Frederick Walter Couch Redux

I have just recently received information from someone researching the Couch family which sheds more light … and more confusion … on the mysterious and elusive Frederick Walter Couch. According to the newspaper, the Straits Times, of October 27, 1913, a “Mr. F. W. Couch, of John Little & Co., goes home on leave by the P. & O. Delta Friday next.” The Straits Times is an English language newspaper published in Singapore and was established in 1845 during British colonial rule. John Little & Co. is a chain of department stores located in Singapore, which was also established there in 1845. So, was Frederick Walter Couch employed by them in Singapore in 1913 as a master tailor? Although family story has him decamping to South America, did he perhaps set out for the Far East instead?

We know that Frederick Walter Couch shows up again in Kingston, in 1915, according to his advertisement in the Gleaner, claiming that he and his partner, H. H. Scott, have just returned from the American Military Camps. Where were these camps? I did a bit of searching on line and came up with the idea … which may be completely wrong … that perhaps Frederick made his way to the Philippines, as this was during the Philippine-American War, and there would have been American army camps there. If so, did he then leave there to return to Jamaica?

My correspondent also pointed out to me something I had missed – that Frederick traveled in October 1917 from Kingston to Liverpool on the ss Tortuguero, an Elders & Fyffe “banana boat”. He gave his occupation as “master tailor”.

The phrase “unmitigated gall” might have been invented for Frederick Walter Couch. Who would have thought that he would have returned to Jamaica, after deserting wife and family? And what eventually happened to him? That is something that still has to be researched

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.

To Canada From Jamaica, With Love

Happy Birthday, Canada! You're looking pretty good for 142! Wish we all could age as well.

I speak as an expat Jamaican who has made her home here for the past forty-nine years, more than twice the years I spent in my birthplace. Canada is home to many Jamaicans, expats who came here for many reasons ... perhaps they went to school or university here and decided to stay; they may have married a Canadian, as I did, and thus made it their home. Many Jamaicans came here in the seventies, the unhappy times in Jamaica, when Canada seemed to offer a safe place, a better place to live and raise our children.

Whatever the reasons, many of us have lived here for a long time ... we have adapted, well sort of. I'll never get used to winter. Mon pays, ce n'est pas l'hiver ... give me spring, summer and fall ... but we survive. Sure, we miss the tropical weather, the sea breezes, the easy-going laid-back life ... soon come, mon! We miss the bright colours of the bouganvillea, the poinciana, the flame of the forest. We miss the food ... oh, we can replicate it, but is isn't quite the same. We miss the salt air of the sea, the soft white sand between our toes ...

But we're here, Canada is our home, and we are happy and safe and living in the best possible country on earth. So, Happy Birthday, Canada! And many more of them!

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.

Discovering Da Costas: And Joseph Makes Three

Today is Mothering Sunday in the Anglican Church, a day when mothers are celebrated. Mothering Sunday has a long tradition in English customs as it was the day when those in service were given the day off to visit their family, and it was also the day when one returned to the mother church, such as the Cathedral in one's Diocese. Mothering Sunday falls in the middle of Lent and is a break from the abstinence of the season; the tradition is to serve Simnel Cake and give the ladies a flower to celebrate the day. I bring this up because I'm feeling rather guilty for neglecting the family blog I've been mothering these past several months ... so, once again, I'm returning belatedly to the Da Costa story.



In my last post I wrote about Melbourne and his family and how I found out about his parents, Jacob and Selina Rodrigues Da Costa, who were also, of course, the parents of my grandmother Alice. I knew that Melbourne and Alice had a brother, Joseph, but I had not so far done any research on him. I did have a photo of a tombstone in Calvary Roman Catholic Cemetery which was very likely that of my great uncle, Joseph Rodrigues Da Costa.


So I started doing some research on Joseph. I went looking first of all for a marriage record for a Joseph Rodrigues Da Costa, figuring that he would most likely have been married around the same time as Melbourne. I did find such a record, on 22 November 1888, which stated that Joseph Rodrigues Da Costa, a tavern keeper, age 41, son of Jacob Rodrigues Da Costa, had married Hannah Lindo, a spinster, age 38, daughter of Jacob Lindo, at 101 Harbour Street (which both had given on the record as their abode), by a William J. Brown, the witness being one Ada Clement Da Costa. It seemed very likely that Joseph was the brother of Melbourne and Alice, as his father was also Jacob Rodrigues Da Costa, so the next question was, did this couple have children?

With the assistance of Father Gerry McLaughlin at the Roman Catholic Archives in Kingston, I was able find out more about Joseph and Hannah. They did have children, three in fact, all of whom were born quite some time before the marriage of their parents! The children were Ida Clementina, born 1871, Eugene, born 1873 and David, born 1876. Father Gerry also found a record of Joseph's marriage in the register, in Latin, entered by the Rev. Fr. William Spillman, S.J., as follows:

"A. D. 1888, die 22 Novembris conjuncti sunt in Matrimonium Joseph R. Da Costa & Hannah Lindo a P. Guls. Burns, S. J. praesentibus testibus D. M. Leon, Ida Clement Da Costa. Ex reg. civili G. Spillmann, S. J."

The witness, Ada Clement Da Costa was in fact their eldest daughter, Ida Clementina, who would have been seventeen years old. Why did it take so long for Joseph and Hannah to get married? What was the impediment? That's probably something that we'll never know. Was Hannah Jewish, and was there some resistance on the part of her family to her marrying a Catholic? What evidence I've been able to find shows that Hannah was a devout Catholic, but it's possible that she might have been a convert to Catholicism.

My next step was to find Joseph's death record and see if he had left a will. Success on both counts! Joseph died at 57 East Queen Street on 26 September 1910 of chronic heart disease, as certified by Dr. F. H. Saunders. The informant on the death record was his youngest son, David, who had been living in England but had come to Jamaica during his father's illness. And Joseph did make a will, which was probated in the Supreme Court of Jamaica.

His will gives the definitive proof that he was indeed brother to Melbourne and Alice as in it he left "to my brother Melbourne DaCosta one hundred pounds and to my sister Alice Levy one hundred pounds." He appointed his wife, Hannah as joint executor with his younger son, David; he left £300 to each of his children, and the rest and residue of his estate to his wife, Hannah.

Knowing as little as I did about this part of the family, I wanted to find out more about Joseph and Hannah, and I was fortunate enough to learn more by researching in the pages of the Jamaica Gleaner on line. In my next post I'll describe what I found there.

And now for a little shameless self-promotion. I've just today received an email from Blog Jamaica who are featuring my blog this week! Naturally, I'm pleased!