William Roache Who Do You Think You Are?

I love Coronation Street and I love working.

Many people say when are you going to retire?

I just say that's not an option.

Eighty-year-old actor William Roache

has been on British television screens almost continually

for over 50 years in his role as Ken Barlow in Coronation Street.

I don't think you understand, Ken.

I want you to walk out of that door and out of our lives.

He is now the world's longest-serving actor

in a drama serial.

-Hi, Bill.

-Hello.

How's it going?

'I never expected fame, nor did I go into it to be famous.'

So, the usual full make-up.

I just wanted to be a good actor and I wanted work, I wanted to work.

The strength and determination, if I got it from anybody,

I got it from my mother.

She's a lovely person, my mother, but she had a tough childhood.

Her father, Albert, drank.

And she hated her father, she just hated him.

But her mother, my grandmother, was a lovely person. She was called Zillah.

All I remember of her was a very lovely, kind, wonderful woman.

'Loved to have known her better.'

I would love to know more about her background.

My mother's name was Hester Vera, but we called her Essie.

She wasn't a tactile loving mother, but I knew she loved me,

and cared for me and would look after me.

She talked very little about her own childhood.

Only when things would crop up and I could piece things together.

But she wouldn't deliberately talk about the past at all.

To discover more about his mother Hester's childhood,

and to find out about

his grandparents Albert

and Zillah Waddicor,

Bill is travelling back

to the area where he grew up.

I'm coming back to my roots, as it were, in Derbyshire,

to visit Peggy, the widow of my cousin Geoffrey.

Who knows what she has there.

I certainly have no pictures of my grandparents

on my mother's side, Zillah and Albert. None at all.

Bill's cousin Geoffrey died two years ago.

He left an archive of family material with his widow, Peggy.

Hello, Bill!

Peggy. Lovely to see you.

Come in, love.

Ah!

It's a long time since I saw you.

-It is, isn't it? But lovely to see you.

-Yes.

Thank you.

Now, Bill, there's...

Ah, is that Zillah and Albert?

And Albert.

-Wow.

-Yes.

Now, this is the first picture I have ever seen of Zillah and Albert.

Look at Albert as a young man.

-Yes, they were handsome.

-Very dashing.

-Yeah.

I remember him as an old man,

but I never remember having a conversation with him.

Mmm.

You get the feeling his daughters didn't like him.

I know my mother didn't like him at all.

Never heard anything mentioned at all about him.

No, they didn't talk about him.

There were certainly no loving comments ever, anything at all.

-He wasn't a doting father, was he?

-No. No, he wasn't.

-Now then.

-Isn't that a lovely photo?

Oh, it's a beautiful picture. The three daughters.

Yeah.

Flo, my mother Essie and May.

Yes, that's right.

I've never seen a picture of them together like that.

You know, it's marvellous to see my mother as a young girl, almost.

Yes.

-Cos my mother was the youngest, wasn't she?

-Yes.

I don't know if you ever heard, Peggy, but I heard there was

something - one of the sisters was not the full child.

I have a feeling it was Auntie May.

No, I didn't hear that.

No. There's no evidence of this and I can't remember the detail. Who knows?

Now, this is lovely.

-That's an interesting one, isn't it?

-Mmm.

Is that Albert? He looks like Albert.

He does.

So that must be Albert's father.

Yes.

But he looks to be a man of means.

Yes.

This is later years, of course.

Oh, boy! Albert and Zillah.

Yeah.

That's at Alton Towers.

It is, yes.

-That was taken at Alton Towers.

-Yeah.

I remember Zillah started the Alton Towers Cafe which was her business.

That's right.

Doing dinners and weddings.

Yes. She was a very astute businesswoman, yes.

As a child, I went there, and I can only remember little bits of it.

Well, I have some pictures of Alton Towers.

-Oh, have you? All right.

-Old ones.

Wow!

Wow, that's it, that's Alton Towers. Look at the building, it's amazing.

Yes.

It was massive, wasn't it?

It was a fabulous place to go, wasn't it?

Oh, wonderful. And that was their home.

-As you know, it's a theme park now.

-Yeah.

But how nice to have that, you know,

just milling around in your own back garden at Alton Towers.

Yes!

This is interesting. These are holidays that Zillah used to go on.

Look, Paris.

Oh, the Sacre Coeur.

Yeah, 1930, look.

"Lugano, Switzerland."

She was quite a gadabout. I'd no idea she was a well-travelled woman.

But she never took Albert with her.

Yes, he's not in any of them, is he?

He's not on any photograph at all.

Yes, that's right.

She must have had a fair bit of money to go on these trips.

I wonder where she got all her money from, then?

-Well, yes.

-We need information, don't we, Peggy?

-Yes.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Pleasure, Bill. It's a real pleasure.

Seeing Alton Towers, that brought back memories for me,

and I'm really intrigued about my grandmother, Zillah.

All these exotic holidays she went on.

But how? Where did the money come from? I don't know.

I need to know more about that.

She ran the business.

So I what I would really love to do now would be to go to Alton Towers.

I remember this massive building.

I mean, it's lovely to think it was the family home

during that period between the wars.

I hope it hasn't changed too much.

In my day it was all grassland and parkland.

Little bit different with people.

The actual building, I'm glad to see it's there.

Alton Towers is now a theme park

famous for its white-knuckle roller coaster rides,

but was once one of the grandest country estates in Britain.

