The History Girls

by Lynne Benton

Traquair House, in the Scottish Borders, is the oldest inhabited House in Scotland. It dates back to 1107, and although it was originally built as a hunting lodge for Scottish kings and queens, it has been lived in continuously by the Stuart family since 1491.

In the early 1700’s the political situation in Scotland was very unsettled, with the Catholic James II now exiled in France and deposed by his daughter Mary and her Protestant husband, William of Orange. Many Catholic Scots were fiercely against interference from the English Protestants, and remained loyal to James. Charles Stuart, the 4^th Earl of Traquair, was a staunch Catholic, and became one of James’s band of supporters known as the Jacobites, who worked secretly to restore the Stuarts to the throne.

It was on a visit to Traquair House that I first learnt the fascinating story of Lady Winifred Nithsdale, Charles Stuart’s sister-in-law. I was so interested that I subsequently bought a book called “Lady Nithsdale and the Jacobites”, by Flora Maxwell Stuart, wife of the 20^th Earl and mother of the current Lady Traquair, which tells in more detail the story of this remarkable lady.

In 1715 Lady Winifred’s husband, William Nithsdale, took part in the first Jacobite rebellion and was imprisoned in the Tower of London and sentenced to death. He was kept in solitary confinement on the second floor of the Lieutenant’s Lodgings, well-guarded by warders. It appeared that his only way out was going to be via the scaffold, but his wife did not intend to sit back and let this happen.

With the support, both moral and financial, of her brother-in-law, Charles Stuart, Winifred decided to go to London and find a way of getting William out. Leaving her young daughter at Traquair, she made her way, with only her faithful servant Cecilia Evans for company, to London, about 400 miles away. It was a bitterly cold December, with snow covering the whole country, but this did not deter her. They set off on horseback, avoiding the main roads for fear of being stopped by the government troops, and intending to join the London coach at Newcastle. This took a few days, stopping at wayside inns overnight, but when they reached Newcastle they discovered that the coach was already full. So they rode on to York, hoping to pick up another coach there. At York Winifred did get the last place on the coach, and with Evans riding behind they set off through a fierce blizzard. Their luck didn’t last, however. After about 60 miles the coach became stuck in a snowdrift and could go no further.

Undaunted, Winifred hired two more horses, and she and Evans rode the rest of the way to London, with snow sometimes so deep that the horses were almost buried. Arriving on the point of collapse after their journey, they went to stay with Winifred’s old friends, Mr and Mrs Mills in Duke Street. Despite her exhaustion Winifred went straight to the Tower to visit her husband, where, with a little judicious bribery she persuaded the warders to let her in. She found William pessimistic about her chances of setting him free, but she was still determined to get him out somehow. When she returned to Duke Street, although her hostess insisted on her going to bed for a few days to recover her strength, Winifred’s mind was busy with plans for her husband’s release.

As soon as she was well enough she decided her first port of call was to the king, George I, to beg a pardon for William.

Mrs Mills had a friend called Mrs Morgan who had been to the king’s court several times and knew her way around, so the two women accompanied Winifred.

Unfortunately George refused to listen to Winifred or to read her petition, and furthermore was extremely rude to her, so much so that his courtiers were shocked and told everyone about the incident, which caused his popularity to plummet. (Not surprisingly, he blamed Winifred for this rather than himself, and never forgot nor forgave her.)

That avenue closed to her, Winifred then devised a very daring, plan. She explained it to her hosts and Mrs Morgan, whose help she needed, and they agreed to play their parts. Then, two days before the date set for William’s execution, she returned to the Tower and, smiling at the warders, pretended that her petition for his release had been successful, and dropping a few coins in their hands urged them to drink to the king and the prisoners’ health. Once out of their hearing, she told William what had really happened, but said if he would trust her and do everything she said, she would get him out.

The following day she returned to the Tower for a “final visit” to her husband, this time accompanied by Mrs Morgan, who was wearing an extra petticoat and cloak which would not show. Once in William’s cell Mrs Morgan removed the extra clothes, had a few words with William and left. As Winifred saw her out she asked her in a loud, excited voice to find her maid quickly as she must present one final petition to the Lords that evening. She made certain the warders heard her.

