb. At the age of 27 he married Margaret Sarah Powell at St Giles-in-the-Fields, and they
had 11 children together. Tragically, Margaret died giving birth to her last child, on 31 January 1859.

Arthur inherited his father and grandfather’s furniture,

gilding and printmaking business, but steered it towards
the more profitable trade of upholstery of high quality
furniture and progressively relocated to more affluent parts
of London. The Census of 1851 sees him, aged 36, living
with his family at 17 King Street, Covent Garden.

By 1855 they have moved to Carlisle Street, Soho, and in

1861 he is occupying spacious premises at 38 Soho Square
(at the corner of Carlisle st and the Square, arrowed),
where he employs seven men and four women in his
furniture business. The building still stands (right). The
Cribb family occupied its two upper floors and the lower
held the workshop and retail showroom. Soho Square in
the mid-C19th was a better address (see above) – not the
seedy nightclub district it later became in the C20 th – and
this reflects the expansion and repositioning of the business
under Arthur’s management.

The rise in the Cribb fortunes is evident

in other ways. Arthur can afford to send
his eldest son, Arthur William Gordon

14
Cribb (left), to a boarding school called ‘The Poplars’ in Surrey. From there he goes on to study
divinity and become a vicar in the Church of England, work for the Church Missionary Society in
Fuzhou, China, before becoming Vicar of Shipley, Yorkshire.

In 1855 Arthur (the father) is elected a vestryman of the parish of St Ann’s, Westminster (aka St Ann
Soho, right).

In 1851 he is recorded in the press as donating a self-portrait by the celebrated portraitist Sir Joshua
Reynolds and his paint palette to Queen Victoria’s Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace – objects he
received from his father who had been given them by Sir Joshua himself – where they attracted
much attention.

During this period, Arthur also came to know John Marsh and Edward Jones who had recently
opened a branch of their highly successful Leeds (Yorkshire) cabinet making enterprise in Cavendish
Square, which was a short walk along Oxford street from Soho Square. Though they may have first
met as trade rivals, Arthur evidently befriended and trusted them, as he sent his next oldest son,
Henry Humphries Cribb to work for them and acquire the entrepreneurial and practical skills
necessary for the business of high quality cabinet-making.

Like his father, Arthur’s family life was marred by tragedy. He lost all six of his daughters in infancy –
two named Margaret, Emily, Fanny and Ann with the sixth (unnamed) dying together with his wife
Margaret during childbirth in 1859. Five of his six sons, however, outlived him.

Most of these premature deaths occurred after the famous outbreak of cholera in Soho in 1854, but
this must have been a terrifying episode for the Cribb family, newly resident in Carlisle street, when
500-600 people perished in the rookeries of Soho, within half a mile of their doorstep, and
thousands more fled the district. That they were not affected is probably because they did not share
the same polluted water source. The outbreak was finally traced by Dr John Snow to the Broad(wick)
St pump in one of the world’s first and most celebrated pieces of epidemiological detective work.
The pump tapped an aquifer that was in turn heavily polluted by the ‘long drop’ privies in the
surrounding tenement buildings. However, its water was so clear – thanks to the London clay that
filtered it – that no-one suspected it was contaminated by deadly bacteria, which were then
unknown as a cause of disease. Nevertheless this, and Arthur’s own family misfortunes reflect the
extremely unhealthy living conditions in Victorian London.

A year or two after Margaret died, the 1861 Census finds Arthur – now 47 and with a young family to
raise on his own – remarried, to Mary Ann Palmer (39) of Covent Garden. He had two more sons
with her. He died in the closing years of the Victorian era, on 6 February 1897 in Finchley, Middlesex,
having lived a full life of 84 years. He left a respectable fortune of 3500 pounds to his third son,
Charles Luson Cribb, who was also an upholsterer, and his last child Cecil Howard Cribb. His oldest
surviving son, Henry Humphries was already established as a leading cabinet maker in his own right.

15
Henry Humphries Cribb 1842-1921
Henry Humphries Cribb was the third child
and second son of Arthur and Margaret
Cribb. His birth was registered at Marylebone
in 1842 and he was baptised in the family
church, St Giles-in-the-Fields, on September
29. While growing up he experienced the
deaths of seven of his brothers and sisters as
well as his mother. Like his older brother
Arthur and younger brother Charles, Henry
attended The Poplars school in Figges, Marsh,
Mitcham, Surrey (right), which lay south of
the Thames about ten miles from Soho.