Bill hasn't been back since he was a child in the 1930s,

and came to visit his grandparents

when they lived in rooms in the house.

To find out more about the cafe

that his grandmother Zillah once ran there,

Bill has arranged to meet local historian Dr Gary Kelsall.

Hello, Bill. I'm Gary. Nice to see you.

Oh, hi, Gary. Lovely to see you.

Welcome to Alton Towers.

Oh, thank you.

The mansion has been uninhabited and derelict since the late 1940s.

I used to come as a child.

I remember oak panelling and I remember very broad floorboards

that I would pedal on my little tricycle.

And I remember a suit of armour I used to pedal past as well.

So you remember actually pedalling around this room?

Yeah. Yeah, it's funny, cos I was here as a child

and my family were running it, I feel quite possessive.

I feel everybody's an intruder, all the people out there.

Wow.

Well, Zillah's operation was called the Alton Towers Cafe.

Yeah.

But it was far from just a cafe, actually. It was a good restaurant.

I just thought she did a few little weddings and teas.

Well, let me just show you this, Bill.

A guidebook from the 1920s, when Zillah would have taken over.

Gosh.

And then if we look inside, on the very first page...

There's Zillah Waddicor, Proprietress.

Seating accommodation for 1,000 people.

Cos when I was here as a child, it would be in the season

when it wasn't operating, so I'd no idea it was on such a big scale.

Yes, she would have occupied quite a few of the rooms.

Wow, look at that! "Dine In The Mansion".

So that would have been the big appeal, that people could have

actually come and occupied a space that was formerly an ancestral seat.

For over 500 years, Alton Towers had been the country seat

of the Earls of Shrewsbury, one of the oldest and most distinguished aristocratic families in Britain.

But the rapid growth of industry during the 19th century

had shifted power and wealth towards the cities,

and the introduction of death duties meant that many ancestral homes

were being sold off, or even demolished.

By the 1920s, the 20th Earl of Shrewsbury could no longer afford

to run his country estate, and was forced to sell up.

Oh!

Here would have been their main room. This is the Great Dining Room.

-It's the biggest room.

-Wow.

So this would be the main banqueting room?

Yeah, indeed. And this is how it would have looked in Zillah's time.

Look at that! Look at all the staff.

-She must have run a staff of hundreds.

-Yeah.

That's wonderful to see it. How she actually did it.

I can imagine people coming in and dining here

feeling like kings and queens.

This is a nice one. It's looking from the other angle.

Oh, they've got a bar. And a minstrel gallery.

There'd be a minstrel gallery up there.

Yeah, that's right.

I'd no idea how grand and luxurious it was.

It's a shame that none of that is left now,

the difference is quite stark, isn't it?

Absolutely. Yeah.

But that is marvellous to have these photographs.

And, to think, my grandmother would have organised the whole thing!

She travelled a lot, I've just discovered.

She went on all sorts of exotic holidays,

so presumably she brought back ideas and things,

so she obviously loved exotic places, and this is.

Absolutely.

And do we know how long she ran this for?

Well, that brings me on to an interesting document. Take a seat.

This is a licensing document that relates to Alton Towers.

"Register of Alehouse Licences. Alton Towers Cafe.

"Name of the licensee, Mary Zillah Waddicor, 1925."

So she got her licence in 1925.

Yeah.

So when did it move from the hands of the Earl of Shrewsbury?

When did they sell? Do we know that?

Yeah, in 1924.

Oh, right. No sooner had he sold it than Zillah zoomed in and grabbed it.

When it was sold in 1925, Alton Towers had fallen into disrepair

and its famous gardens were neglected.

The consortium of local businessmen who bought it from the Earl

quickly set about restoring the gardens

back to their former glory to attract paying visitors.

And the new owners leased several of the mansion's grandest rooms

to Zillah Waddicor to run her restaurant.

What were the typical sort of person who would visit here?

Well, this is an example.

Oh, that's amazing! Look at the crowds.

You can hardly find a gap on the lawn.

That's right.

Many of them would have been just ordinary working class folk, really.

They all wear hats, really quite formal.

And they're feeling that they're going to the ancestral home of

the Earl of Shrewsbury, they felt they'd got to put their Sunday best on.

But it's packed, isn't it?

The number of people that actually visited here per summer

is estimated at being upwards of a quarter of a million people.

To cater for that number, even today with modern facilities,

would be pretty demanding.

So the organisation that she had to have to deal with that

was extraordinary, wasn't it?

We've got various menus offering varieties and packages.

"Cold lunch - ham, tongue, bread and butter, tea and cake."

"Two shillings a head."

So you've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,

nine...ten choices.

For all different sorts, not only all different sorts of tastes,

but all different sorts of pockets and all different sorts of budgets,

so if they were feeling particularly flush...

There's a four-shilling lunch.

Wait a minute, let's have a look at this one.

"Soup, kidney or tomato." A choice of soup.

"Roast beef or lamb." You're getting a choice here.

"Potatoes and vegetables in season. Sweets, cheese and biscuits."

Wow, a four-shilling banquet.

And the thing is as well, there would have been various sittings,

so that there may have been

quite a number of thousand on any particular day,

that would have come in here for one sitting and gone. The next would

have come in, and so she would have catered for a thousand at a time.

Wow!

So, in a day time...

I had no idea it was so vast!