Returning to William’s cell, Winifred begged him to do exactly as she said, and waited for Mrs Mills to come next. Mrs Mills duly arrived, sobbing and holding up a handkerchief to her face as she passed the warders. In William’s room she hastily took off her cloak and petticoat and put on those left by Mrs. Morgan. When Mrs Mills left she walked out with her face exposed and in her new clothes, looking like a different woman. Winifred accompanied her out, asking her loudly to hurry and remind her maid to come for her, so they could go to hear the petition that evening. Again she made certain the warders heard her.

Finally, returning to the cell, she helped William put on Mrs. Mills’ clothes, and told him to go out with her, holding his handkerchief to his face and sobbing as Mrs Mills had done, hoping that the warders would assume it was the same woman. Positioning herself between William and the warders, Winifred appeared to be very agitated as they walked out, and begged “Mrs Mills” to tell her maid to come without delay to accompany her to the Lords to hear the final petition. This gave her the excuse to be in a hurry to leave, and seeing her agitation the warders opened the door and let the disguised William out.

Through the doorway Winifred could see Mr Mills, who was to take William to a safe house, and Evans waiting for her as promised. But she still had the most difficult part of her plan to do.

Returning to William’s cell, she hurriedly shut the door behind her and talked to him as if he was still there, giving his replies in a gruff voice. She waited until she guessed enough time had elapsed for him to have been taken to the safe house, and then said goodnight, adding loudly that she was afraid something serious must have happened to delay her maid, so she would have to go on her own. She said she would come again to see him that evening, and hoped to have good news by then.

She then shut the door, carefully pulling the little string that lifted the latch through to the other side, so that it could only be opened from inside. She told the servant waiting to light the candles that her husband was saying his prayers and didn’t want to be disturbed, and then, bidding the warders goodnight and muttering frenziedly about the petition, she hurried down the stairs and outside, got into a hackney coach and left.

Having released William from the Tower, it was now imperative to get him away from London as quickly as possible. After a few days in hiding, with the help of Mr and Mrs Mills and other sympathetic friends, William was disguised as a footman and smuggled across the Channel to France, where the Nithsdales had friends and relatives. He begged her to go with him, but she insisted on returning to Scotland first, to collect their small daughter.

This was not quite as easy as it sounded, since she was well aware that George was furious that William had escaped and she was afraid she might be accused of helping him. However, since the weather had by now greatly improved, she was undaunted by the prospect of riding all the way back to Scotland, and this she did, once again taking a cross-country route to avoid being noticed.

There, having been reunited with her daughter and arranged for the contents of her house to be transferred to Traquair for safekeeping, she followed William to France and, ultimately, to Italy where they lived for the rest of their lives.

However, Winifred’s troubles were still not quite over, for although she knew William was profligate, it wasn’t until he died in 1744 that she realised he had left huge debts for her to deal with. But deal with them she did, and managed to pay them all off within one year.

A remarkable lady indeed.

She died peacefully in Rome in 1749.

A small postscript to this story: the guide at Traquair House told us that in 1739 the 5^th Earl of Traquair, like his father a staunch Jacobite, had some splendid gates built at the top of the Avenue leading to the house. With statues of bears on each gatepost they were known as the Bear Gates. Six years later, however, after a visit from James's grandson, Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Earl was so incensed by the behaviour of the next English Protestant king, George II, that he gave orders for the Bear Gates to be closed and locked, and swore that they would never be opened until a Stuart king sat on the throne again.

Accordingly they have been locked ever since 1745. However, the guide said, since Prince William is a Stuart through his mother’s line, when William becomes king the Bear Gates will once again be opened.

This post is a tribute to my father, who turns 100 today. The above picture of him was taken a few years ago, on an earlier birthday, though I don't remember which one.

In February 1993, I asked my dad to tell me something about his family history and I took notes on what he said. With his permission I am reproducing these notes below to mark the day. The conversation took place shortly after I began reading widely about the Holocaust, and that explains the nature of some of the information I elicited; I hadn't talked to him in any detail about the fate of his family before.

Notes from conversations of 10-11 February 1993

Dad's mother and father were Etta (Ethel) and Meyer Ger, born in Shadowo, Lithuania: Meyer in 1869, Etta three or four years later. Etta's maiden name was Klevanski (deriving from the small town of Klevan). Her father was a bookkeeper and died before Dad was born. Dad has some memory of his maternal grandmother, however.

