Toy boat

Over the breakfast olive loaf, bought to bridge the gap while the new loaves come on-stream, I happened to notice that the boys and girls of Epsom College are at it again, trying once more to sail a toy boat across the Atlantic, with the previous attempt having been noticed at reference 1. Quite a large toy at 1.8m. We await developments.

In the meantime, I should like to put on record the important fact that I have a family connection to Epsom College. Not just toffs that get to go there.

So, Neville Percy, the son of one Ebenezer Toller, a doctor who was, for a time, superintendent of the Gloucester District County Lunatic Asylum, also went to Epsom College, on the strength of being the son of a doctor, a speciality of the college. My further information is that: 'Neville followed his brother Seymour ... to St Thomas’s Medical School. Unlike Seymour, he was better known as a good rugby player than as an outstanding student. He graduated in 1892 and continued at St Thomas’s for a few years before going to work for P&O ... He died in 1900, aged 31'. While Victor Conyers Ebenezer, another son, went to the college a few years previously, from 1878 to 1880. He ended up as a small cheese in the Post Office - but at least he lasted the longest, dying in 1915, while his widow died in Dun Laoghaire in 1949, the year that I was born.

According to the obituary of Ebenezer senior in the British Medical Journal of January 19, 1907, '[Ebenezer senior] was a member of a remarkable Bedfordshire family. His grandfather and three great uncles were each between 7 ft. and 8 ft. in height, and his four great-aunts are described in an old engraving as the four beauties of Bedfordshire'.

I am still checking, but I think our nearest common ancestor is one John Toller (John and James seem to have been common names in the family), born in 1727 in Bedfordshire. The county which was also home to some BH farming relatives on her mother's side.

And making a connection to the asylums of the immediate BH family and to Epsom College. Triple whammy.

Perhaps if we are very bored we will make the trip up to Epsom College and see if they will open their old books for us. I assume that a place of this sort will keep old books.

PS: olive loaf a bit chewy but not bad, the culinary solecism of using green as well as black olives aside. See reference 3.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/model-boats.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/on-saying-cat-again.html. An entirely different sort of toy boat.

Reference 3: http://theflourstation.com/.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/claim-to-fame.html. A previous notice, concerning the tallest of the tallies mentioned above.