The crowds that flocked to Zillah's restaurant at Alton Towers

were part of a new generation of day-trippers.

Trade Union pressure had led to the introduction of half-day

Saturdays, so for the first time it became possible

for working people to take weekend breaks.

Alton Station platform had to be extended to accommodate

the large groups of workers arriving on special trip trains,

often organised by their employers,

who saw visits to historic buildings as self-improving for their staff.

During the holiday season,

thousands of people visited Alton Towers every weekend.

Now, she must have earned quite a lot of money while she was up here.

I would say so. What is this, then?

"Alton Towers Cafe", that's Zillah's business here.

Who's it to?

It's actually to...

Ah, the Surveyor, Council Offices, right.

"Referring to The Old Mill Buffet, Alton."

Oh, was that something else she ran? Something down in the village?

Another little restaurant? Cor!

-You see the date.

-1933.

1933, So she'd been up at the Towers since 1925.

Right.

And then she must have decided, "I'll stay at the Towers,

"but in the meantime we'll do something else."

She bought the Old Mill opposite the train station, and converted it.

These are the plans that she drew up?

-Yeah. And here, this is the building.

-Wow.

From 1933 she was running this...

-And she was running...

-..and she was down there, too.

Good grief!

Right opposite the station, so people get off the train,

first thing they see is that, let's go and have a meal at old Zillah's.

Such an enterprising woman, wasn't she?

She was, yeah, absolutely.

In many respects, it shows her as one of the leisure entrepreneurs

of the period. She had a definite eye for an opportunity.

God, wow! What a woman!

But what about poor old Albert? Where does he feature?

We can't find any mention of Albert.

Nothing at all?

We've looked, and her name seems to be associated with everything.

It's always her, isn't it?

It's always her.

She's the licensee, she's the proprietress and she was the owner of this place.

Yes, and she's applying for all the alternations to be done.

Yeah, Mrs Waddicor.

As there's no mention of your grandfather,

obviously she ran the show.

She had the idea, she saw the opportunity,

she made the most of it.

That is very, very interesting.

She was totally the matriarch,

and Albert was well and truly kept in his place.

There are certain mysteries that have come out of this.

Poor old Albert didn't appear on anything.

He wasn't the licensee, he wasn't the proprietor,

he was absolutely nothing.

I know he was there. What was he doing?

But I am so impressed and so proud

of my grandmother Zillah, I can't tell you.

The massive size of the empire that she ran on her own,

and made it into a really big and successful business.

She made money. I mean, amazing. But then, how did she begin here?

So the mystery is filling in those years prior to Alton Towers.

To find out more about Zillah and Albert and where they came from

before they arrived at Alton Towers, Bill has come to

the William Salt Library in nearby Stafford,

where he's meeting historian Dr Nicola Phillips.

Bill, hello. Good to meet you.

Good to see you.

-Would you like to come through?

-Thank you.

This way.

Well, Nicola, I've got some photographs to show you here.

This is Zillah and Albert.

My grandmother Zillah was a businesswoman,

she ran the Alton Towers Cafe in the early 1920s.

We've got all this documentation of Zillah being the proprietress.

My grandfather is just totally absent.

It's all in her name.

For a woman at this time, this was pretty unusual, wasn't it?

It is unusual.

I mean, we know of very few women in business in this period.

In fact, it's known as a bit of a black hole for women in business.

They were lone figures in a male world.

Just a few years before Zillah started her business,

World War I had moved women into the workplace in great numbers.

But when the soldiers came home,

they were expected to return to their families.

Marriage bars were reinforced, excluding married women

from many occupations, to ensure that men were re-established

as the primary earners.

And by 1920, the number of married women in work

had fallen to record lows of under 14%.

So, running a family business like Zillah's was one of the few ways

for a married woman to make her own living.

What's different about her is the size and extent of her business.

-It was an amazing big business, wasn't it?

-Yes.

And also the fact that her husband was kept well out of it, wasn't he?

Yes.

I mean, well out of it. He appears nowhere.

So she could have held all the money.

Quite separately, yes.

Quite separately.

And because the married women's property laws said that women

could actually hang on to their own separate property, their earnings.

And, most importantly, profits from their own businesses.

Although social pressures kept most married women at home,

the few who did manage to earn their own money, like Zillah,

could take advantage of the Married Women's Property Act.

This series of laws, which were extended in 1926, gradually put

a stop to husbands having control over their wives' financial affairs.

So a generation before, say,

Zillah wouldn't have been able to keep all the money.

Yes. In the 19th century, a wife lost her independent legal identity,

and effectively, husband and wife become one, and the husband can

take, appropriate all the profits and earnings from the business.

He could drink it away, he could gamble it away,

he could give it away and there would be very little

she could do about it.

So Zillah's benefitted from the feminist campaigns

that led up to the gaining of the vote in 1918.

Yes.

And that in itself gives women a confidence.

Yes. There's no doubt about it, she had a towering personality.

She had these photographs.

They are exotic holidays. Look at that.

That looks like Italy or somewhere.

She went only with her daughters and womenfolk.

Albert is again significant by his absence.

So not only is she making money, she's using it for herself.

-Good for her.

-Yes.

She's living the high life. This is luxury travel.

Yeah. But no mention of Albert.

Now, is there any way of finding out anything about Albert?

Well, I have a marriage certificate here.

Ah.

Of his daughter, in 1928.