Etta had twin sisters, who married twin brothers. The son of one of these couples played a role in the defence of Leningrad against the Germans, and was made a Hero of Leningrad. Dad met him on his visit to Russia in 1972. The daughter of the other couple was living at this time in Stettin (Szczecin) on the Baltic.

Dad's paternal grandfather, Meyer's father Jacov, was a wallpaper manufacturer when wallpaper was still made by hand. In the late 1890s he established a factory in Minsk. He died before Dad was born, Dad's paternal grandmother after that in about 1919.

Meyer's elder brother, Chaim, went to South Africa and changed his name to Harris. In the 1880s or 1890s, by now established as a grocer, he joined a pioneer column in Mafeking and went to Salisbury; he was on its first town council. He died in 1912. Another uncle, Samuel went to Toronto in the 1890s, also becoming Harris. He may have been a soapbox leftist. He was in any case a tobacconist and evidently quite well-to-do, because when Meyer later lost his factory, Samuel sent him £100, no mean sum at the time. Meyer had two sisters as well, one of them (surname Tigger) also going to Toronto, in about 1927. The other went to Africa, and she was in Nyabira in Southern Rhodesia when Dad arrived in August 1928 to work in Shabani.

The Harris in Rhodesia (Chaim) had been a very wealthy man, owning a goldmine at Shamva and land in Salisbury. He married a younger woman. After he died, she in turn married a younger man. They sold the mine and lost or misused the wealth. The Harris children went to England.

Dad had three sisters, all older than he: Rachil, born in 1900, Sonya in 1904, and Tsila (Celia) in 1908. The family lived in Minsk throughout the Revolution. They had a wonderful apartment. During the Civil War, first the Germans and then the Poles occupied Minsk. Pushed back by Budienny, the Poles burned down the industrial area of the town before leaving, destroying the wallpaper factory. Meyer now set up a hardware business, but things became increasingly unpleasant for him. He was accused of being a speculator, arrested at a club he belonged to, and spent a month in prison. In 1920 a decree was passed allowing wartime refugees to return to independent Lithuania, and the family, though not actually refugees, took advantage of it to return in 1921. They travelled by train, in goods wagons, and settled in Panevezys.

Ger was now changed to Geras, the endings -as and -is being usual for masculine names in Lithuania. Meyer died not long afterwards: in 1923 from pneumonia.

The two older girls, Rachil and Sonya, were members of the Left SRs. Rachil went to the University at Kovna, and Sonya (who had earlier studied at a musical conservatory in Kiev) did also. Both of them were in the Faculty of Humanities. They became Marxists. The Communist Party was illegal and their activity, accordingly, conspiratorial. As the parents had hoped the move to Lithuania would help integrate the daughters in the Jewish bourgeoisie, this was unwelcome to them. In 1926 Rachil stood as a candidate for a CP-front party. The Social-Democrats won the election and there followed a political liberalization, the growth of trade unions, a hopeful revolutionary mood - and a coup by the army. Rachil was arrested and released on bail. Sonya, too, was arrested, in 1927.

Rachil was sent to a camp for political prisoners. Dad used to take food parcels to her, sometimes carrying secret correspondence. On one occasion he was detained and interrogated, but nothing was found. Discovering his involvement, however, his mother now wrote to relatives in Southern Africa and Canada, in order to get him away. He saw Rachil but not Sonya - now in prison in Siauliai (Shavli) - before he left. Soon afterwards, Tsila was also arrested. Unable to stand the punishment, she gave names, and when she was let out on bail, her comrades sent her to Coventry. Under discipline, her sisters apparently also did so. Forfeiting bail, she and her mother moved to Latvia; they settled initially in Libau. Rachil subsequently escaped from the prison camp and went to the Soviet Union. Sonya contracted tuberculosis, and was released in about 1933. From Southern Rhodesia Dad corresponded with all of them regularly and sent money.

Dad's mother and Tsila were in Riga at the time of the German invasion, Tsila meanwhile having got married and had two children. They were all murdered. Sonya was in Kovno; she was now Joffe through marriage. They took to the roads and she was killed fleeing. There is, or was, a memorial to her husband in Kleipeda (Memel).

