By Roy Fallows
Like many people interested in the history of Armitage and its surroundings I have seen this photograph, and was always intrigued about this interesting looking old man and what his story was. At long last I have made some effort to find out a little more about him.
Antoine Albena Mountsoy was born in 1787 (later accounts give his
birth date as 6th January) in Bordeaux, a busy sea port town in southwest France. Like many young men born in a port area he was likely to find himself going to sea. It seems that this was the case with Antoine, according to a story published in the Lichfield Mercury dated 9th July 1965. I have not been able to find the source of some of their information but it makes for a plausible story. They say he went to sea as a cabin boy on a sailing trading ship which was part owned and captained by his father. This was during the Napoleonic Wars and Britain and France were fighting on land and as sea. The small trading vessel was sailing off the French coast when it was intercepted by an English ship and captured. The crew were held captive and taken to England where they remained for some years. When hostilities ceased they were released and Antoine’s father returned to France. Antoine elected to stay in England.
In the Mercury’s account he was later taken by a press gang and taken into service on a Royal Navy man o’war. This is quite possible as, at that time, the Navy were not fussy who they picked up to serve on their ships. So long as the man they picked up looked reasonably fit and had a full complement of limbs they would qualify as good enough to serve the British crown. Other accounts say he volunteered, which is also plausible for someone brought up to be at sea. Personally, I prefer the thought of the press gang.
Antoine seems to have adapted well to life with the Navy and he became an able seaman. At the age of 29 years he was serving as a quarter deck gunner on board Lord Exmouth’s flagship ‘Queen Charlotte’. ‘Queen Charlotte’ was a 104 gun first rate ship of the line and for its time was considered ‘state of the art’. She was commissioned in 1813, having been launched at Deptford in 1810, and wasn’t sold until 1892. In those days the Navy knew how to get value for money!
In 1815, following the end of the Napoleonic war, Britain was free to join other nations in efforts to stop the Barbary state’s involvement in their trading of Christian slaves. After failed diplomatic efforts to stop the slave trade Lord Exmouth on board ‘Queen Charlotte’ led a squadron of Royal Navy ships to North Africa to punish the Algerians, who had earlier massacred Mediterranean fishermen ostensibly under British protection. On 27th August 1816 the squadron bombarded the port city of Algiers until they surrendered. Many slaves and other hostages were freed.
In the middle and right background is the ‘Queen Charlotte’, 104 guns, in port-quarter view, flying Pellew’s blue admiral’s flag at the main, and a glimpse of the ‘Leander’, 50 guns, ahead of her. They are engaged with the batteries of the harbour, engulfed in flame, and the ships burning within it. Above the smoke Algiers can be seen rising up the hills behind.
During this action Antoine was seriously injured while manning his quarter deck gun. The calf of one of his legs was torn away by a shell splinter but he recovered and eventually discharged from the Royal Navy after serving for some five years.
After discharge from the Royal Navy he continued his life at sea and served on board civilian vessels including a whaler on which he went on expeditions around the Greenland coast, and merchant ships travelling between England and the Far East, and as far as Canada.
He eventually settled in South Shields before moving to Staffordshire – about as far away from the sea as is possible. In the 1851 census he is found living at Hadley End in Yoxall, with his Yorkshire born wife Maria, 20 years his junior and a 3 years old child named Suzanah Simpson, described as a nurse child. A nurse child, in modern terms, would be a foster child. At that time Suzanah would have been left with the Mountsoys for a number of possible reasons; maybe she was illegitimate or lost one or both parents. Perhaps her parents were struggling to look after her due to poverty. Either way, she may very well have ended up in the Lichfield Workhouse so to live with the Mountsoy’s was a lucky break for her (and them, as they would have been paid). Although Maria is described as Anthony’s (Antoine’s) wife I can find no record of any marriage. His occupation was given as ‘Smallware dealer (sailor)’.
By 1871, the Mountsoy family have moved to an area in the Ridwares called Hickbury (about halfway between Hamstall Ridware and Blithbury). Antoine and Maria are together although their ages are now 30 years apart. Antoine is called Anthony (simpler for the enumerator) and, at the age of 82 years is described as a Coal Higgler. A coal higgler was a person carrying on a trade as an itinerant coal seller, usually by cart. Not bad for an octogenarian with a gammy leg! Suzanah is now to be found at Etchinghill, near Rugeley, employed as a cook domestic servant in a boarding school. She is using the surname Mountsoy.
The previous year (1870) Maria had fallen foul of the law. On 1st December of that year she had been arrested on warrant, accused of stealing one sable muff the property of John Lawrence at Hamstall Ridware on 23rd November. John Lawrence was a farmer from Rowley at Hamstall Ridware and a reasonably wealthy man for that period. She was committed for trial by J. Spode Esq. of Hawksyard Park on the same day. She remained in custody over the Christmas and New Year period until appearing at Stafford Assizes on 3rd January 1871. The jury found her guilty of larceny and was sentenced to one month imprisonment with hard labour in the House of Correction in Stafford.
They are all back living together at Hickbury Cottage in 1881 and Suzanah is still using the surname Mountsoy. Antoine is still being called Anthony and he is described as a seaman (ms), meaning merchant service.
Maria died in 1882 and by 1891 Antoine had moved to Armitage where he boarded with Mr and Mrs Wallbank. Mrs Wallbank is believed to be his adopted daughter Suzanah. They occupied what is now known as Lodge Cottage, at that time a workers cottage divided into two or three dwellings. Mr Wallbank was a farm labourer. Lodge Cottage is the impressive thatched building in Rugeley Road, still to be seen almost opposite Church Lane.
Antoine was becoming well known for his life story and his great age. On 24th April1896, a London evening newspaper, the St James’s Gazette, published an article outlining his exciting life but finished by saying that the hero of this tale was aging fast with diminished hearing and eyesight. To help support him the Lichfield Guardians, who were overseers of the Lichfield Workhouse and poor people in the wider district, awarded him 2s/6d (12½p) a week.
Antoine Mountsoy died in April 1896 at the age of 109. He had been practically housebound for the final four years of his life but, according to the Gloucester Citizen ‘his hair was plentiful and of a brown colour, having grown again since his baldness after an illness about three years ago’.
His death was regarded as very notable and was widely reported in British newspapers and even as far away as Australia. He was buried near his wife in the church yard at Pipe Ridware. The service was conducted by the Rector of Armitage, Rev. JW Kewley. A Union Jack, sent by the Hon. Capt. Littleton, draped the coffin of the man who had seen and taken part in so much history.
Researched and compiled by Roy Fallows.
Images in the above post:
- May Grimley Collection
- National Maritime Museum, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons
- Roy Fallows