"The marriage between William Vincent Roache and Hester Vera Waddicor."

Well, that's my mother and father's marriage certificate.

And Albert Waddicor, my grandfather, is referred to as a gentleman.

Mmm.

Now what did that mean? A gentleman!

To be a gentleman, you couldn't be in trade.

You had to have an income, either from land, or...

And being in trade was not the thing to do.

No, absolutely not.

Albert, to me, was someone they didn't speak about.

I heard he drank a lot.

Yeah.

But I've seen photographs of him as a young man,

very well dressed in expensive clothes, and he did have a presence.

And here he is described as a gentleman.

Yes.

Must have been a man of means.

Gentleman is also a very aspirational status.

It covers up a multitude of other things.

Right.

In that it means that he's not working.

Yes. That is very interesting.

That's the first indication I've had of anything about Albert.

Do you have any more evidence of Zillah and Albert before...?

Yes, there is. Just this way.

We're going to have a look at some Census records. So, if you take...

OK.

I'm not brilliant. I'm not high tech, you'll have to help me.

That's all right.

Now, the most recent one we can look at is the 1911.

In order to find the family,

use Zillah's name, because it's so unusual,

I think it might find it faster.

I think that helps, yeah.

So put her first names in.

Zillah.

Waddicor.

There we go.

OK. So we have Albert Waddicor, head. This is 1911, of course.

"Age 35, married to Mary Zillah Waddicor,"

and Hester, my mother, was ten.

"Occupation - Ices and Temperance Drinks." Wow!

Now there we are, he did have an occupation.

He did. Do you know what Temperance Drinks are?

-Well, presumably, non-alcoholic.

-Yes.

Ironic, given what you know!

Yeah, what we know. He likes the heavy drinks.

But, obviously, in his early days he had a business,

so what was the address of that?

Now then, look at this. "4 Princess Street, Blackpool."

I assume that was the home that Albert and Zillah lived in

before Alton Towers came on the scene.

Yes.

On the marriage certificate,

his occupation is described as gentleman,

but on a Census in 1911 he was described as

a seller of ice cream and temperance drinks -

what we would call ice cream and soft drinks now.

So he wasn't a true gentleman,

because gentlemen did not have a trade.

I don't like to think anybody's all bad,

and hopefully there's some good in the background of Albert.

So I need to find out more about this shop

and where they lived in Blackpool.

This is Blackpool.

I've never actually stayed here on a holiday,

but I did in fact switch on the illuminations a couple of times.

To find out more about Albert and Zillah's life in Blackpool,

Bill has arranged to meet Blackpool historian Professor Vanessa Toulmin.

Hello!

-Lovely to meet you.

-Lovely to meet you.

Professor Vanessa. Bill, hello.

Right. Now I gather my grandparents had a shop somewhere around here.

-Actually here.

-Actually on the location!

-On this corner here.

-Wow!

-I've got a photograph to show you.

-Yeah?

-And there it is.

-Oh, amazing! Waddicor's, there.

Blackpool rock, lemonade.

-And it was actually here?

-Yeah.

-This is it?

-This is it.

Wasn't exactly a great property.

No. It's what we call a shanty shop, literally, literally. A pop-up.

-It was really just a front, wasn't it?

-Yeah.

-I mean, how deep back did it go into here?

-Six foot.

-Just into...

-Yeah.

Yes. So you'd get all the punters coming down here,

and there, and you get all the punters coming on there.

But to be on the front, you know, selling lemonade and ice cream

was a good business site, wasn't it?

I can show you a photograph of how many people would have seen them.

Oh, wow, look at that!

This is Blackpool Carnival in 1923.

Now, look at the people, absolutely solid. Wow!

Incredible.

What was interesting, on that photograph,

Albert Waddicor's is the only big sign there.

Was this just the beginning of Blackpool as a popular resort?

Well, in the '20s there was about eight million people coming a year,

-three times more than any other seaside resort in the UK.

-Really?

Yeah. And this area became known as the Golden Mile, because of

the quickness of time it took to put a property up and take money.

Right. Not only did they pick the right place,

-they picked the right place within the right place.

-Yes.

At the time Albert and Zillah were running their stall,

Blackpool was the fastest-growing holiday resort in Britain.

Blackpool kept one step ahead of its rivals,

and attracted increasing numbers of tourists with the latest in modern

entertainment, like the Pleasure Beach fairground completed in 1905.

The world-famous illuminations began as early as 1879,

when Blackpool became the first British town

to have permanent electric street lights.

By the turn of the century, all three piers

and the Blackpool Tower were complete,

creating the Golden Mile Promenade where the Waddicors had their stall.

Imagine the fairground. That's what the Golden Mile was like.

Yeah.

Alongside your family stall, you would have had freaks,

giants, um, girlie shows, you would have had the whole range.

It's really, really interesting, because my grandmother went on

to run a business within Alton Towers to do with catering,

so the fundamentals of all that they would have learned here, wouldn't they?

Yeah. This was their training ground. The family learnt how to make money in Blackpool.

Yeah, that is very true, because you've got to learn the basics.

Just selling something, selling ice cream and entertaining.

I have a feeling it was pretty much Zillah who was the driving force.

Albert possibly owned this and he was the man,

but I think Zillah was the force behind it.

But we don't know.

Yes. Women in this kind of business were always incredibly

-entrepreneurial, it allowed them the opportunity.

-Right.

