Chapter by chapter 1. John Crix, Joy and Marion John was born three years after the end of the first World War. This chapter explains the post-war pacifist movement and the Peace Pledge Union. John grew up in the depression. These two events were to influence some of his decisions both in terms of his choice of career and being a conscientious objector in World War II.  Like many in the war, he married and divorced. After the war, he eventually re-married and became very involved in Church activities, especially the Boys Brigade. His daughter Liz worked for Labour controlled Lewisham Council during the turbulent Margaret Thatcher era. 2. Fred Crix and Joyce Fred was born in 1924 and trained as an accountant. Like all the brothers, he experienced the London Blitz but was then called up into the Royal Navy. After the war, he married Joyce. The book describes the rise of the new field of reprographics and how Fred was involved in it from the outset and of the Institute of Reprographic Technology. He joined the newly founded Open University, running their reprographics unit and wrote a standard text on the subject. He also wrote on aspects of the Christian faith and was much involved in the ecumenical movement. His daughter, Hilary, is also an author and her husband is a sound-engineer for radio and television. 3. Bernard Crix, Pat and Ann Bernard was five when the second world war broke out. He was briefly evacuated to Kent but was back in London in time for much of the blitz. He was the first in the family to go to grammar school and then university.  He became a teacher and married Pat and was involved in the United Nations Association. They went to East Africa with their two-year old child, David, and Peter was born in Uganda. The chapter recounts some of their adventures there. It outlines his career but also his divorce, cancer and marriage to Ann. There are pictures of his son David’s rock band and some of Peter’s photographs. 4. Jack Crix and Millie Now the book moves back in time to meet their parents. Jack was born on Foulness Island in 1894. In the First World War, he was in the merchant navy but during the difficult post-war years he continued his career as a baker. He married Millie, who was from a very different background, having been born in Rotherhithe in south London. Jack then became a London City Missionary. In World War II, he was too old for military service but he went to work for the British Sailors Society and he was with them until he died in 1959. 5. Charlie Crix and Elizabeth Jack’s father, Charlie, was also born on Foulness and this chapter compares Foulness then and now. He started work as an agricultural labourer but in his late teens went to work on a Thames barge and married Elizabeth Hoare, his boss’s daughter. As the book explains, it could be a hard life on the barges but he worked his way up, becoming Mate, Master and finally owner of a barge, the May Flower. He gave up the sea when he was 40, sold the barge and built a bakery in Burnham-on-Crouch. He was a baker until his mid-fifties when he moved to South Woodham Ferrers and it was this, presumably, that made it possible for his son Jack to meet Millie Deavin. 6. Will Deavin and Margaret Millie (see chapter 4) was born in Rotherhithe in Victorian London, as was her father Will. Although only a mile or two from the Thames, it was then the outer suburbs though it did not remain so for long. Like his father before him, he was a carpenter and builder. Around the turn of the century, plots of land were being sold off in a little village in Essex called South Woodham Ferrers. As the railway now reached it, Will moved out there, commuting back to his work in London every day. He bought a plot and built himself a house-cum-shop (to give his daughters something to do) and he and his wife Margaret became pillars of the Congregational chapel. 7. Will Hoare, Harriet, Charlotte and Martha In chapter 5, we discovered that Charlie Crix married Elizabeth Hoare. This chapter is about her parents and step-parents. Will Hoare was a bargeman and he had a close working relationship with Charlie for most of his life. Harriet was his first wife but she died shortly after giving birth to their first child. It didn’t take him long to marry Charlotte and one of her three children was Elizabeth. Charlotte died in her forties and he eventually married Martha. There is more in this chapter about barges and Foulness, including the church. 8. John Cricks and Eliza The final chapter is the furthest back in time for John Cricks (that’s how it was spelt initially) was born in 1815, the same year as the Battle of Waterloo. It is entirely set on Foulness and there is much about life on the island in the 19th century and those political events that impinged on this island which, although quite close to Southend-on-Sea, was in a real sense quite remote. The chapter tells about smuggling, the Foulness Riot and bare knuckle boxing.  Site Map Back to Eight Families introductory page Index Additions and Corrections