Young Henry was raised to the upholstery and cabinet-making

business by his father Arthur. He is still living at home in Soho in
1861, but by the mid-1860s he has moved to Yorkshire to learn
the business in the firm of exclusive cabinetmakers Marsh &
Jones. Romance blossomed and, in 1868, he married John
Marsh’s 5th child, Emily. Emily had been born in Soho, London in
1848 about the time when Marsh & Jones acquired the cabinet
making business from its Yorkshire founders the Kendle family,
and it is very likely the couple had known one another since
childhood. The marriage took place at St Mathews, Chapel
Allerton (left), in Leeds, Yorkshire on 30 April 1868, with both
fathers in attendance. Henry was 25 and Emily 20.

Although his first job was as a salesman for Marsh & Jones, HHCribb’s marriage saw him rapidly
promoted to the status of partner, even though he was but 26 years old, and the firm was re-named
Marsh Jones & Cribb. It had a spacious factory, warehouse and show room at Boar Lane, Leeds and
was evidently highly regarded in the local community as, according to the Yorkshire Post, it was
employed to furnish the mansion set aside for the royal visit of the Prince of Wales in 1872, with
“chairs and couches covered in blue sateen cretonne”, along with a triumphal arch “draped and
fluted with crimson cloth”. The firm was active in many ways in the local community, including
fielding its own works cricket team. In 1878 it won a Bronze Medal for its furniture at the Paris
Exhibition.

Although removed to the more salubrious

surroundings of Yorkshire. Henry and
Emily’s life had its share of family tragedy.
Their first son, Ernest Henry, was born in 1869, and their second son, Charles Bertram in 1870. The

16
1871 Census records the family living in the leafy surrounds of Potternewton, an upscale suburb with
a big park near Headingly, Leeds, where they provide a home to Henry’s younger brother Frederick
(18), an apprentice engineer, and keep two maid servants.

However, in June 1876, tragedy strikes. Henry and Emily’s oldest son, Ernest, just seven years old
and out for a walk with his nurse, is kicked by a horse and dies. The Yorkshire Post details the event:

In addition to their surviving son Charles, Emily and Henry went on to have six more children, all of
whom led long and useful lives.

The reason for Marsh Jones and Cribb’s continued presence in Yorkshire, despite their London outlet
was the Victorian textile and industrial boom, which had made many of the Yorkshire mill owners
and their families very wealthy. In keeping with their new status they build large, ornate homes and
furnished them in the finest style, with the best furniture money could buy. The company was
originally founded by John Kendle in 1760 and specialised in furnishing and interior decoration for
the stately homes of the Yorkshire aristocracy, then moved to London around the 1840s under
Kendle’s grandson. It was taken over from him by John Marsh, who was joined by Edward Jones of
Oswestry, Cheshire, but the new partners maintained Kendle’s Yorkshire base and also took on
young Henry Humphries Cribb.

About this time the firm begins to style itself as ‘Mediaeval Cabinet Makers’ and specialise in a range
of high quality reproduction furniture and marquetry from popular periods in English history –
Gothic, Elizabethan, Restoration, Regency, Georgian as well as contemporary Victorian. They also
sold imported Turkey carpets and exotic Oriental ceramics as well as drapery. That HHCribb was the
driving energy between this diversification cannot be doubted, as in 1878 Marsh dies and Jones
retires, leaving the business under his full control. The firm carried on under the name of Marsh
Jones and Cribb and was registered as a Limited company in 1905. HHCribb employed several of the

17
most gifted furniture designers of the age and, today, its products fetch a small fortune on the
antiques market.

In keeping with the growth in the

business, the MJC headquarters on a
22,500 sq ft site in Boar Lane was
expanded (left) from a warehouse into a
rather magnificent late-Victorian factory
and emporium (left).

The business continued to grow and

diversify throughout HHCribb’s
managership. Besides furniture it also made
billiard tables and offered complete
packages in interior design to people who
wanted to refurbish their homes. In the
1900s they diversified into fitting out the
luxury ocean liners that were just starting to
gain popularity, such as the first-class
lounge of the Cunard Line’s RMS
Mauretania (below).