To find out how the Waddicors began their stall, Bill

and Vanessa have come to Blackpool Central Library which holds

information about local businesses dating back to 19th century.

The play where we took you today was known as Central Parade then.

OK.

So this is a list of all the shops on Central Parade in 1924.

Just before they went to Alton Towers.

Is it just saying what businesses were on Central Parade?

Yes.

Like Lee's Amusement Arcade and so... I see. Er, auctioneer.

They were mainly just ordinary businesses, weren't they?

Ah, 41, Waddicor, Temperance Bar. So this is 1924.

It was the year that they went to Alton Towers.

But it doesn't give the dates of how long they'd been there

in the directory.

Can we find out when he started?

Well, let's go back to the 1890s.

To see how long they'd been...

This is the Trade Directory from 1898.

About 26 years earlier.

So let's have a look.

There's Central Parade again.

It's not alphabetical, is it?

No.

Waddicor is at the end. Waddicor. He's now called "a herb beer maker".

So we know that he was there, then, in 1898.

Having only had "gentleman" after his name when they were at Alton Towers,

I'd understood that he was a kept man, in a sense, by Zillah.

But here... No, it's his business, all right, isn't it?

Yeah.

"Albert Waddicor, herb beer maker."

And he's there for 26 years, that's right.

But who was the power behind the throne?

Well, let's try an earlier one.

This is 1896, so it's a couple of years earlier.

Let's have a look if there's any Waddicors in this book.

OK.

"Central Parade. Waddington..."

"Waddicor, J. Medical... No, that's not it."

"Waddicor, J, medical electrician."

Is that Albert's father, then?

"Waddicor, J, medical electrician, Central Parade" -

I should have carried on -

"Central Parade." That is this shop in 1896, two years earlier,

and it was a medical... He was...

Albert's father, J, was a medical electrician.

What does that mean?

I think they used to use electricity for treatment, didn't they?

Was he...? That's very interesting.

So he had this little shanty shop, started out as a medical electrician

with his father, and Albert turned it into a herb beer temperance bar.

Yeah. I did find something else about Albert Waddicor.

It's a bit fragile.

It is, isn't it?

Yes.

Blackpool Herald in 1894.

Have a look on here.

Yeah.

"A serious kicking affray."

"An excitable sandwich man breaks a youth's ankle."

Yes.

It sounds comical.

"On Wednesday afternoon, as one of the sandwich men was proceeding

"through Foxhall Square, his board was struck by a marble."

"Conceiving that the missile came from the hand of a youth

"named Albert Waddicor..."

A youth called Albert Waddicor!

"..who was standing outside his father's shop..."

So it was his father's shop.

"..he rushed at him."

"Waddicor was knocked down, and as he lay there, his assailant

"administered a kick which broke his ankle in two places."

Wow! This is 1894. So, Albert's about 18,

what was he doing throwing marbles at sandwich men?

He must have had a little bit of a sort of vandal in him somewhere.

However, he got his ankle broken in two places for it.

So Albert might have been helping his father in the shop.

Yeah.

Can we get any more information about Albert's father, J Waddicor?

Now we've got the initial, we can try and find him on the Census.

-We can trace him further, can we?

-On the Census. And this is the 1881 Census.

Ah, now, 1881.

And this is your great-grandfather.

James Waddicor, who was 32.

Alice would presumably be the wife, and Albert, the son.

There's my grandfather Albert. And then Albert was five.

James' rank and profession.

What's that word? Quarterly...

Quarry.

Oh, quarry! That's quarryman from Darwen in Lancashire.

So he was just a quarryman.

So James Waddicor, my great-grandfather, at the age of 32,

worked in a quarry, hacking bits of stone,

before he started this strange electrical medical thing in Blackpool.

Well, yeah, but at some point in between 1881 and 1894.

Yeah. So how did they get from Darwen to Blackpool?

The 1890s was Blackpool's boom period.

Yeah.

Blackpool was developing as the major English seaside resort,

so people were coming to Blackpool from all over the country.

Ah, so he was attracted by the knowledge

that this was a burgeoning place.

Bill has discovered that his great grandfather, James Waddicor,

came from the industrial town of Darwen, 30 miles outside Blackpool,

and arrived some time after the 1881 Census was taken

and before 1894, when his Promenade stall is first recorded.

The arrival of the railways in the 1840s had made it possible

for working-class people to reach Blackpool.

And by the 1880s, it had grown from a small seaside village

into a flourishing consumer town.

The holidaymakers who arrived from the mills and factories

had more disposable income than ever before to spend on leisure.

The promenade and beach were soon lined with street entertainers,

stallholders and hawkers, all vying to cash in on the tourists.

It's a bit like the gold rush in the Wild West, isn't it?

Yeah, it is, that's a perfect way of describing it.

And that it's called the Golden Mile,

he took them to where money could be made.

James Waddicor, the one who got the family, moved them out.

He's the one who made the leap.

And really, at that time, that's kind of middle aged.

Well, he's 32, yes. An older age than it is today, isn't it?

Yeah.

So it looks like James Waddicor was, again, quite entrepreneurial.

I'd like to know more about this electrical medical business

that he started in Blackpool.

Well, what I've found out today is,

it wasn't Albert who actually started the shop.

It was my great-grandfather, James, who started the business,

and it was as a medical electrician, which I find very intriguing.

I think it took a lot of courage and a lot of guts to uproot everything

and go out and try something new.

