A Comerford family that brought me from the heart of London’s East End to Northampton and Leicester

A search in Change Alley last week led to the story of a large branch of the Comerford family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

When I was in London last week, I visited the alleys off Cornhill, searching for the Jamaica and Jonathan’s, two of the oldest coffee houses in London, and looking in Change Alley for the site of the home of a branch of the Comerford family who lived and worked there in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Change Alley is a collection of at least five interconnected labyrinthine passages that have changed shape and direction down the centuries and with five access points: two off Cornhill, two off Lombard Street and one leading out of Birchin Lane.

Thomas Comerford, who came from Ireland, was a tobacconist in London from the mid-18th century. He was twice married and married his first wife Alice Davenport (1735-1769) on 26 October 1759 in Saint Mary’s Church, Whitechapel. They lived in Leman Street, Whitechapel (1759-1768), and they were the parents of three sons:

1, William Davenport Comerford (1763-1763), died in infancy.
2, James Comerford (1764-1833), ancestor of the Comerford family of Holborn and Belgravia.
3, Thomas Comerford (1769-1810), draper, of Bond Street, who married Charlotte Watson (1772-1851), and who has a large number of living descendants.

Alice died in childbirth in 1769, and Thomas Comerford married his second wife, Ann Underwood (1734-1807), in Saint Botolph’s Church, Aldgate, on 28 October 1770. Thomas and Anne Comerford were the parents of two more children, a daughter and a son:

4, Mary (1775-1839)
5, Charles Comerford (1784-1849), solicitor. He married Elizabeth Edings Morgan (1797-1867) in Saint Luke’s Church, Chelsea, on 1 May 1813. He lived at East Street, Lamb’s Conduit Street, off Great Ormond Street in Bloomsbury (1807), 16 Clement’s Inn, off the Strand in Saint Clement Danes parish (1838-1840), 72 Old Broad Street (1848), and 21 Oxford Square, Paddington (1849).

I was aware of the story of Thomas Comerford’s second son James Comerford (1764-1833) and his descendants, who were tobacconists, notaries public and Victorian book collectors who had connections with Change Alley for at least four generations and another three or four generations of distinguished medical practitioners and surgeons in Belgravia.

But I had overlooked the Thomas Comerford’s third son, Thomas Comerford (1769-1810), a Bond Street draper and younger brother of James Comerford (1764-1833), and the story of his far-flung branch of the family.

My visit to Change Alley lead me to finding the stories of a branch of the Comerford family that are an introduction to portraits of family life that are both intriguing and fascinating, and at the same time often heart-rending. Over five or six generations or more, I found sad stories of infant mortality and death at childbirth, of children and whole families ending up in the workhouse, and stories too of resilience and fortitude, of trade union activism, and of death at the Gallipoli landings, of passages to India and of birth at sea off St Helena in the mid-Atlantic.

There are intermarriages in successive generations between the Comerford and Finch families that consolidate family networks. There are gun makers and shoemakers, soldiers and bus drivers, whose lives, I imagine, were worlds apart from the doctors’ consulting rooms in Belgravia of their distant cousins.

A family that at one time was at home in places in the East End like Stepney, Tower Hamlets, Whitechapel and Bethnal Green, son moved south of the river to Southwark and places such as Southwark, Lambeth, Newington, Camberwell, Bermondsey and Walworth, and north to Clerkenwell and Islington. In time, they moved on to Aston in Birmingham and other places in the Midlands, including four generations or more in both Northampton and Leicester, with four generations of bootmakers and shoemakers. I even found six or seven members of this branch of the family with the name Charlotte Comerford, and I found that many of the family baptisms and marriages took place in churches that I already know well and have blogged about in recent years.

