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Father:

John Robert Blandford (1795-1830 )

Mother:

Martha Warne Snelling (1793-1825)

Birth:

1822 Ebbsbourne Wake, Wiltshire, England

Death:

1896, Donnington Gardens, Reading, UK

Marriage:

(1) Hannah Janes, 1842, Martin, Wiltshire (Hampshire)

(2) Sarah Ann Baker, 1892, Reading, Oxfordshire

Children:

Martha Amelia Blandford (1843-1904), married George
     Dance, 1864, Andover, Hampshire

John Robert Blandford (b 1848)

Business ups and downs are often the lot of businessmen - but as far as setbacks go, one that hit John Blandford in the 1870s rates high on the scale of serious problems.  John, a builder, built a house that fell down within three weeks of completion, killing a child as it fell.  That was the end of John's career building houses.

John had been born in the nearby county of Wiltshire, in the small village of Ebbsbourne Wake, the year after his parents married there. For many people a middle name is almost an unnecessary afterthought - to be used only when called for on official documents.  But for John Snelling Blandford, it seems almost an essential part of who he was, even being incorporated into his signature.  "Snelling" was a name inherited from his mother Martha - it was her maiden name.  Martha died when John was only three years old, so the name probably had extra significance for him. John's father also died when John was still a child, but it's not known who brought John up after that.

His father had been a yeoman farmer who was also a Congregational minister (according to John's two marriage certificates), but John obviously had no inclination to follow him and instead turned to learning a trade. By 1842, when John married a young local Wiltshire woman, Hannah Janes,  he was already working as a carpenter, so presumably by then he'd undergone training with another tradesman, or more probably an apprenticeship.  Youths were usually apprenticed for around seven years and would rely on their 'masters' for food, housing etc. As well as on-the-job training, they would have study, particularly reading, writing and arithmetic in their down time.

After a seven year apprenticeship, John would have been newly qualified as a carpenter when he married Hannah, from the nearby village of Martin.  At least two children were born to the marriage: Martha, the eldest born the year after the wedding, and John born six years later, in 1849, by which time the family had moved to Andover, in neighbouring Hampshire.  Demand for carpenters was not providing John with enough work, and in the UK census of 1861, his occupation was listed Census as "Grocer and carpenter", a slightly odd combination.  Maybe he was being assisted in the grocery work by his teenage daughter Martha, whose occupation was given as "shop woman'

In the next 10 years, the need for skilled workers improved, and he was then listed as a "Joiner - Clerk of Works", a big jump up the scale on a building site, and the family moved again, this time from Andover to Wokingham, in Berkshire.  By then, his 22 year old son had followed him in the trade, as a carpenter and joiner. 

A note in passing, from that 1871 Census: by then, his daughter Martha had married George Dance, and Martha's six year old son was visiting his grandparents at the time of the census, where his name is recorded as following the Blandford tradition of the mother's maiden name being incorporated as a middle name for the eldest son, George Blandford Dance.  Young George was to become one of the two Dance brothers who, in the 1880s, settled in the Marburg area of Queensland. One further note about John's children, Martha and John - the siblings each married members of the Dance family, Martha had married George, and John married George's sister Eliza Jane Dance. 

left: Bridge House, High Street, Sandhurst,  (presumably one side of the duplex) named as John's home in a court case in 1877. (Image taken from Google Street View, June 2019).

John's fortunes took a bad turn in the 1870s.  By 1877, he was a master builder, with several men working for him, when he undertook to build a house for a family in Wellington College, Reading.  It was a wet few months the construction, possibly affecting the foundations - a fact blamed by John for the collapse of the house just after Christmas, three weeks after the family moved in.  The collapse had a tragic result - a one year old child, Ada Barnes, was killed as her bedroom fell apart around her.  An inquest into the tragedy was hastily called, and evidence was given about its construction, and what happened as rescuers tried to extract the family from the debris.  The report of the first days testimony was given in the Reading Mercury of 30 December, 1876.

left: The report on the manslaughter charge from the Liverpool Mercury of 20 February, 1877

 

Within two months of the collapse, John had been charged with manslaughter and imprisoned until the trial a month later .  This trial found him "Not Guilty".  Unsurprisingly, John decided this tragedy meant he should not continue to work as a builder, and in two subsequent Census (1881, and 1891), he described himself as a "retired builder".  The word "retired" was underlined in the 1881 document.

 

John's wife, Hannah, died in 1891, aged 68. 

Less than a year later, John, then aged 69, remarried. His new wife was 42 year old Sarah Ann Baker.  For John's few remaining years, he and Sarah lived in a terrace house in Reading, Berkshire, with ill health from heart problems causing some distress in his later years.

His daughter Martha (Dance) told of his troubles in a letter in May 1896 to her third son Fred, who had migrated to Canada in 1893:

[Your grandfather]  is got so weak he cannot rise from the chair he which he sits continually night and day. Someone having to sit up with him every night. It commenced in October last that he could not lie down owing to the heart affliction with dropsy. He has five wounds on each leg where the water runs. The doctor says he will go off without any warning. He says he is a wonder that he is alive. We really cannot wish his life to be prolonged as it is to witness the suffering. I have been telegraphed for twice now. He wants me here and you know I am wanted at home. Sarah is very good but nearly done up.

Six months later,  in December 1896, John died.  His business setbacks were reflected in the probate of his will, which showed that although he had assets of £322, he also had debts of £431, a shortfall of nearly £100.




95 Donnington Gardens, Reading, where John and Sarah lived before John's death.  At that time, his son, John Robert Blandford, lived next door in No. 97.