So I want to find out more about James.

To see what he can discover about his great-grandfather James,

and his occupation as a medical electrician,

Bill has come to the Blackpool Tower,

to meet historian of science, Professor Iwan Morus.

-I'm Iwan Morus.

-Hello.

-Hello.

Now, my great-grandfather had a shop literally just down the road there

and he was doing something strange. He was called a medical electrician.

I'd like to know a bit more about that.

Oh, I can tell you all about medical electricity.

-Good, good.

-I think your great-grandfather's a one-off.

-Oh, really?

-As far as I'm aware.

Medical electricity in the 1890s

is quite common, but I've never actually come across anybody else setting up a stall.

Selling it to the general public.

-Exactly. I've got an example of the kind of apparatus...

-Oh, wow!

..that your great-grandfather would probably have used.

Would you need any training to be able to operate it?

You wouldn't really need any training at all.

It's a very simple piece of apparatus. There's a magnet there.

Yeah.

And then there are coils of wire here, and I'm spinning this

so that the coil is spinning in front of the magnet.

That's what makes it produce electricity.

It's a very basic electric generator.

Yes. I mean, that's exactly what it is.

So was this medically accepted?

Medical electricity was very much a sort of late-Victorian medical fad.

The basic idea is that the electricity is meant to cure

a range of what the Victorians would describe as "nervous diseases".

Nervous diseases!

That covers everything, pretty much.

Yes, the Victorians were obsessed by nervous disease.

Medical electricity was a popular cure for what Victorians

thought of as nervous diseases,

a catch-all term that covered a wide range of ailments.

Since the late 18th century,

scientists had established that electricity could be

conducted through the body to produce muscular contractions.

And by the mid-19th century,

electricity seemed to offer a modern way to jolt the sick back to health.

Many doctors began using electrodes to pass currents

through the afflicted areas of their patients' bodies.

Portable machines, like the one James used, were widely advertised

and bought by both professional doctors and middle-class families

who used them to treat a variety of complaints.

With no National Health Service,

most of the working-class people passing by James Waddicor's stall

had little access to professional medical treatment.

James offered them a chance

to try out this latest innovation for themselves.

Medical electricity - he's bringing something to the people

walking up and down outside this tower

that they probably wouldn't really get an opportunity to experience.

They certainly wouldn't have electricity in their homes.

In their homes. So it would be quite exciting.

They've got the illumination, which is why they came here,

but to actually go in and actually feel electricity for the first time,

you can understand them paying a few pennies for that.

Do you fancy a go?

I don't know. Are you going to electrocute me, then?

-Well, if you hold those...

-OK.

-..I'll be happy to see what I can do.

-What voltage goes through it?

-We're talking about relatively small currents.

-I hope so.

-So, if you're ready?

-OK.

Tell me when you want me to stop.

Oh yeah, yeah, I've got a tingling. Yeah, I can feel it, a tingling.

It's going up my arm.

HE CHUCKLES

So that will have cured me from my hysteria, will it?

That will have cured your hysteria,

that will have cured your neurasthenia.

But although he was doing this really as a thing on the front

to make a bit of money, they couldn't really harm anybody, could they?

He couldn't really damage anybody.

But I suspect that the real skill that your great-grandfather had was something of a showman.

People would be coming up to his stall, they'd be paying a few pence

-for a go on the electrical machine.

-Yeah, yeah.

He must have had a sort of persuasive personality, mustn't he?

A sort of salesmanship to lure people in.

Whether it was good for them or not was beside the point.

If he could get them in and get them out and get the money, that was it.

That's the name of the game.

I've got another document here I think might tell you a bit more

about what your great-grandfather was doing as well.

-This is a Census form from 1891.

-OK. Where are we?

James Waddicor, my great-grandfather,

who was 42 at the time.

That's quite old.

-Yes. And read here. This is his profession or occupation.

-Ah!

He was a phrenologist and medical electrician.

A phrenologist.

So when he's not giving his customers a little jolt of the electric...

He was feeling the bumps on their head.

He was indeed. That's what phrenology's all about.

I mean, I've got a phrenological head...

-Oh, wow!

-..down here.

The idea is that brain is divided into different organs

and that you can read somebody's character by reading the bumps on their head.

So if you've got a big bump here, then according to this,

that's the organ of intuitive reasoning.

So you can tell somebody that if you've got a bulging forehead,

that means you're clever, or whatever you think

that your paying customer would...

And then electrocuting them, so they'd go out feeling really good.

So from a particular bump on the head...

One there says "'selfish sentiments".

Here. I've got quite a bump there! Have I got selfish sentiments?

I mean, was there some foundation to phrenology?

Well, during the early decades of the 19th century,

phrenology was very popular amongst the middle classes

-and this is a 19th-century cartoon that takes the mickey out of phrenology.

-Oh!

A middle-class family would ask for phrenological advice before hiring servants,

so they could have some indication

of whether they were likely to run away with the family silver or not.

"If this science be cultivated, the time will come when,

"on hiring a servant, an examination of the organic manifestations

"of the mental faculties will supersede the necessity of further enquiry into character."

By the end of the 19th century,

when your great-grandfather has his stall here,

phrenology is a very long way away indeed

from anything like respectable science,

and in a lot of ways is regarded as a quite disreputable activity.

Right.

As you can see, if you take a look at this document from 1898.