18
Examples of MJC cabinetmaking and marquetry which fetch high prices on the modern antiques
market.

In World War 1 MJC joined the British War Effort as a manufacturer of aircraft which, being made
mostly of wood in those days, required very high standards of timber craftsmanship. In the course of
the war MJC produced over 300 fighter aircraft, primarily the famous Sopwith Camel (below), but
also its derivative the Sopwith Dolphin, and the Airco DH5

This Sopwith Camel, F5213, was one of 175 produced by Marsh Jones and Cribb around 1917. It was
replaced by the Sopwith Dolphin in 1918, below left.

19
MJC also made 100 Airco DH5s, below right. Both the Dolphin and DH5 featured a ‘back-stagger’
wing arrangement to improve the pilot’s view.

In 1919, at the age of 76, Henry Humphries Cribb decided to step down from his position as
managing director of Marsh Jones and Cribb and he and Emily moved to a seaside retirement at
Sherwood House, Esplanade Road, Scarborough (below right), on the Yorkshire coast. They did not
have long to enjoy their peace and quiet, as Emily died the following year, on May 21, at the age of
72. Henry’s health failed and he outlived her by only 15 months, passing away on August 11, 1921,
aged 78.

Yorkshire Post of August

15, 1921. Below: 53
Esplanade Rd,
Scarborough

20
Charles Bertram Cribb 1870-1947
Charles Cribb was born in Potternewton, Yorkshire, on April 6,
1870 and baptised at St Clement’s, Sheepscar. The tradition
of sending young sons to boarding school established by his
grandfather persisted, and the Census of 1881 sees him as a
10-year-old at the notoriously tough King William’s College,
on the Isle of Man, where bathing in the icy sea was a part of
the curriculum even in winter time.

By the age of 21, he has returned home, but has evidently

decided not to follow his father in the furniture business,
instead taking up an ancient Cribb profession as a wool textile
(or ‘stuff’ as it was then known) merchant.

On June 1, 1904, at the age of 34 Charles married Ethel Bown

(29, left) in St Martin’s, Potternewton, Yorkshire. The Bowns
were a large and lively Yorkshire family, the children of a
well-known architect, Charles Edwin Bown of Harrogate,
Yorks, who is responsible for some of the area’s grander
buildings. Tragically, her father had died of tuberculosis at the
young age of 36, when Ethel herself was just 6.

By 1911, the couple are living at 5 Cunliffe Villas,

Manningham in Bradford, Yorks, and have four children –
Margaret, Doris, Joan and John Humphrey (bottom left). CB
Cribb is 40 years old and a departmental manager in a large
textile warehouse. Their fifth child, Peter Henry, is born in
September 1918.

The 1920s took a hard toll on the Cribb family: in just six
years, Charles loses his mother and father and two of his
older brothers, Frederick Victor Cribb, a sea captain, and
Harold Lyndon Cribb a cabinet maker.

Of his early life and family, Charles’s son Peter recalls “We’ll raise the curtain in 1924 on a rather
underdeveloped child of six or so, overshadowed by three
bossy sisters to whom I was an unwelcome distraction from
their dynamic pursuits of mental, spiritual and bodily
development. My main comfort and refuge being a gentle
and self-effacing mother (Ethel Bown), much-worn I think, by
the rearing of the three aforementioned Amazons...

“My father (Charles Bertram Cribb) was preoccupied with his

business affairs as a whole-saler of fine woollen worsted, tory politics and his hobbies of fossil
hunting, stamp collecting, chess and (as) a devotee of the Yorkshire Cricket Club. I recall him as a
benevolent but rather unaccessible (sic) figure, an Anglican model of comfortable middle-class
conformity.”

Peter says his father maintained “a small but excellent cellar” and “presided over the family Sunday
feast of roast beef, Yorkshire Pud and trimmings, fortified by a bottle of vintage claret and rounded

21
off with a glass of port. A regular sip of these delicacies from an early age ensured that I embarked
on life with an educated palate.”

