Hannah's Children: David Rodrigues Da Costa -- a Remembrance Day Tribute

Tyne Cot Memorial, Belgium

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells,

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, --

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

Anthem for Doomed Youth – Wilfred Owen

I had meant to write about Eugene Da Costa, the second child of Hannah and Joseph Rodrigues Da Costa, but here we are on yet another Remembrance Day and I find myself thinking about their youngest son, David, who was killed in the First World War.
David is the only one for whom I have baptismal information, thanks to Father Gerry McLaughlin, the Archivist for the Roman Catholic Church in Kingston, Jamaica. He was baptized by Father Joseph Dupont who wrote in the register:

"On the 6th of August 1876 I baptized David Rodrigues Dacosta, born 7th July last, son of Joseph Rodrigues Dacosta and Hannah Lindo. The sponsors were Charles H. Nunes & Josepha Duquesnay."

Apart from that I knew very little about David, discovering bits and pieces of information about him as I researched the family. In searching for information about his older sister, Ida, and her children, I came across an immigration record for young Ida Clementina, age 17, sailing from Liverpool to New York on May 26 1913, going to her mother, Mrs. Ida Couch, at 152nd Street, New York City. Ida gave her address in London as that of her uncle, D. R. Da Costa, 149 Strand. This is how I discovered that David was living in London. Again, when I was following the saga of Ida and Frederick Walter Couch, I discovered them on a passenger list travelling from Jamaica to England in 1892. Listed with them was their infant son, Frederick Joseph, along with a Master Da Costa, age 16, who must have been David. Perhaps he had decided to seek his fortune in England. Strangely enough, his father, Joseph, had named him along with Hannah, as an executor of his will made July 19, 1910, a few months before he died. I wonder why Joseph named David who was living in England, as his executor, rather than his other son, Eugene, who was right there in Jamaica.

Once the 1901 British census became available I went looking for David and found him lodging with one Alfred Collins, an engraver in gold and silver, living at 52 Bromar Road in Camberwell. David’s occupation was given as journalist and author. I was also able to find David on various passenger lists between England and New York as well as Jamaica. In November 1909 David sailed on the RMS Mauretania from Liverpool to New York. He was still lodging with Alfred Collins and his family, and indicated that he was in transit to Jamaica. I imagine that he was going to see his father, Joseph, who was most likely ill at this time, as he suffered from chronic heart disease. David then sailed from Jamaica aboard the ss Clyde on January 19, 1910 en route to New York, intending to return to England. However, he returned to Jamaica on August 6, 1910, sailing from Avonmouth to Kingston on board the Port Henderson. No doubt by this time his father Joseph’s health had deteriorated. Joseph died September 26, 1910.

David remained for some time in Jamaica to help settle his father’s estate because he does not show up in the 1911 census -- his landlord, Alfred Collins, is shown living with his family at 41 Larkhall Rise, Clapham. David himself returns to England on board the Elders & Fyffe ship, ss Nicoya, arriving in Manchester on May 8, 1911.

It was purely by chance that I discovered David’s name on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website. He is commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial, near Ieper, Belgium. It is one of the four memorials to the missing in Belgian Flanders, covering the area known as the Ypres Salient. David was killed on October 13, 1917. According to the information on the site he was a private with the 10th Battalion, Sherwood Foresters (Notts. And Derby Regiment). He was 41 years old. I immediately searched for his war record and was fortunate to find both his attestation papers as well as other documents, and also the war diaries of the Sherwood Foresters on the Documents Online section of The National Archives. Curiously, David did not join the Sherwood Foresters but the Royal Flying Corps, on July 31, 1916. He was forty years old and gave his address as 58 Danville Road, Camberwell, London, S.E. He listed his occupation as journalist, was not married and gave his mother’s name – Hannah Da Costa, 54 East Queen Street, Kingston Jamaica -- as next of kin. He was described as 5 ft. 9 inches (the Da Costas are not tall!).

This is the badge of the Royal Flying Corps. According to his statement of services, David remained in England from July 31 1916 till April 27 1917, and then was sent to France from April 28 1917 until his death on October 13, 1917. He was listed as a private, regimental number 41271, in the Royal Flying Corps, military wing, stationed at South Farnborough, as of July 31 1916, then on September 24, 1917, he was compulsorily transferred to the 10th Battalion, Nottingham and Derbyshire Regiment, retaining his present rate of pay, but with a new service number, 72329.

This is the badge of the 10th Battalion, Sherwood Foresters.

Another document in his records indicates that he belonged to Group 41 (Journalist) and had been attached to Balloon Party, and was also attached to 63rd R. N. Div. 1.B.D. for training as infantry personnel. It is not clear to me why he was transferred.