So this is a letter

from the Blackpool Company House Proprietors' Association

saying, "That no permission be given by the Corporation

"for the carrying on of any of the following occupations upon the Foreshore."

Phrenology is number one.

"Phrenology, palmists, quack doctors." Quack doctors!

So phrenology is banned on the Foreshore in 1898.

That's right, yes.

Phrenologists are clearly part of a culture

-that Blackpool Corporation didn't want in their town.

-Yeah.

I wonder what he would move on to afterwards.

Just around the corner from where his family had their stall,

Bill has arranged to meet genealogist Mike Tringham,

who has some information for him about what happened to

his great-grandfather James after the ban on phrenology.

-Hello, I'm Bill.

-How do you do? I'm Mike.

-You're Mike. Hi, Mike.

Now, I gather my great-grandfather had a little shack shop

at the end of this street.

Yes. We are standing at the corner of York Street and Coop Street.

What I have here is a rate book from 1898 that tells us

-who owned certain properties in this area of Blackpool.

-Oh, right.

-Well, there's a Waddicor.

-Yes.

Is that J Waddicor?

-It is indeed, yes.

-Yeah. 15 Coop Street, is it?

Coop Street.

And the name of the occupier. Oh, so that is the name of the...

Oh, so what he's done, he's rented it out, has he?

That's right.

Can you see underneath as well?

17. Oh, that's still Waddicor. So, two properties.

Ah, Waddicor again.

Number 43 York Street.

And right behind you is 43 York Street.

This was one of his?

-Yes, this one and the next two. Number 17 Coop Street.

-Yeah.

Right here, and the far building is number 15.

So he must have made a bit of money while he was doing his phrenology

and electrical... medical electricity and things.

He must have done.

-To buy the properties.

-We're talking about late 1890s,

and he probably picked them up fairly cheaply.

Yeah, because the town was only beginning to grow, wasn't it?

Exactly, And very rapidly the value of them would have...

Zoomed.

A canny investor could have made an awful lot of money

in a very short space of time, I would imagine.

Good, good man. Oh, well, that makes me feel more comfortable.

-I was getting worried for him, actually.

-Yes. Oh, were you?

He was 47, he's got a family, he'd been into precarious, dodgy things

on the front, they were passing phases,

so I'm glad he's now gone into something

-that's really secure at a good time.

-Yes.

My grandfather, Albert, who was James's son,

-described himself as a gentleman.

-Gentlemen.

And they were men of means, weren't they?

So he could have been living off the investments of this property.

So, in a sense, he was right to call himself a gentleman.

That's quite possible. It was a common term used when...

You didn't have to work.

..a person was of independent means.

Do you have any record, you know,

when things changed from James's hands to Albert's?

-Come on, let's go inside.

-Let's go and find somewhere dry and warm.

Now, this is the will of your great-grandfather, James Waddicor.

He died in November 1904,

just a few years after the dates of those rate books.

He'd only be quite young, wouldn't he?

Only be in his 50s, would he, or...?

Yes, he was a relatively young man.

Poor old guy.

So the value of his estate was £4,792,

which was quite a lot in those days, wasn't it?

Well, in today's terms,

the estate would be valued at between £300,000 and £500,000.

Yeah. I mean, really pretty good.

-Quite easily. He was a wealthy man.

-He was a wealthy man.

So, this is the will that's been transcribed so it's easier to read.

"I appoint my wife, Alice and my daughter-in-law,

"Mary Zillah Waddicor..." Zillah has suddenly appeared on the scene.

They're to be the executors of the will, totally disregarding Albert.

You had two women

basically controlling quite a substantial estate.

What is very unusual is that he's appointed his daughter-in-law

as one of the executors. We're talking about late-Victorian Age.

Yeah.

And it would be very unusual to exclude one's son

in preference to the daughter-in-law.

The picture I have of Albert, from my mother,

is that he was a pretty unsavoury guy, in many ways. He was a drinker.

Not very reliable, and maybe James saw this

and trusted his daughter-in-law more than he trusted his own son.

I think you've hit upon something, because look at the next part of the will.

"..Shall pay the surplus or net unto

"and profits thereof to my son Albert during his life

"and subject thereto and the life interest of my said wife."

So, to summarise, your great-grandfather James

has left his estate in trust to his widow, Alice, and on her death,

only the rental income from those properties

-would go to your grandfather, Albert Waddicor.

-Yeah.

He had to wait for his mother, Alice, to die before he inherited only the profits.

But was unable to touch any of the capital.

He's not trusted with the ownership.

It must have been very frustrating for him.

He obviously would be able to live well...

-As a gentleman, like he described himself.

-Exactly.

-..but without getting his hands on those three properties.

-Wow.

So there must have been some big reason why Albert was excluded,

not just he wasn't liked or a bit unpopular, for him to do that.

-Definitely. It's almost unique, I would say.

-Oh, right.

-I've never come across this situation before.

-Yeah.

That he'd leave his only son

-out of any controlling influence on his estate.

-Yeah.

And he did it expertly, taking very unusual, unconventional steps

-to protect the wealth that he'd accumulated from his work.

-Yeah.

So, the question of who he left it to, then.

"I direct my trustees to stand possessed of all my real

"and personal estate in trust for my granddaughter,

"Lavinia Alice May Waddicor, daughter of my son, the said Albert."

That's my Auntie May. Why was it left to her?