Thomas Comerford (1769-1810) married Charlotte Watson in Saint Martin in the Fields, facing onto Trafalgar Square (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The story of this branch of the Comerford family begins with Thomas Comerford from Ireland who became a tobacconist in London. He was twice married and he died on 29 June 1812 in the Parish of Saint Botolph, London. His third son was:

Thomas Comerford (1769-1810), born in 1769 and baptised in Saint Mary’s Church, Whitechapel, 15 February 1769. He was a draper in Bond Street, London, in 1784. He married on 23 February 1792 in Saint Martin in the Fields Church Charlotte Watson (1772-1851), daughter of Joseph Watson and his second wife Elizabeth (née Wiltshire) of Whitechapel.

Thomas Comerford died in Mill Yard on 12 July 1810, and was buried in Goodman’s Fields, the burial ground of Somerset Street Presbyterian Church; Charlotte Comerford died in January 1851. Their children included three daughters and three sons:

1, Elizabeth (1795-post 1812), born 27 December 1795 in Everard’s Place, a small alley or courtyard off Church Lane, near Cable Street and Wellclose Square, in the parish of Saint Mary, Whitechapel, in the East End. She was baptised on 21 January 1796 in the Presbyterian Church, Somerset Street (now Mansell Street), Stepney. She married David Smith in Saint Mary’s Church, Stratford Bow, on 10 November 1812.
2, Anne (1798-1800), born 7 February 1798 in Everard’s Place and baptised 23 July 1799 in Somerset Street Presbyterian Church. She died in November 1800 and was also buried in Goodman’s Fields.
3, Charlotte (1800-1800), born 20 January 1800, and died in Everard’s Place in December 1800.
4, Joseph Comerford (1801-1848), of whom next (see below).
5, George Comerford (1803-1806), born 4 November 1803 Swallow’s Gardens, Whitechapel, died in 1806 Rosemary Lane.
6, Francis Thomas Comerford (1811-1864), of whom after his brother Joseph (see below), born after his father’s death, 6 April 1811.

The widowed Charlotte Comerford later married the widowed Samuel Hormack Dann (born 1789) in Saint George in the East Church, Tower Hamlets, on 6 July 1818. They had no further children, and Charlotte died in January 1851.

At least three members of the Comerford family were baptised in Saint Botolph Without Aldgate, Bishopsgate (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The elder of the two surviving sons of Thomas and Charlotte Comerford:

Joseph Comerford (1801-1848), born 10 October 1801 in Sparrow Corner, which was between 83 and 84 Minories in Saint Botolph Parish, Aldgate. He was baptised on 25 August 1809 in Saint Botolph’s Church, Aldgate. He married Mary Davies (1805-1862) in Saint George in the East Church, Tower Hamlets, on 15 July 1827.

Joseph Comerford died 14 November 1848 in Phoenix Court, and was buried in Goodman’s Yard burial ground; his wife Mary (née Davies) died in East London in 1862. They were the parents of ten children, five sons and five daughters:

1, Charlotte (1829- ), born 19 April 1829 in Aldgate.
2, Francis Thomas Comerford (1831-1918), of whom next (see below).
3, Joseph Comerford (1833-1899), born in Whitechapel in 1833, of whom after his brother Francis Thomas Comerford (see below).
4, Mary Ann (1834-1896), born at Sugar Loaf Court, Angel Alley, 4 December 1834. She married James Keegan (born 1838). They lived in Regent Street, Lambeth, and Kennington, and were the parents of four children, a son and three daughters.
5, Elizabeth (1836-1905) born in Aldgate in 1836. She married Benjamin George Broome (born 1840) in Saint Thomas Church, Stepney, on 5 April 1863. They were the parents of four children, three daughters and a son. Elizabeth Broome was living in Dean Street, Soho, when she died in 1905.
6, George (I) Comerford (1838-1839), born in Aldgate in May 1838, died in October 1839.
7, Martha (1840-1915), born in Aldgate 1 February 1840. She married William Finch (born 1824), a widowed fishmonger and later a postman, in Saint Thomas Church, Stepney, on 9 February 1868. They lived in Lambeth and later in Battle and then Bexhill in Sussex. Martha (Comerford) Finch died in Brighton in October 1915, and they were the parents of six children, four sons and two daughters who all continued the Comerford name:

•1a, Jessie Comerford Finch (born 1869), who married Walter West Gwynne (1866-1958);
•2a, Herbert Comerford Finch (1871-1937), who married his cousin Florence Eva Comerford (1876-1957) in Christ Church, Sparkbrook, Birmingham, on 7 May 1900 (see below);
•3a, Charles Comerford Finch (1874-1949) of Harrow and Willesden, who married Jessie Emily Farrall (1870-1961);
•4a, Frank Comerford Finch (1876-1952), of Swansea, Wales, who married Elizabeth Harriett Rees (1885-1963);
•5a, Ephraim Comerford Finch (born 1880), married in Croydon in 1903;
•6a, Emma Comerford Finch (1885-1949), who married Frederick J Walker in 1913.

8, George (II) Comerford (born 1842), born 1842 in Crown Court, Aldgate.
9, Emma (1845-) born 8 February 1845 in Aldgate.
10, Benjamin Comerford (1848-1852), born July 1848 Aldgate, died 1852 in East London.

The eldest of these ten children:

Francis Thomas Comerford (1831-1918), gunmaker, was born 17 January 1831 at Sugar Loaf Court, Angel Alley, Aldgate – the site is now occupied by railway lines – and was baptised 6 February 1831 in Saint Botolph Without Aldgate, Bishopsgate. He married Hannah Matilda Govett (1832-1905) in Saint Thomas Church, Stepney, on 15 April 1850. They lived for a time in Grove Street, Tower Hamlets, moved to India in the late 1850s, and later lived in Aston, Birmingham from the 1870s. Hannah died in Aston in 1905, and Francis died there in 1918.

They were the parents of 11 children, eights sons and three daughters:

1, George Comerford (1850-1852), born in Stepney, 4 October 1850, died at 27 Grove Street, Tower Hamlets, in 1852.
2, Francis Thomas Comerford (1852-1927), of whom next.
3, Frederick Henry Comerford (1855-1936), born in Stepney, 20 August 1855.
4, Charlotte Elizabeth Comerford (1857-1858), born 4 May 1857, died in infancy on 28 October 1858.
5, Charles William Comerford (1859-1937), born in Madras, 13 March 1859. He married Polly Robinson (1863-1932), from Wednesbury, Staffordshire, in Saint Paul’s Church, in the Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham, on Christmas Day 25 December 1882. They lived in Aston and do not seem to have had any children; Polly died in December 1932, Charles died in Birmingham in June 1937.
6, Henry Hardwick Comerford (1860-1861), born at sea off St Helena in 1860, died in Stepney in 1861.
7, Kate Margaret Comerford (1864-1912), born in Bow in 1864, married James Arthur Garlick (1860-1935), a travelling salesman, in Saint Paul’s Church, Birmingham, in January 1885, and they were the parents of three daughters and a son. Kate died in King’s Norton, Birmingham, in April 1912; James Garlick died in Birmingham in June 1935.
8, Alfred Edward Comerford (1866-1894), born in Lambeth in June 1866. He married Rosina Clarissa Buck (1862-1936) in Holy Trinity Church, Bordesley, on Christmas Eve 24 December 1892. Alfred died at Anderton Road, Sparkbrook, on 26 January 1894; Rosina died in September 1936. They were the parents of an only son:
•1a John Augustus Comerford (1894-1958) of Birmingham, who died unmarried.
9, Walter Comerford (1870-1873), born in Birmingham in January 1870, died in January 1873.
10, Thomas Henry Comerford (born 1874), born in Aston at the end of 1874.
11, Florence Eva (1876-1957), born in Birmingham 19 February 1876, she married her first cousin Herbert Comerford Finch (1871-1937), see above, in Christ Church, Sparkbrook, on 7 May 1900, and they were the parents of two daughters.