According to the war diaries I found on line the 10th Battalion was stationed in October 1917 outside of Hazebrouck, through which thousands of British soldiers passed en route for Ypres or the Somme. It became an Army Headquarters in October 1914. The war diary for the time of David’s death does not indicate any action on the 13th of October, but that there were casualties on October 12th

It reads as follows:
“The enemy continued their counterattack during the day – all of which were dispersed by M.G. (machine gun) fire and artillery fire. Congratulated on the information sent back to Div. and Brigade. Observation forts were established at CONDIE HQ & MILLERS HOUSES. Number of casualties during the day were officers killed 2, wounded 4, and O.R. (other ranks) killed approximately 15. Wounds 150.”

Perhaps David was among the wounded and died later, but based on the fact that he has no known grave it would seem that his body was not found and he would have been considered killed in action.

This has been a long post but I wanted on this day to remember David Rodrigues Da Costa and his ultimate sacrifice in 1917.

"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;

Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn;

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We shall remember them. " – For the Fallen, Lawrence Binyon

Hannah's Children -- Ida Clementina Da Costa

I never knew the children of Joseph and Hannah Da Costa. What I do know about them I have managed to glean from various sources, including the Daily Gleaner, and such genealogy databases as Ancestry and Findmypast. The picture that emerges about Ida, the eldest, shows her to have been a particularly resilient person. She was one of the witnesses when her parents married and would have been about seventeen or eighteen at the time. As the eldest she must have been responsible for her younger brothers. Perhaps she worked with her parents in the Commercial Hotel. At any rate, at the age of twenty-one she married an Englishman, from Cornwall, Frederick Walter Couch.

Frederick Walter Couch, aged 28, arrived in Jamaica in 1886, according to a notice in the Gleaner of November 10th of that year. He left behind him three children and their mother, to come to Jamaica as a master tailor in the employ of Richard Recuero, whose business, El Fenix, was located at 117 Harbour Street.

The item in the Gleaner, which referred to Frederick as “Mr. Crouch, a celebrated Continental cutter”, stated that he had been engaged by the firm of Messrs. Recuero and Co. “for their outfitting establishment which has just been opened at the corner of Temple Lane and Harbour Street.”

We don’t know how and when Frederick met Ida. They were married 6 May 1891 at St. George’s College, then located at 26 North Street, by the Rev. Fr. Patrick J. Hogan, S.J. Frederick stated that he was a bachelor, a merchant, aged 31 … he was actually 33 … father, Frederick Couch, and gave his address as Lilias Cottage, Hope, St. Andrew. Ida was listed as a spinster, age 21, of 101 Harbour Street. No father was named on the record but Joseph Da Costa was one of the witnesses along with an Agnes Maud MacDonald.

Did Ida know that Frederick had been in a relationship in England with a woman named Emily Jane Prout, with whom he had fathered five children (two of whom had since died)? No marriage has ever been found for Frederick and Emily, although she claimed to be his wife on birth registrations of their children. I am sure that Ida as a devout Catholic, as was her mother Hannah, would not have knowingly entered into a bigamous marriage. At any rate, she traveled with Frederick and their first child, Frederick Joseph, born 9 November 1891, to England in June of 1892 and it appears that they stayed with Frederick’s father and mother, Frederick and Amelia, at 19 Westgate Street, Launceston, Cornwall, as that is where their second child, Eugene Adrian, was born on the 21st July 1893. What then does this say about Frederick’s relationship with Emily Jane Prout? Was Ida welcomed because she and Frederick were married?

Frederick had apparently parted company with Recuero and Company, a provisional order of bankruptcy having been filed against the company according to the Gleaner of October 20, 1891, and had entered into partnership with Octave Lay of 29 King Street.

Ida and her child, Frederick Joseph, must have returned to Jamaica about 1894, as her third child, Violet, was born there, on May 22, at “The Laurels”, St. Andrew. Ida was the one who registered the birth. We cannot be sure that Frederick had returned with them. He certainly sailed from Southampton on November 10, 1894, for New York, but he must have returned to Jamaica some time after that, as their fourth child, Ida Winifred, was born 15 February 1896, also at “The Laurels”. Once again the birth was registered by her mother, Ida. Frederick, meanwhile, was again on the move where his career was concerned. A new advertisement appeared in the Gleaner of April 5, 1895, in which there is no mention of Octave Lay.

The ad is hard to read but the text at the bottom states: “I the original F. W. Couch begs [sic] to notify the public in general that I have no connection whatever with any other firm in the Parade”.

What happened after that to the family is somewhat of a mystery. From what I’ve learned it appears that Frederick deserted Ida and her children and was not heard from for some time. He supposedly traveled to California and may well have been in San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake, as a result of which he returned to Jamaica and resumed his relationship with his wife. On 17 December 1907, their fifth and last child, Stanley Noel, was born at 34 Victoria Avenue, Kingston. Shortly after, according to what I have been told, Frederick once again deserted the family, supposedly sailing to South America. No other information about him could be found until the following notice appeared in the Gleaner in July and August of 1915.