[Note: According to Martin Gilbert, 80 per cent of the Jews of Riga were murdered in November and December 1941: they were 'taken to pits in the nearby Rumbuli forest, and shot'; the 'few survivors were put into a forced labour camp'. The Holocaust, pp. 229-30.]

Dad first became aware of the genocide against the Jews in the closing stages of World War II, through press reports. He remembers once in Rome trying to see if he could get any information about the fate of his family. He learned more about the Holocaust in 1945, demobilized and back in Rhodesia; both from the press and from survivors. In 1947 or 1948 he found out from Rachil, who had re-established contact with him via a cousin in Johannesburg, what had happened to his mother and sisters. There were some more details but he has not retained them. He had to establish a new life and went through a period of personal difficulties.

Rachil asked him to stop writing during the anti-Semitic campaign of the early 1950s in the Soviet Union. She was sent into internal exile in Karelia and prohibited from living in the towns there. This ended with the death of Stalin when contact between them was again resumed. Dad saw her in 1972. She had been married and divorced and was Rachil Ger, with one daughter, Galina (then deceased), and a grandson, Ergali, whom Dad met. Ergali's father was from Kazakhstan and had been killed in a 'mining accident' (possibly a nuclear explosion) in the Urals. After she was rehabilitated, Rachil settled in Vilna. She came to visit Dad in Leningrad, staying there with a maternal cousin, Lozick, and also in Moscow, staying with another maternal cousin, Freda.

Information added later: When Dad was born in 1912, the family lived in a house on Rakovskaya Street (10/1) in Minsk: they lived there until 1921.

I shall now say a few more things. The above picture, with my dad on the left, has '1927' written in ink on the back of it; so he would have been 14 or 15. He has told me more than once that his mother sent him away to Africa in part so that he would avoid the problems encountered by his two politicized sisters. I've written something brief about this here and also about Dad's part in the war. Below is a picture of him in wartime. He is in the middle of the group.

In March 2006, he met up with a guy who had been in the same squadron as he was and also called Jack - Jack Ferera. I described the circumstances that led to their meeting in this post; and here is a picture of the two of them.

After the war my dad went into business in Bulawayo. He had a clothing factory for a period, then a button factory, and later one that produced foam rubber. His success in this last enterprise led in due course to a merger with Vitafoam in the UK. He and Mary and their two daughters, Etta and Nita, came to England in 1965, settling initially in Wilmslow. They then moved down to London at about the time of Dad's retirement in 1969 or 1970. He was admired and held in great respect by everyone he worked with.

Dad has also been, throughout, a good father to his children by both of his marriages - to Beryl, my mom, and then to Mary, who died in October 2004 - a man of great generosity, and with an indefatigable thirst for knowledge about political and economic affairs. I learned a lot from him, and we have talked politics (agreeing or disagreeing) from the time I first started to take an interest in the subject right up to today. Until his eyesight began to fail, he played a pretty damn good game of Bridge.

Here is a picture of Dad on my sister Sue's wedding day, with my sister El there, too, as Sue's bridesmaid.

And here, finally, is one of him at home, at ease, in his pomp.

PS. A few nights ago, I had a lovely meal here in Cambridge with Norm's second cousin, Professor Bill Harris and his wife, Professor Christine Holt. They live in Newnham and we spent a very enjoyable evening discussing the connections between us, and the serendipity of living in the same place at the same time. Bill and Christine are neuroscientists and when I came home and looked them up on Google, I was in total awe of their achievements. Bill is the grandson of Samuel, who has the added lustre of being the founder of Toronto's first delicatessen. Norm was the grandson of Meyer, one of the three brothers mentioned above. We were all brought into contact with one another recently through the good offices of Jeff Rose, from Canada, who searched out the Harris genealogy and discovered hidden Gerases. Jeff is making a comprehensive family tree and it will be many-branched, and various. The Canadian branch changed Geras to Harris, which was probably sensible, but I for my part, having married into this family, am very glad to be a more unusual (if often misspelt and mispronounced) Geras.


Traditional Irish Jack O'Lantern - Photo: rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid	b

Jack Geras at 100

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