Saint George in the East, where some members of the Comerford family were baptised and married (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The eldest surviving son of Francis Thomas Comerford (1831-1918) and Hannah Matilda (Govett) Comerford was:

Francis Thomas Comerford (1852-1927), born in Stepney 9 March 1852 and baptised in Saint George in the East on 20 January 1856. He moved to Birmingham with his parents and family when he was in his teens and became an apprentice in the gun trade. He married Charlotte Finch (1851-1933) in Mile End, London, in July 1874 – she appears to be related to William Finch who married Martha Comerford (1840-1915). Francis and Charlotte Comerford lived in India on at least two occasions in the 1870s and 1880s. Francis Comerford died at 92 Milward Road, Hastings, on 9 September 1927; his widow, Charlotte Comerford, died there on 5 March 1933.

Francis and Charlotte Comerford were the parents of five children, three sons and two daughters:

1, Florence Charlotte (born 1875), born in Birmingham October 1875.
2, Lilian Rose (1878-1940), born in Ferozepore, Punjab, in 1878. She returned to England with her parents and lived in Dorset before moving to Hastings, where she died on 30 September 1940, aged 62.
3, Violet Isabel (1879-1951), born in Bexhill in 1879, she later lived in Twickenham and died in Hastings in December 1951.
4, Percy J Comerford (1881-1898), he was born in India, returned to England with his parents, and died in Aston in January 1898.
5, William Ewart Comerford (1887-1974), born in Poona on 9 December 1887. He returned to England with his parents, and later lived in Guildford. He died in June 1974.

We now return to Joseph Comerford (1833-1899), second son of Joseph Comerford (1801-1848), and next brother to Francis Thomas Comerford (see above):

Joseph Comerford (1833-1899) was born in Whitechapel in 1833 and was baptised in Saint Botolph Without Aldgate on 3 April 1833. He was an armourer or gunmaker. I have found no record for his first marriage, but he described himself as a widower when he married Elizabeth Jenkins (1837-1918) on 7 July 1867 in Christchurch, Cannon Street Road (the church was demolished after bomb damage during World War II). They lived on Mile End Road in the East End and briefly in Edinburgh. Joseph Comerford died in London in October 1899; Elizabeth died in Islington in December 1918. They were the parents of one daughter and one son:

1, Eva Cannon (1880-1944), married Henry Percival Welbelove (1879-1933) in Saint Mary the Virgin, Somers Town, London, on 3 August 1908. They later lived in Long Eaton, Derbyshire, and Rotherham and Pontefract, East Yorkshire.
2, Joseph Jackson G Comerford (1884-1969), he married Theresa Ellen Wilson (1888-1945) in London in 1909, and they later lived in Monsell Road, Islington. They were the parents of three sons and a daughter:
•1a, Joseph William Comerford (1909-1982), married Clara Gladys Moore (1915-2001), lived in Brighton and died in Hove.
•2a, Harry James Comerford (1911-1972), married, and died in Hillingdon.
•3a, George Albert Comerford (1916-2004), died in Hastings.
•4a Patricia Joan Renshaw (1929-1994), lived in Stevenage, Hertfordshire.

The tower and some walls remain at Christ Church Greyfriars, near Saint Paul’s Cathedral … some members of the Comerford family were baptised there (Photograph: four Comerford)

We now return to Francis Thomas Comerford (1811-1864), the second surviving son of Thomas Comerford (1769-1810) above and the younger surviving brother of Joseph Comerford (1801-1848) above:

Francis Thomas Comerford (1811-1864) was born 6 April 1811 in the Parish of Saint Giles Without Cripplegate, Aldgate. He was a porter and hatter and lived at Christopher Court, off Fenchurch Street, and at Providence Street, Southwark. He married Edith Parsley (1813-1889) in Saint James’s Church, Paddington, on 1 May 1842. Francis Comerford died in 1864 at 72 Hosier Lane, Smithfield, London; Edith died in Camberwell in December 1889. They were the parents of six children, three sons and three daughters:

1, Thomas Comerford (1841-1906), of whom next.
2, Edward Comerford (1845-1918), of whom after his brother Thomas (see below).
3, Emma (1847-1920), she was born in Aldersgate 8 July 1847 and baptised in Christ Church Greyfriars, Newgate, 26 September 1847. She died in Bromley in December 1920.
4, Mary Ann Matilda (1849-1852), born 15 July 1849, baptised in Christ Church, Greyfriars, 5 August 1849, and died in July 1852.
5, Joseph Comerford (1853-1897), of whom after his brother Edward (see below).
6, Eliza (1854-1929), born September 1854. She married Gillespie George Callam (1855-1930) in Saint James the Less Church, Bethnal Green, Tower Hamlets, on 28 November 1875, and they were the parents of seven children, three sons and four daughters.

The first of three sons of Francis and Edith Comerford:

Thomas Comerford (1841-1906), wire weaver, was born in Saint Martin’s Le Grand, a former liberty north of Newgate Street and Cheapside and south of Aldersgate Street, on 18 July 1841, and was baptised in Christ Church, Greyfriars, Newgate, on 29 June 1845.

He married Mary Ann Powell (1843-1935) in Saint Mary-at-Lambeth Church, Lambeth, on 14 November 1864. They later lived in Paradise Street, Rotherhithe, Camberwell and Bermondsey. He died in West Ham on 8 June 1906; she died in Leicester in September 1935. They were the parents of one daughter and five sons:

1, Jane (1863-1932), married James Seamer Lock (1860-1950) in Enon Baptist Chapel, Woolwich, on 17 May 1881 and they were the parents of 16 children, eight daughters and eight sons. They later lived in Leicester, where she died on 29 April 1932.
2, Thomas Comerford (1865-1949), of whom next.
3, Benjamin James Comerford (born 1868), born in Cripplegate, 7 February 1868, baptised in Saint Matthias, Bethnal Green, Tower Hamlets, on 1 March 1868.
4, John Comerford (1870-1871), died in infancy.
5, Robert Comerford (born 1872)
6, Henry Comerford (1875-1946), of whom after his brother Thomas and his descendants.

The eldest son of Thomas Comerford and Mary Ann (Powell) Comerford was:

Thomas Comerford (1865-1949), shoemaker, born Southwark 27 July 1865, baptised in Saint Matthias Church, Bethnal Green, Tower Hamlets, 1 March 1868. He married Mary Elizabeth (Lizzie) Patey (1872-1936) in All Saints’ Church, Walworth, on 16 September 1889. They lived in Camberwell, Newington, Walworth and Southwark, and had moved to Leicester by 1897, living at Knighton Fields Road.

Lizzie died in Leicester on 24 December 1936, and Thomas died there in March 1949. They were the parents of two sons and four daughters:

1, Thomas Comerford (1890-1962), of whom next.
2, Amy Ellen (1892-1952), married Henry Davey Radford (1890-1971) in Leicester in June 1915 and died in Leicester in 1952.
3, Elizabeth (1893-1961), baptised in Saint Christopher’s, Walworth, 6 December 1893, married James Lakin (1893-1972) in Leicester in July 1915.
4, Mary Ann (1895-1981), born Preston Buildings, Southwark, 8 December 1895. She married Frederick William Jackson (1894-1973) in Saint Mary Magdalene Church, Knighton, Leicester, on 11 May 1918, and they were the parents of a son and a daughter.
5, Henry Comerford (1897-1997), born in Leicester 27 October 1897.
6, Helen (Ellen) Winifred (1902-1988) in Leicester, 7 April 1902. She married Jack Kyle (1900-1989) from Kettering, Northamptonshire, in Leicester in 1929, and they were the parents of a daughter. She died in Leicester on 20 June 1988.