This was very curious, as from what I’ve been told, no one ever stated that Frederick had returned to Jamaica and Ida certainly was no longer living with him. Her father, Joseph, had left her £300 in his will, which must have been a great help to her as her situation cannot have been easy. One by one the family left Jamaica. Her daughter, Ida Winifred, traveled to England and spent some time with her uncle, David, in London, and from there sailed to New York where Eugene, her older brother, was living, having gone to the United States in 1912. He became a naturalized citizen in 1922. Ida and Stanley must also have gone to New York at that time although I have not been able to find a record of their sailing, so they probably were not even in Jamaica when Frederick returned. Ida apparently traveled back and forth between New York and Jamaica. I found her in 1921, sailing with Violet and Stanley and by herself in 1924 again traveling to New York. On the 1924 manifest she indicated that she had been living in the U.S. between 1912 and 1924. She described herself on the ship’s manifests on both occasions as a widow … so was Frederick dead, or did Ida consider him to be as good as dead? Again, we don’t know. She and Stanley eventually returned to Jamaica, as did Frederick Joseph and Violet.

By a strange coincidence, Stanley worked for some time at Desnoes & Geddes, bottlers of Red Stripe Beer among other beverages, about the same time that my father, Michael Levy, worked there. Did they know that they were cousins? Who knows? It’s another one of the family mysteries that probably will never be solved.

Joseph and Hannah Da Costa

Once again I have been tardy in updating my blog. I feel that I have left Joseph and Hannah Rodrigues Da Costa in limbo while I dealt with other responsibilities. It's way past time to get back to their story -- a story I've managed to piece together using what records I could find about them and their family as well as stories in the Jamaica Gleaner. It's hard to put together a family history when you have no context, only names to go by, so I've been really lucky to find various bits of information in the Gleaner which have helped me enormously.

Joseph was the proprietor of the Commercial Rooms at 101 Harbour Street, as per an advertisement in the 1891 Kingston Directory, which appears on the Jamaican Family Search website as follows:

Commercial Rooms

101 Harbour Street (Upstsirs)

Bar & Billiard Saloon

Joseph DaCosta, Proprietor

N. B. Telegrams received daily, and can be read immediately on arrival. Also late English and American papers.

Telephone 167

Besides this ad he also advertised regularly in the Jamaica Gleaner. One of the earliest ads I found was this one in the February 15th, 1894 Gleaner:

Joseph seems to have imported all sorts of goodies for sale at the Commercial Rooms so he was quite the entrepreneur. Most of the ads I found were of this nature.

How did Joseph come to own the Commercial Rooms in the first place? Well, based on a brief article I found in the Gleaner of January 6, 1886, it appears that Hannah, his wife, was the original owner and Joseph was her manager. (At this time they were not married though they had had three children together.) The report in the Gleaner stated that Hannah, as proprietress of the Commercial Hotel, had appeared in District Court charged with keeping her hotel open later than eleven o'clock and also "unlawfully and knowingly permitting disorderly conduct in the same hotel on the night of the 9th December last." The defence was that on the night in question a large group of disorderly sailors, armed with marlin spikes, had entered the hotel "for the purpose of avenging an insult that one of their comrades had received the night before. Seeing that they meant mischief, Mr. Joseph DaCosta, the manager of the hotel, did his best to induce them to leave quietly." Fortunately the defence was accepted and his Honour decided in favour of the defendant.

Joseph's bravery did not go unrewarded as he and Hannah were married two years later on November 22, 1888, and from then on it is Joseph's name that is associated with the hotel and billiard rooms. Many ads appeared in the Gleaner extolling the various imported foods that Joseph had brought in. Joseph was also involved in horse racing. An ad in the Gleaner in 1891 for the Cumberland Penn Races stated that tickets for the grounds, stands and carriage enclosure could be purchased at the Commercial Hotel, at four shillings and ten shillings and sixpence respectively for the Grand Stand and Special Stand. An interesting sidelight to Joseph's career, particularly as his son, Eugene became quite the turfite and even wrote a book on the history of horse-racing in Jamaica.

Joseph died at the relatively young age of sixty-three in 1910 of chronic heart disease, certified by Dr. F. H. Saunders. His obituary in the Gleaner of September 27th, 1910, referred to him as "well known for his sterling character and his great business ability. All those who came in contact with him -- and his friends were legion -- admired his pleasant disposition, his quiet demeanour, and his charitable qualities."

Hannah outlived her husband for many years, dying at her home in Rae Town on 27 April 1925. Her obituary in the Gleaner spoke of her as charming in her manner and a pleasure to converse with.