On 24th March 1890 in Boldre, Hampshire, there was a double wedding, when Henry Rawlings, chimney sweep, son of Job, married Elizabeth Hedges and his sister, Freedom Rawlings, daughter of Job, married John Cole, a licensed hawker, son of Elias/Goliath.
Freedom and John, favouring the southern counties of Hampshire, Sussex and Surrey, were to have a considerable family. Their first son, Ernest Minnott Cole, was baptised at Binsted, Hampshire on 23rd September 1888, whilst they were hopping, and two more sons followed, John born in August 1890 and Joby, named for Freedom’s father, in August 1892. Some census records claimed these births in Surrey, but baptisms appear to have been in Hampshire. However, Freedom is unlikely to have been allowed to attend the baptisms of her daughters, Olive, born in May 1895, and baptised on 20th June 1897 at Shalford, St. Mary the Virgin, in Surrey, and Sarah, born in June 1897, and baptised in December 1897 at Southampton, in Hampshire, for Freedom had been sentenced to penal servitude in November of 1896, when her eldest daughter was about 18 months and when she must have been pregnant with her second daughter, Sarah.
Local newspapers had carried the story of a fight, following the ejection of Gypsies from a public house, the Horse Shoes Inn, at East Worldham, Hampshire, in August 1896 and both Freedom and her husband, John, were among those named in the article. During the row, in which stones and bottles were hurled, the owner of the establishment, Henry Newman, was severely wounded by a glass bottle thrown by a ‘woman wearing a white blouse,’ and later identified as Freedom Cole. She was found guilty of the offence and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, whilst John was charged with assault and fined.
Freedom was sent to the Aylesbury gaol, in Buckinghamshire, with a release date of November 1901. She is described in the prison records as 5’3, aged 26, born in Lavant, Sussex, with brown hair, black eyes and two scars on her right cheek. However, she must have gained remission on her sentence, since Freedom is with her family in the 1901 census, and has a baby daughter, Esther, named after Freedom’s mother, born in early October 1900, and so conceived at the beginning of the year. The family are recorded living in a tent at East Worldham, Alton, Hampshire with their six children, together with a 20-year-old Sarah Cole and 18-year-old Albert Cole. The census taker had named these two amongst the children of John and Freedom, but are surely John’s half-siblings, born of his father’s second marriage, following the death of John’s mother, Britannia James, when he was only 3 years old.
Little Esther Cole was not to live long, and her death on 24th August, when she was 10 months’ old, records ill health and a ‘putrefying cough’ for the previous six months. The death certificate shows the family are still at East Worldham, and probably little Esther’s health had been a contributory factor to remaining there. The next year Freedom gave birth to a son, and, perhaps a little ironically, named him Liberty, a name popular amongst the Gypsy and Traveller population.
Now Freedom and her family were travelling again and Liberty was baptised on 9th July 1902 in Molesey, Surrey. The baptism of two more sons followed, Albert baptised in September 1904 in Borden, Hampshire and Goliath, in October 1906, at Ropley in the same county. In Alton, Hampshire, another daughter, Freedom, was baptised in October 1908 and a sibling, Robert, in November 1910 in the same location. By this time John and Freedom had had eleven children, and the 1911 census records the entire family in Hampshire (with the exception of Olive), Ernest, John, Job, Sarah, Liberty, Albert, Goliath, Freedom and Robert, as well as Henry Rawlings, Freedom’s brother, who is lodging with them. The three elder boys, their father and uncle, are all described as general labourers, and Freedom as a hawker. In May 1913 their last child, Henry, was born, named after Freedom’s brother.
When John and Freedom ceased their wandering life perhaps it was surprising that it was not in Hampshire, but in Surrey, that they chose to live, and probably soon after the 1911 census, as the marriages of their children seem to indicate. Their two eldest sons, Ernest and John, married sisters Annie and Maud Daisy Harris, daughters of George and Annie Maria, at Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, as early as 1914. Ernest and Annie were to use the significant family name of Liberty for their son, born in 1915. Annie Cole died early, perhaps the death record in 1925 is hers, and in 1929 Ernest married Annie’s sister, Lily. Ernest’s sister, Olive Cole, who married Thomas Stacey in 1920, a family the Coles often travelled with, also named a son Liberty, born in Surrey in 1921.
Freedom and John Cole settled in Cann’s Cottage, High Street, West Molesey, Surrey, for the remainder of their lives and their extended family can all be found living in the same area. Freedom died and was buried at St. Peter’s, West Molesey, on 30th November 1925, as ‘Freedom Susan Cole, aged 56.’ John Cole’s burial also took place there in May 1928, ‘aged 64’ and their eldest son, Ernest, dying at 43 years of age, was buried at St. Peter’s on 8th December 1931.
The records of 1939 show many of the family are working together: Ernest’s second wife, Lily, now a widow, is recorded as a market garden labourer, along with John Cole’s wife, Maud Daisy. Sarah Cole, married to John Woods in 1935, is also working there, together with her sister, Freedom, married to William Swallow, her brother, Henry Cole, and his wife, Doris. Joby Cole and his wife, Elsie, formerly Selby, are both farm workers.
John Cole, son of John and Freedom, is listed as a groundsman, his son, also named John, works for the Gas Company, as does his brother, Robert Cole, now married to Lily Tillman. Goliath Cole, married to Florence Hopgood, is a labourer for Thames Conservation, along with his brother-in-law, Thomas Stacey, and William Swallow, another brother-in-law, is working in a factory. Liberty Cole, married to Lilian Cooley, is an electric crane driver, his nephew, another Liberty Cole, is a farm carter, and Liberty Stacey, son of Olive, is an apprentice to a marble mason. Only Albert Cole, working as a general labourer, remained unmarried.
But, fascinatingly, there is another Freedom Cole amongst the 1939 records. The family may consider themselves as part of the settled population by this time, but they have clearly not forgotten their roots, and remained close to other Gypsy and Traveller families, with whom they had a shared history. Surely this explains the marriages of Ernest and John to members of the Harris family, Olive to Nathaniel Stacey’s son, Thomas, and Liberty Cole, son of Ernest and Annie, to Freedom/Freda Loveridge in 1938, who therefore became another Freedom Cole.