in a letter to his brother Samuel, he mentions “trying to hustle the boys off to school.” By then Samuel Edward was five, Carl three and George Harrison, or Harry, was fifteen. Sarah had travelled to Duluth to help Mary, her sister, in her first childbirth and had brought the baby back with her to London as Mary was considered too frail to care for the baby herself. In the meantime George’s father, Robert, now blind and unable to continue with his dairy farm and milk delivery, came to live with the Weirs and also was cared for by Sarah in the cramped quarters of York Street. Certainly Samuel Edward was given an example of service to others from his early childhood.
Martha Frances born 1886; Charles Paul born 1900; and Samuel Edward born in 1898. Photo taken on York Street in 1903. Sarah peeks around the door.
By December of 1903 the sale of York Street for unpaid taxes was completed. Early in 1904 George bought a larger house for $150.00 down at 197 Sherwood Avenue. Set on ten acres, the storey and a half dwelling with four bedrooms, a parlour, a kitchen and study, also had a long verandah with a rod for hanging fowl. The heat for this house was supplied by a fireplace. By August George had assumed a first mortgage of $900.00 and a second of $500.00. Odd jobs helped the family’s meagre income. Now that the Weirs lived on ten acres of land they acquired a cow, Stella’s Cream Cup. She is alleged to have produced milk with a butterfat content of 7.5%. It seems that everybody in London knew about the Weirs’ remarkable Stella.
Samuel Edward was sent off to school in Grade 1 with holes in his stockings and his clothing much the worse for wear. He was teased, laughed at and picked on by the other children and frequently had to defend himself physically. The area in the east end of London has been described as brutal, where fists and hard fighting determined the social pecking order. Fortunately, six year old Samuel was big for his age and strong, but the bitterness of those early years of extreme poverty, the hazing and having to look out for Paul left its mark on a proud and sensitive child. Paul became very ill in the same year with encephalitis, now known to be a viral infection, but at that time it was thought that encephalitis could be caused by a blow to the head. Samuel Edward, our young Teddie, now had even more responsibility for Paul, especially after his brother developed a permanent limp.
By 1905 the family finances showed a slight improvement, but the reason for the lessening of money troubles increased the tension in Teddie’s and Paul’s social lives. With both in the public school system where George, their father, was the truant officer, student life held other difficulties for the two boys. ‘Monkey Weir’ was the name given to George by a student faction more noted for its high spirited flouting of authority than for obedience and scholarship. Teddie’s soubriquet was, naturally, ‘Little Monkey,’ a name he detested. It was bad enough for a very intelligent high-minded proud child to turn up at school in torn and shabby clothes, but the taunt of ‘Little Monkey,’ attacking both the child and the father, laid the foundation for a certain resentment of the well to do and accepted children of his age.
Just as in his earlier days as a teacher, George Sutton Weir was a strict disciplinarian and an upholder of respect for the law as well as for himself as an embodiment of law. At this time Dr. John Dearness was a school inspector, well known and feared. With his approval, persistent cases of truancy and general mischief were put in detention rooms in the Children’s Shelter at George Sutton’s direction. Upon one occasion three unusually troublesome lads were placed in solitary detention overnight on George’s suggestion and under his control, but it was noted that in this instance he obtained the consent of the parents first. This sort of action may have given George and perhaps the parents some satisfaction, but it did nothing for the acceptance of Teddie and Paul into the society of their peers. Fisticuffs and torn clothing continued, much to the despair of Sarah.
It is interesting to note that in 1905 and the early years of the century no one thought to question children on their reason for fighting, or if they were questioned, some sort of personal pride forbade them telling their mothers of the situation. Telling their fathers would, of course, have made the whole situation even worse. There is no evidence that Ted’s Aunt Jennie, a teacher in London, ever interested herself in her cousin George’s fortunes or the predicaments of his children.
In 1955, the London Free Press ran a fiftieth anniversary issue, and harking back to school matters in 1905, reprinted an excerpt:
“A new venture in public relations was undertaken in 1905 by Inspector Edwards and the public school staff. This was an elaborate exhibit of work done by the pupils. It was held in the City Hall and was open to the public for a week. At the invitation of the trustees, the Minister of Education was invited as their guest. On Friday, the concluding day, the teachers from Chatham attended in a body. The undertaking proved to be an unqualified success and netted a profit of $235, which was divided among the schools for library books.
The trustees at this time had a very resourceful truant officer in the person of George Weir. His monthly reports to the board indicate that truancy was probably a more serious problem than it is now. Mr. Weir, however, had no intention of being thwarted in the successful performance of his duty by any mere boys. In handling persistent cases he made use of detention rooms in the Children’s Shelter. On one occasion, with the consent of the parents, three unusually troublesome lads got a taste of solitary confinement. Whether Mr. Weir ever taught school is not known. He appears, however, to have been a man who would try anything once, for in one of his reports he tells of Substituting for two weeks for one of the teachers in the school on Colborne Street south, a two room building that for many years had a heavy enrolment of primary children. Undoubtedly Mr. Weir had a busy, if not pleasant, two weeks.”
George Harrison born 1885. The photo was taken 1905 when he was 19 years old, the year prior to his death of typhoid fever in Winnipeg.
Ted’s sister, Ruth had left school with a leaving certificate and had gone to work in the classified advertisement section of the farmers’ Advocate. Harry soon followed and found work as a monotype operator with The London Free Press. He seems to have had considerable skill in draughtsmanship and in composing a picture with a camera. Ruth took every opportunity to see something more of the world than London offered. With her friends from the office she went on overnight trips, sending postcards to her mother from Toronto and Buffalo. She sailed on the Turbinia from Hamilton, round trip $2.39. “This boat belongs to Eaton’s,” she wrote. Paul’s postcard from Buffalo came with the message, “Yesterday we went through coontown and you never saw so many blackberries in your life,” a statement reflecting the racism of the time.
In the summer Harry was transferred to the Winnipeg office as a monotype operator. He took delight in photographing the city and made up some of his best views as postcards, probably with the idea of making a sideline business for himself. The examples show a keen eye for ‘taking a good shot.’ By wintertime his mother was concerned lest he not have enough warm clothing. Early in 1906, she hastened out to Winnipeg with an overcoat for him. He had contracted typhus and, by the time she arrived, he was hospitalized with typhoid fever and died shortly afterward. Sarah was heartbroken. It was said of her that “she never got over her son’s death at the age of eighteen.” Sarah kept the cards and letters she received from church members. One sad note starts, “We hope Mr. Weir is better,” and goes on to discuss church meetings with a strong note of complacent piety, but by the time the letter was delivered Sarah was on her way back to London and Harry was dead.
Ruth was doing very well and had risen to be head stenographer at Canadian Woman, a subsidiary of Farmers’ Advocate and, in her summer vacation of 1906, went west to Oxbow to visit her Aunt Susannah Weir Burnett. In the same summer in the continuing saga of misfortune that seemed to shadow the Weirs, Ted was involved as a catcher in a baseball game and, having discarded his mask, caught a hardball on his forehead. He was knocked unconscious for a short period, probably about half an hour. Later in life he would blame his eye troubles on that game of baseball. The pitcher was a student minister and somehow that seemed to make everything all right in his parents’ eyes.
Sarah’s health deteriorated