The family home, No 1 Highfield Place, Manningham, was a large house on the edge of Bradford,
build in neo-Georgian style out of sandstone blocks. Everything was on a large scale, Peter recalls.
The dining table, made by the family cabinet makers, could comfortably seat a dozen and the oaken
side-board was to match. “Add twelve dining chairs, two arm chairs and an open-hearth fire place,
leaving plenty of room to walk about and you can visualise the general scale. We had six bedrooms
on two floors above, a large laundry, larder and wine-cellar, below ground level. The back yard
contained the coal store, a store-room and the servants’ lavatory, all in a block about 50 feet away
from the house. Coal was delivered by the ton, by horse and cart, and tipped into the coal store from
a hatch on the street wall.

“Everything was heated by coal fires, including (the) kitchen range and laundry on wash-days
(Mondays). Humping coal in scuttles from the outside coal store to the living rooms, laundry and
bedrooms, was the major occupation of one of the live-in maids – until the squeeze of the
depression years devolved it on my mother, father, sisters and daily helper.

“The house was lighted by gas, ignited by a taper on a long rod with a hook to operate the tap on the
chandelier. Later on we were ‘modernised’ with auto-ignition operated by a switch near the door,
and had gas fires fitted in the bedrooms to reduce the coal-hauling and dirt of open fires.

“Once a year, after much excited packing of steamer trunks,

a horse-drawn dray collected our luggage and we all piled
into a horse-carriage and rumbled off to the railway station.
Here we embarked for Scarborough on the east Yorkshire
Coast... Sunny days on the beach were pure heaven
compared with the smoke-polluted and grimy streets of
Bradford, created by coal-burning domestic fires and the
mills of the Yorkshire woollen manufacturing industry, of
which Bradford was the trade capital.”

Left: Charles and Ethel, on holiday in Scarborough

In 1935, partly as a result of the Depression, Charles

decided to retire from the woollen business and bought a
home in Menston-in-Wharfedale, nearly Ilkley, Yorks, on
the edge of the famous Ilka moor (‘baht ‘at). Peter, who
had been at Bradford Grammar was sent to Prince Henry’s
Grammar School, Otley, for the final two years of his schooling.

Charles was gratified to see all his children do well in life. His eldest daughter, Margaret, married
Edgar Rhodes, a clergyman who died tragically young, leaving her to raise their son Basil, who
became a journalist on the Yorkshire Post. Doris married a noted American scientist, David Green,
who was involved in the early research that established how life on Earth first emerged and went to
live in Wisconsin. Joan became a career physiotherapist in Bradford, John became an engineer and
Peter became a senior officer in the Royal Air Force, a commander in the bomber offensive against
Germany in WWII.

Charles lived quietly in retirement in Menston until his death, just after World War II on December 6,
1947, at the age of 77.

22
Above: Charles and Ethel, late 1930s

Above right: Charles in retirement, 1930s

Left: Charles attended Peter’s investiture

with the Distinguished Flying Cross by the
King at Buckingham Palace, 1942.

Below: Joan, Ethel and Margaret, on the

Yorkshire Moors, 1950s

23
Peter Henry Cribb (1918-2011)
Peter Henry Cribb was born in Manningham, Bradford, on September 28, 1918, and was educated at
Bradford Grammar and Prince Henry’s College, Yorks. In 1937 he was admitted to the Royal Air Force
College, Cranwell, and trained as a pilot. He was commissioned into the RAF on August 31, 1938, and
assigned to Bomber Command. He married Patricia Walter in 1939 and they had two children, Bruce
and Rosemary. Details of Peter’s life and times, including his war service and personal recollections,
are published in Master Bomber, at https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=37BF421D66DE35B!
11180&ithint=file%2cdocx&app=Word&authkey=!AOyRm9OAJaT51Nk

Peter served with 58, 104, 35 and 582

Squadrons and was Commanding Officer
of the RAF’s Bomber Development Unit in
1943. He was one of the RAF’s first
Pathfinders – the expert crews who
guided the bomber stream to its targets
in Europe – and became a Master Bomber
(the commander who directed individual
raids from the air). He flew more than 100
missions to attack enemy targets, a
record attained by very few, including the
first 1000-bomber raid on Cologne and
numerous attacks on the industrial
centres of Germany and northern Italy,
and was highly decorated. On the last day
of the war he mounted a private raid on
Hitler’s home at Berchtesgaten. After the
European war ended he was posted to
India, arriving just as Japan surrendered.
He served here for two years, made
memorable by meeting his second wife,
Vivienne Perry, an actress who was
touring the subcontinent with the Stars in
battledress.

