GREAT GRANDFATHER
JOSEPH REAY/RAY/DAVIS
(1859-1906)
Joseph was baptised on 11th March 1859 and his mother was Naomi Davis, a spinster from 24 Balloon Street, Birmingham. She was likely a girl linked to the Romany Lock family.
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| BALLOON STREET... |
Naomi had married Samuel Reay on Christmas Day 1862, when Joseph was 3 years old, so was likely not Samuel’s son. Although Samuel was listed on the banns certificate as a gun barrel striker and his father as a sawyer, on the 1871 census Samuel himself was described as a wheelwright…
Joseph was 13 and living at 25 Balloon Street in Birmingham at the time of that 1871 census but interestingly, at number 24 was the Davis family, linked to the Reay/Ray family and indeed, there was a Joseph Ray, 25, a gun barrel striker lodging with them…
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| GUN BARREL WORKERS... |
On April 22nd 1878, wire drawer Joseph married spinster Ann Best, my great grandmother and she has been discussed as my Grandad Ray’s mum elsewhere on this blog.
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| GREAT GRANDMOTHER ANN BEST... |
Daughter Angelina was born in September 1878, suggesting a hurried wedding for the couple but the child died in 1882. Son Joseph was born in 1881, then my grandad William Ernest in 1883 and Ann in 1889. However, before Frederick came along in 1891, Joseph senior was punished in the Birmingham Police Court for the latest of his crimes which had been committed over the period 1884-1890…
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| THE OLD BIRMINGHAM MOOR STREET PRISON... |
Fourteen days of imprisonment had been served for wilful damage from 2nd January 1884, before seven more days were served from 14th December 1885 for drunkenness.
From 1st September 1887, he served fourteen days for obscene language, then as ‘Joseph Ray’ he was sentenced to two months, plus a further two months of imprisonment at Birmingham Summary Court for stealing two dresses, one dress skirt, one overcoat and two jackets…
As Joseph Davies (Davis, more likely…) on 6th May 1889 he was sentenced to fourteen days for assault, then three more days from 10th September that year for gambling.
On 24th June 1890 he was tried for stealing a brewer’s copper refrigerator belonging to the Holt Brewery Company Ltd. A jury convicted him of receiving stolen goods and he was incarcerated at Birmingham Prison for four months…
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| JOSEPH'S CRIMINAL RECORD... |
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| THE HOLT BREWERY COMPANY... |
Although Joseph was living with his family at 21 Court 4 Staniforth Street in 1891, remarkably he was actually living in Holt Street where the brewery was, at the time of the 1901 census… He was a gun barrel welder.
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| GUN BARREL WELDING... |
BIRMINGHAM'S GUN BARREL PROOF HOUSE... 
INSIDE THE PROOF HOUSE... 
THE WORKFORCE...
As mentioned before on this blog, I worked a week of nights at Holt Street Brewery, then part of the Ansells Company in the late 1960s as a student, never knowing that my ancestors had lived and committed crimes in that very environment…
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