A poor Pig but mine own (part 1)

Margaret Long

As an life long family tree researcher, you get familiar with the mechanics of mapping someone’s life. To be perfectly honest, sometimes the process is incredibly dull and you find that all you are doing is trawling through census records and birth, marriage and death records without ever actually getting to know the person.

At the start of my research into the life of Margaret Long, I was beginning to think that this investigation would be rather tedious. I had already encountered Margaret’s early life through researching the story of her mother, Maud Willes Johnson, and I thought I knew what would happen in Margaret’s life. However, Margaret’s story went in a direction that I simply couldn’t have predicted.

Margaret was born in 1889, the second of three daughters born to Robert and Maud Long. She had a comfortable childhood, living at Wye House, Marlborough (as per 1891 census), Ludford Park (1901 census) and Rowden Hill House (1911 census). Margaret’s engagement to A. R. Uvedale Corbett was announced in the March 18th 1911 edition of the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard. Andrew Reynard Uvedale Corbett was the grandson of Uvedale Corbett of Aston Hall,Oswestry, and is the 'page mate' of Margaret. A year later, that engagement was called off (Gentlewoman, 2nd March 1912).

At the end of 1913, the engagement was announced between Margaret and Jack Giffard (Wiltshire Times and Trowbridge Advertiser, 20 December 1913). Jack was an officer in the Royal Horse Artillery, and a near neighbour of Margaret from Marlborough. They married in January 1914 at Christ Church, Bradford on Avon. After the wedding, Jack and Margaret honeymooned in London and Warminster. Margaret’s travelling costume was “hyacinth blue with skunk collar and a long black pony skin coat” (Clifton Society, 15th January 1914).

Jack’s service records do not exist – many records were destroyed in a fire during WW2 – but his medal card survives. This shows that Jack was a member of the British Expeditionary Force. He kept a personal diary of his time on the Western Front, which alongside the diaries of 2 of his brothers, was published in 2003. Whilst Jack was fighting on the Western Front, Margaret gave birth to two of their four daughters. Violet Margaret was born in 1915 and Sybelle Francis Maude was born in 1917. Also in 1917, Jack was posted to New York as part of the Anglo-Russian sub-committee. Margaret accompanied him, and their third daughter, Jacqueline Bruce Ryecroft was born there in 1918. In the New Years Honours list of 1918, Jack was awarded the OBE.

Eleanor Genista, Jack and Margaret’s youngest daughter, was born in 1923. It is around this time that Margaret began to gain recognition as a dog trainer. The Western Chronicle (29th February 1924) identified Margaret as a “well known trainer of Alsatian Wolf Dogs”; Margaret was also the Honorary Secretary of the Alsatian Sheep, Police and Army Dog Society (Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 31st January 1924). Through 1925, Margaret and her dogs, such as Crumstone Flora and Crumstone Aello, competed with some success such as at competitions held at Crystal Palace (see image from Daily Mirror, 12 October 1925 featuring Margaret and Crumstone Aello).

Sometime between then and 1927 the family emigrated to South Rhodesia to take up farming. Passenger manifests has a Lt Col. J Giffard, aged 42, travelling to South Africa aboard the SS Ceramic, but there is no sign of Margaret or the children being in South Rhodesia until a newspaper article in The Tatler (16th November 1927) features a photo of Jaqueline and Genista (Eleanor) Giffard. Major Robert Long, Margaret’s father, also emigrated to South Rhodesia around the same time. Records from South Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) are challenging to find, but this collection of armorial records from Zimbabwe show that the Giffards farmed at M’Lembwe, Banket , and Major Long resided in Salisbury (now named Harare).

The marriage between Margaret and Jack did not survive for long in Rhodesia. I have not been able to find a reason for the divorce, but one must have taken place because in New Zealand in 1930 a marriage took place between Margaret and Harold Desmond Griffin. The 4 daughters of Jack and Margaret stayed with their father in Southern Rhodesia, and I have not found any children born to Margaret and Harold.

Margaret and Harold returned to England on 22nd December 1935. The passenger manifest from the SS Rangitiki shows that their initial address in the UK to be Campbell Sudthorpe Lodge, Ham Common. Although no such place seems to exist, there is a Sudbrook Lodge on Ham Common which was part of the estate created by John Campbell Duke of Argyll.

From there, Harold and Margaret moved to Chilling Street Cottage, Sharpthorne where Harold worked as farm manager at Hurstwood Farm. In 1937, Harold was summonsed to appear at the Haywards Heath Petty Sessions, charged with causing unnecessary suffering to a sheep (Mid Sussex Times 27 April 1937) in a case brought by the RSPCA. The case was dismissed as being carelessness rather than neglect; ironically, a month earlier Margaret had begun advertising her boarding kennels (the Crumstone Kennels) as being recommended by the RSPCA (Eastbourne Gazette, 31 March 1937).

As well as running kennels and breeding Alsatians, Margaret was also training dogs for a variety of reasons. One of her dogs, Storm, appeared as Black Wull in the film “Owd Bob” (Dundee Evening Telegraph, 22 September 1937). Towards the end of 1937, the Crumstone Kennels had relocated to “Grayshott”, Eastwick Drive, Bookham (Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 10th December 1937). An article in the Liverpool Echo (6th Jan 1965) helps to shed some light on what happened next: “both Storm and Irma [another Crumstone dog] had been trained as guard and messenger dogs and for six months they served as an emergency messenger service for the A.R.P. at Leatherhead, Surrey…….This service was followed by a government request for Mrs Griffin to take the dogs to Bookham to guard an important factory there.”

At the time of the compilation of the 1939 register, Margaret was living at Woodlands Road, Pilgrims Way, Little Bookham. She states her profession as “Poultry, Goats, Training of dogs for war or police”; soon after this Margaret was recruited to be a trainer at the first British War Dog school at Staverton Court, Cheltenham. Storm and Irma went with Margaret. Storm became a guard dog, mine detector and demonstrator, whilst Irma and Margaret pioneered what we would understand as “search and rescue”. Irma, with Margaret working as her handler, would scour the wreckages of bombed houses and buildings to find people trapped in the wreckage. So sensitive was Irma, that she was able to identify whether a trapped person was dead or alive. Some of Irma and Margaret’s stories have been published in the book “Dogs of Courage” by Claire and Christopher Campbell (published 2015). In November 1944, as part of the Civil Defence, Margaret set up kennels in Station Road, Loughton to cover rescue missions in North East London. Crumstone Irma and Crumstone Psyche were both stalwarts of these kennels.

Crumstone Irma was awarded the Dicken Medal and along with Margaret formed part of the 8000 workers who attended the Civil Defence workers stand down parade in 1946. Also in 1946, Margaret was awarded the British Empire Medal for her work with the Guard Dog Training School.

In the years following WW2, Margaret continued to forge the Crumstone Kennel reputation, often appearing at dog shows and fetes with the celebrated Irma and Psyche. Electoral rolls from the 1950s show Margaret living at 3 Mill Lane, Abingdon.

But what of Harold Griffin? It seems as if Margaret and Harold’s relationship broke down after their return to the UK. In 1950, Harold married Joan Tweddell, and they moved to Scotland where Harold became a farmer. Harold died in hospital in Oban on 3rd March 1968.

Margaret died on 8th May 1972; the address on her probate record a testament to her lifelong career – Crumstone, Nuffield Lane, Crowmarsh, Oxford.