After the war, Peter was briefly with Coastal

Command before being assigned to Bomber
Command Headquarters, High Wycombe,
Buckinghamshire, to help in planning Britain’s nuclear
deterrence strategy. This involved developing credible
plans for counter-attacking the USSR, should it decide
to invade the rest of Europe as it was then
threatening to do. As nuclear missiles did not exist in
those days, Britain’s V-Bomber Force (left) was the
principal instrument of deterrence, as it could destroy
Soviet centres such as Moscow and Leningrad with
nuclear weapons within an hour or two of war breaking out. The plan worked, and Stalin took no
further steps to threaten western Europe.

24
Peter was divorced from Patricia in 1949 – their marriage had broken down due to the stresses of
war – and was free to marry V, whose family were of Irish and English heritage and came from
Lancashire and Cheshire. The had three sons, Julian (1950), Andrew (1956) and Simon (1957.

In 1957 Peter was posted to Germany, where he commanded three RAF fighter stations at
Oldenburg, Ahlhorn and Gutersloh. These ex-Luftwaffe bases were at the time the front line defence
of the West against attack from the Soviet bloc countries just to the east. Following this assignment
he spent time at the Air Ministry, London, as Director of Air Staff Briefing and the family lived in a
15th Century cottage in the Kentish seaside town of Herne Bay. In 1961, as a full Air Commodore,
peter was posted as Senior Air Staff Officer to Aden on the southwestern corner of the Yemen on the
Arabian Peninsula, responsible for peacekeeping in a huge area stretching from the Persian Gulf to
East Africa. In 1964 he was appointed Deputy Director, Joint Warfare, at the Air Ministry and served
until 1966 when, dismayed by the cuts to defence by the Wilson Government, he resigned his
commission and emigrated with his family to Western Australia.

Here Peter took a position as administrative manager for one of the State’s first iron mines, at
Mount Goldsworthy in the northwest on the edge of the Simpson Desert – and one of the hottest
places in Australia. He later wrote: “Retirement and migration to the mining industry in Australia
could be likened to a metamorphosis from butterfly to ant. The transformation was a process of
discontinuity, requiring concentration on the present, to the exclusion of the past.” Yet, he was on
the whole a contented man, happy to see his family grow up. After some time he moved with V back
to Perth and started his own business, with mixed success. This was followed by several
management jobs, culminating in one that gave him much satisfaction, with the Slow Learning
Children’s group in Busselton, where he and V lived close to the sea at Australind.

25
Following this Peter retired and he and V moved
to Roleystone, then Greenwood and finally to
the RAAF Retirement Village at Merriwa, WA.
Peter died on June 20, 2011, at the age of 92,
followed by his wife V, nine months later, aged
89. Their ashes were scattered in the
Churchman’s Brook, Roleystone, in the native
bush they loved. A plaque in the RAAFA Estate
Chapel, Merriwa, commemorates their
achievements.

26
i
The significance of this is that the Cribbs have a significant genetic (DNA) connection with Scandinavia. This may be
due to the Viking presence in Wareham, as well as the Yorkshire families with whom they later married, as Yorkshire
was for a several centuries a Viking kingdom – the so-called ‘Danelaw’, which bordered with Saxon England along
Watling Street (or OE ‘Wæcelinga Stræt’, from a time when "street" (Latin: via strata) referred to any paved road. The
ran diagonally across England from North Wales to London. It still exists today as the A5.
ii
Stoborough is a village a mile south of Wareham township and the Frome River, on the road towards Corfe Castle
and the Isle of Purbeck.
iii
http://www.opcdorset.org/WarehamFiles/WarehamMayors.htm
iv
Today the Fleet is the main sewer line than runs beneath Fleet street. It can be heard through a grid in the centre of
Charterhouse Street. On a very low tide, the murky Fleet can be seen gushing into the Thames from immediately
under Blackfriars bridge
v
Robert McDonough Cribb, Robert Samuel’s oldest surviving son.
vi
Meaning his business was broke or in trouble.
vii
Morrow L et al., Alterations in Cognitive and Psychological Functioning after Organic Solvent Exposure, Journal of
Occupational and Environmental Medicine, May 1990.
http://journals.lww.com/joem/abstract/1990/05000/alterations_in_cognitive_and_psychological.10.aspx