For almost 200 years there had been a doctor resident in Bow. I was the twenty-ninth.
This is our story
THE MEDICAL GENTLEMEN OF BOW
Edwin Partridge Longman 1806-????
SADDLER IN BOW 1830-1847
Edwin Partridge Longman was born in Devon, possibly in Budleigh Salterton, in about 1806.
His parents were not married – his father James was a "tuner of musical instruments" in Exeter. His mother Susanna Partridge was well connected – her father owned the Barton at Nymet Rowland and her mother was a Wreford from Clannaborough. (William Wreford, who in 1852 was found drowned in Exeter Canal in unsavoury circumstances, was this aunt's nephew.) Susan died in 1819. In her will she describes herself as "unfortunately having a child unprovided for" and bequeathed "all I shall be possessed of to my child commonly known as Edwin". She was buried at Nymet Rowland as Susannah Longman.
Edwin became a saddler, learning his trade from William Densham in Chulmleigh (whose son William was later a surgeon in North Tawton).
His father James died in Bristol in 1827 and Edwin inherited property in Thornbury in Gloucestershire.
In Chulmleigh he met Mary Ann Woolway. They married in Exeter in 1828; Edwin having been baptised just before. They settled in Bow where his sister Susanna lived. Their first son was born in 1830 and over the next 14 years they had nine more children, all born and baptised in Bow. All his children carried the middle name of Partridge.
In 1841 the family was living on the main street in Bow. With them lived a 16 year old servant girl named Elizabeth Heard. Three years later she had a baby named William Heard, who was baptised in Bow on 8 May 1845. In January 1845 in South Molton Quarter Sessions an affiliation order (for maintenance) was made against the putative father, Edwin Longman. (The baby died aged 3 and was buried in Bow Church. In 1848, Elizabeth Heard married John Austin, son of a convict. With their family they emigrated to Australia in 1866 in an eventful journey.)
Things got worse for Edwin. In 1847, he was charged with stealing on separate occasions horses from John Rodd (of Winkleigh), and Edward Balman and John Kelland (both of Lapford). (John Kelland, a farmer of Pennycott and later of Kelland Barton, was the father of John Kelland and William Henry Kelland.)
In January 1847 he was arrested in Wales and brought up to Exeter.
He was remanded in custody (and was one of only seven of the 109 prisoners on remand who could “read and write well”).
On 23 February at the County Sessions in Exeter he was found guilty and sentenced to transportation for three consecutive periods of seven years. The sentence was later commuted to a total of 10 years.
Around that time the colonies were objecting to receiving large numbers of convicts. So prisoners spent part of their sentence in jail in England before being taken to Australia. They were given their ticket of leave on arrival, effectively as free men.
So in June 1850, Edwin was taken to Tasmania as one of 300 men on board the wooden sailing ship “Nile II”, arriving at Hobart on 3 October.
He was described as "Height 5’3” age 47 fair complexion, large head, grey hair, oval visage, broad forehead, grey eyebrows, grey eyes, medium nose and mouth, double chin. Native place “Bugley Stetlon Devon”.
In 1852 he married 26 year old Ann Smith. She was a convict from Ireland, transported for arson. Little is known about his time in Tasmania although, ironically, he advertised for a “lost” horse whilst living in Ross, in the South of the island in 1856.
There the trail of Edwin Partridge Longman goes cold, until August 1877, when one of his sons and next of kin, James Partridge Longman, a painter and glazier in Chulmleigh, was granted administration of Edwin’s effects, claiming that Edwin – “a widower and a hawker” "late of Bow" had died intestate in Taunton in April 1875. However there is no record of anyone called Longman dying in Taunton around that time.
MYSTERY
Did Edwin Longman return to England?
There are signs that he may have been living in South Australia. In January 1860 this advertisement appeared several times in South Australian papers.
In September 1857 this notice had appeared in the South Australian Register
Also, around that time there was reference in the local papers to an “Edwin Partridge” a saddler living with his wife in Edwardstown, south of Adelaide.
In 1874 this advertisement appeared:
This death announcement in 1876 would tally with his date of birth of about 1803. Furthermore the actual death registration documents for this death refer to an Edwin Partridge.
There is considerable doubt that Edwin Longman ever returned to England, and a suggestion that he remained in Australia with a new wife and adopted "Partridge" as his surname.
Edwin Partridge Longman's family in England:
In 1829, in Bow, his sister Susanna Partridge married Peter Bird (a druggist in Chulmleigh where they subsequently lived).
Four of Edwin's children died in Bow as infants.
His son James married Jane Rabjohn in 1856 (? once his father’s servant in Stoke Canon?). He returned to live in Chulmleigh where he was a painter and glazier. (In August 1878 a fire that destroyed 26 homes in Chumleigh started when the thatched roof of his house was ignited by a spark from a chimney.)
His daughter Ann married Henry Franklin, a surgeon who qualified in 1867. They lived in Islington, London.
Possibly because of this, his wife and the rest of his children moved to New North Road in Islington where they ran a butcher’s shop.
In Bow, the new saddler was William Henry Jackman, until his death in 1892.