This must have been done before my mother and my other aunt were born.

Well, the will's actually written in 1901.

-So...

-Well, my mother was born in 1900, I think.

Do you remember exactly when she was born?

-Yes, she was born on December 9th 1900.

-Right.

So she was born then.

And there's another?

-Another daughter, Flo, Florence.

-Right.

-But they're not mentioned.

-They're not.

I don't understand that at all. There's something strange there.

I would have thought if he was going to leave it to the grandchildren,

it would be to all of them, equally divided.

Yes. That's very strange.

Bill has learnt that his great-grandfather James

left his entire estate in trust not to his only son Albert

but to just one of his three granddaughters, Bill's Auntie May.

To try and discover why she was singled out,

Bill and Mike are checking through Census records for May,

whose full name was Lavinia Alice May.

This is the 1901 Census.

We'll just have a look and see if there are any Lavinia Waddicors.

Lavinia. Waddicor.

Search.

Result - complete negative.

But let's not worry too much about that.

We'll run through the names. Let's try Alice. Second name...

Oh! Yes. James Waddicor - head.

Alice - wife.

And then Alice M - daughter.

Now, the only M is May, and she's four.

So that figures with Auntie May.

-So she lived with her grandparents.

-Yes.

-Really, that should say granddaughter.

-Yes.

-But it doesn't, it says daughter.

-Yes.

I knew she was special, er, or had to be special,

for him to have left all his property to her, there had to be a reason.

So, whether adopted or what...

..she's living with James and his wife Alice.

-Yes.

-Now, that's the mystery I've been wanting to solve.

One of the daughters was different.

And it's obviously Auntie May.

-So she was brought up by her grandparents.

-Yes.

But we don't know why she was in this position.

It must have been a very, very powerful reason, mustn't there?

Maybe the grandparents were protecting their children.

-Yes.

-But they're not... My mother isn't there.

No. I think we can only speculate.

I can only speculate at this stage.

Let's look at your grandfather's family.

That might give us a better insight into what's going on. So your grandfather is Albert...

Ah, right.

-Albert Waddicor - head.

-Yeah.

Mary Zillah, his wife. Flo, that's my eldest aunt.

And that's it.

-But where... What year is this?

-This is 1901.

Well, my mother was born in 1900. So why wasn't she on that?

One would expect perhaps to find your mother with her grandparents.

Yes. Though she isn't.

-She's not there either.

-No.

Let's see if we can find her somewhere else.

What was your mother's name?

My mother's name was Hester Vera.

Hester. Hester Waddicor.

-Hester Waddicor.

-There she is.

-Yeah. Aged three months, that's right.

-Yeah.

-That figures.

-Born in Blackpool.

-Born in Blackpool.

Born in Blackpool. Who's that? Who are these?

Elijah Stanier and Thomasina.

So, my mother was brought up by somebody else, as well...

..it would seem.

Have you noticed the relationship?

-His niece.

-Thomasina...

-Yeah.

..and your grandmother were sisters.

So your mother spent her early life with her aunt.

Where did they live? Leigh, in Staffordshire.

We're not talking about round the corner, down the road.

No. Leigh, Staffordshire, was some distance.

When my mother was only three months...

She was taken away from the family home for some reason.

Yes. Now, the only reason would be Albert's drinking

and violent behaviour, which my mother did talk about.

And a picture is emerging that Albert

is a drunken, violent, horrible man

and the minute he has a child it is taken away -

because social services didn't operate then -

and they're brought up by somebody else.

Apart from Flo, who seemed to stand the... She was the first born,

probably was able to look after herself a bit better, I don't know.

Yeah, I think you're right.

We can only look at the facts as they were recorded

and we can only interpret what we see.

Yeah, but honestly, I really feel for my mother there.

-I feel quite emotional, actually, about this.

-I can understand.

She was a lovely person but she never showed love,

as I said, never self-pitying.

-It does explain a lot, doesn't it?

-It does, actually.

Going back to the will and the way the children were farmed out.

Maybe your grandmother could cope...

With one.

-..under those circumstances.

-Yes.

The most shocking thing for me was that my mother, at three months -

- three months, probably still being breast fed by Zillah -

was ritually wrenched from her and went to live with Zillah's sister.

I remember my mother as being not tactile and affectionate,

but having understood what she had to go through,

I think she didn't know how to be more openly loving.

I would say that I love her even more now,

and I would like to have told her that.

That was a really sad situation.

To find that the three sisters, my mother, my Auntie May

and my Auntie Flo, didn't live together.

My mother was separated from them.

And why were the two of them so quickly taken away

and given to somebody else?

We don't really know the answer to that,

but I do believe the root cause,

without any doubt really, in my mind, was Albert.

I could understand why my mother hated Albert.

I was looking for redeeming features for him, but there aren't many.

But he really paid the price for what he was.

He didn't love anybody, so consequently he wasn't loved.

But in spite that, what is inspiring and encouraging is the strength

of my great-grandfather, James Waddicor, who moved from Darwen

into Blackpool, a burgeoning place. He was very entrepreneurial.

He made some money and steered the money around Albert.

And that money went right through the family and carried on.

And what a towering personality Zillah was.

She lived in a man's world,

but she didn't go under because of Albert. On the contrary,

she was a successful business woman, entrepreneur.

She really made a good life for herself.

I've got colossal respect for Zillah's guts and determination.

She was amazing.

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