The eldest son of Thomas and Lizzie (Patey) Comerford was:

Thomas Comerford (1890-1962) was born in Camberwell 15 March 1890, and was baptised in All Saints’ Church, Newington, 2 April 1890. He moved to Leicester with his parents, and he married Charlotte Barton (1887-1955) in Leicester in December 1907. Charlotte died in Leicester June 1955, and Thomas died at 3 Northdene Road, Leicester, on 5 March 1962.

Thomas and Charlotte Comerford were the parents of seven children, including two sons and four daughters:

1, Thomas William Comerford (1908-1978).
2, Florence Winifred (1909-1966) of Leicester, married Cyril James Gilbert (1908-1996) in 1928.
3, John Henry Comerford (1913-1997) of Leicester, married Edna Austick (1914-2003) in Leicester in September 1937.
4, Barbara Elizabeth (1920-2002), married in Acle, Norfolk, in December 1946.
5, Elsie May (1920-1975), married in Leicester in September 1940.
6, Mary (1924-2001), married Alan A Bassett in Leicester in June 1946.

The sixth child and youngest son of Thomas Comerford and Mary Ann (Powell) Comerford (see above) was:

Henry Comerford (1875-1946), bus conductor, born Newcastle on Tyne in March 1875, and grew up in London. He married Rebecca Louisa Hudson (born 1879) in Saint James’s Church, Bermondsey, 25 December 1899. Henry died in Finsbury in March 1946. They were the parents of five children, three sons and two daughters:

1, Henry Thomas Comerford (1900-2001), born Walworth 30 October 1900, baptised Saint Matthew’s, Newington, 18 November 1900. He married Florence M Waller in Edmonton in 1940. He lived to 101 and died in Enfield in December 2001.
2, (Male) Comerford (1902-1902), who died at birth in Southwark in September 1902.
3, Jessie Rebecca (1903-1974), born in Walworth, 22 May 1903, baptised in Saint Matthew’s Church, Newington, 7 June 1903, and died in Newton Abbot, Devon, in December 1974.
4, Charles William Comerford (1905-1961), born in Walworth, 19 March 1905, died in Southend on Sea, 28 May 1961.
5, Isabella Mary (1908-1920), born in Walworth, December 1908.

Saint Mary-at-Lambeth Church, where some members of the Comerford family where baptised and married (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

We now return to the second of three sons of Francis and Edith Comerford:

Edward Comerford (1845-1906), coachman and bus driver, was born 2 June 1845 and baptised in Christ Church, Greyfriars, Newgate, 29 June 1845. Edward was twice married; he married his first wife Louisa Trimmer (1846-1888) in Saint Mary-at-Lambeth Church on 29 September 1867. They lived in Saint John’s Square, and later in Newington, and Louisa died in March 1888. Edward and Louisa Comerford were the parents of three sons and three daughters:

1, Louisa Elizabeth (1869-1903), born in Cheap 1869, baptised in Saint John the Baptist Church, Clerkenwell, 24 April 1870. She married William Griffin Walker (born 1867) in Saint Peter’s Church, Walworth, in June 1888, and they were the parents of two daughters. She lived in Newington and died in July 1903.
2, Edward Thomas Comerford (1870-1917), born in Clerkenwell 1870, baptised in Saint John the Baptist Church, Clerkenwell, 24 April 1870. He was a private in the East Surrey Regiment by 1901. He died in Southwark in 1917.
3, Arthur Comeford (1876-1946), born in Southwark 30 September 1876 and baptised in Saint Mary, Newington, on 15 December 1876. He was a plumber and gas fitter, and lived in Bermondsey. He married Alice Elizabeth Howard (born 1879, Bromley Bow, Poplar) in Saint Dunstan and All Saints’ Church, Stepney, on 21 May 1899. He died in 1946 and was buried in Greenwich.
4, Harriet Eleanor (1878-post 1955), born in Newington, 1878, baptised in Saint Mary’s, Newington, 25 July 1879. She married William Henry Pearson (1877-1967) in Saint Mark’s Church, Walworth, on 31 July 1898. The lived at Ethelred Street, Lambeth, and Blandford House, Richborne Terrace, Lambeth, and were the parents of one son and three daughters.
5, Rose Matilda (1881-1933), born Newington, 13 July 1881, baptised in Saint Mary’s Church, Newington, 24 August 1881. She married William Henry Chaproniere (1878-1916) in Saint Paul’s Church, Bermondsey, on14 May 1899. They lived in Bermondsey, and were the parents of three sons and a daughter. He was a corporal and died in the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916; she died in December 1933.
6, Albert Edgar Comerford (1887-1915), born in Kennington on 25 June 1887, and baptised in Saint James’s Church, Kennington, on 28 July 1887. A printer, he was a private in the Royal Fusiliers City of London Regiment 2nd Battalion by 1911, in Jubbulpore, India. He was killed in Gallipoli on 5 June 1915 and is named on the Helles Memorial Gallipoli.

Louisa died in March 1888 and Edward Comerford married his second wife, Jane Julie Osborne (1866-1943) in Saint Mary-at-Lambeth Church on 27 July 1890. Thomas and Jane Comerford later lived in Camberwell, but by 1913 they were described as ‘destitute and homeless’ and living with their children in Saint Olave’s Workhouse, Bermondsey. Edward died at the end of 1918; Jane died in Staines in 1943. They were the parents of two daughters and a son:

1, Jane Agnes (born 1901), born in Camberwell 11 March 1901, baptised in Emmanuel Church, Camberwell, on 28 April 1901. She married Frank Gill.
2, Frederick Charles (aka Charles Frederick) Comerford (1907-1985), born in Old Lambeth 23 April 1907. He married Phoebe Carpenter (born 1908) in Brighton in December 1929, and died in Hove in December 1985.
3, Ellen Elizabeth (born 1911), born in Camberwell 10 February 1911.

Saint James’s Church, Northampton … Edward William Comerford and Harriet Longworth were married there in 1902 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

We now return to the third of three sons of Francis and Edith Comerford:

Joseph Comerford (1853-1897), a boot maker, was born in St Georges Borough in 1853. He married Catherine (Kate) Miller (1854-1915), from Aspley Guise, Bedfordshire, in Saint James the Great Church, Bethnal Green, on 7 August 1874. Joseph Comerford moved to Northampton, and moved between Northampton and Newington as Joseph Comerford continued to find work in the shoe industry. They eventually lived at 32 Wellington Street, Northampton. Joseph died in Northampton in October 1897, when he was only 45 and his children were still young. His widow Kate later kept a boarding house at 84 Dunster Street, and died in Northampton in October 1915. They were the parents of eleven children, six daughters and five sons:

1, Catherine (born 1874), born in Bethnal Green, Hackney, July 1874. She married William Thomas Tyler (1863-1908) in Saint Michael’s Church, Northampton, 6 August 1893, and they were the parents of seven children, three daughters and four sons.
2, Clara (born 1876), born in Hackney, married William Muddiman (1878-1942) in Saint Giles Church, Northampton, in January 1897. They lived in Dallington and Marlboro’ Road, Northampton, and were the parents of one son and four daughters.
3, Joseph Comerford (1879-1958), shoe finisher, born Northampton. He married Esther Mary Clarke (1871-1957) in Northampton 16 September 1906; he died in Daventry 16 November 1958; she died at11 Baker Street, Northampton, 29 November 1957. They were the parents of one son:
•1a, Joseph Cyril Comerford (1906-1985), born Northampton, 19 March 1906. He married Florence Isabella Liggins (1910-1975) in Northampton, March 1932. They lived at 59 Northfield Gardens, Watford, Hertfordshire. She died June 1975; she died 8 December 1985.
4, Edward William Comerford (1880-1949), born Newington, 25 May 1880, baptised Saint Christopher’s Church, Walworth, 12 October 1887, and moved to Northampton with his parents. He worked in the boot trade and married Harriet Longworth (1881-1961) in Saint James’s Church, Northampton, 8 May 1902. They lived in Duston, Northampton, and Abbott Road, Manfield, and were the parents of six children, five daughters and a son. Edward Comerford died in Mansfield 1 May 1949; Harriet died 10 August 1961.
5, Thomas James Comerford (1884-1975), born Northampton 10 June 1884, married in Northampton September 1921, and died there December 1975.
6, Herbert Comerford (1886-1970), of whom next.
7, Eliza Edith (1888-1933), born Southwark 28 April 1888, baptised in Saint Giles, Northampton, 13 September 1893, along with two of her sisters. She married William Henry Beal (1885-1933). She died at 187 Hampstead Road, St Pancras, London, 10 May 1933, and he died in June 1933.
8, Elizabeth Miller Comerford (1890-1967), born Northampton 13 August 1890, baptised in Saint Giles, Northampton, 13 September 1893, along with two of her sisters. She married Frederick Stevens (born 1890) in Northampton in April 1915. She died in Poplar, London, in December 1967.
9, Sarah Victoria (1893-1983), born Northampton 28 January 1893, baptised in Saint Giles, Northampton, 13 September 1893, along with two of her sisters. She married William Thomas Hollowell (1890-1963) in Northampton in January 1910, and they were the parents of a son, Ernest William Hollowell (1910-1990), who lived in Bolton Lancashire.
10, George Albert Comerford (1895-1897), born London, 27 May 1895, baptised in Saint Giles, Northampton, 21 January 1897, died later that month in Northampton.
11, Lily (1898-1899), born in Northampton in April 1898, died there an infant in October 1899.

The sixth child and fifth son of Joseph and Catherine (Miller) Comerford of Northampton was:

Herbert Comerford (1886-1970), of Northampton. He was born in Southwark 25 June 1886 and moved to Northampton as a child with his parents and siblings, and grew up in Alcombe Terrace and Dunster Street, Northampton. He married Mabel Louisa Lamburn (1891-1982) in Northampton in April 1915. Herbert died in Northampton in June 1970; His widow Mabel died in Northampton on 2 August 1982. They were the parents of:

1, Herbert Comerford (1915-2005), of whom next.
2, Reginald Comerford, born in Northampton 10 February 1921

The elder son of Herbert and Mabel Comerford of Northampton was:

Herbert (Bert) Comerford OBE (1915-2005), born in Northampton in November 1915. Bert, Comerford attended Kettering Road Intermediate School, and at the age of 15 followed his father and grandfather into the shoemaking trade. He first became a clicker in the shoemaking industry, working for G Webb & Sons at their factory in Brockton Street, Northampton. The clickers became known as the elite or the ‘gentlemen’ of shoemakers. They cut out the shoe uppers from the precious fine leathers using knives with curved and sharply pointed blades.

Bert married Ella Mary Everitt (1917-2011), daughter of George Everitt and Maud EE Bennett of Northampton, in Northampton in January 1940. Bert was in the British Army during World War II, but returned to shoemaking in Northampton in 1946. He was a long-term member of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives (NUBSO) when he began working full-time for the union in 1959. In the 1960s, he was living at 10 Lea Road, Northampton. He became the union’s assistant general officer in 1969. The union merged with other unions in 1970 to form the National Union of the Footwear, Leather and Allied Trades (NUFLAT), and Bert Comerford was elected as its first General President. The union sponsored Labour Party candidates in several parliamentary elections.

The 1970s were a difficult period for the footwear industry in Britain, and when Bert retired in 1980, he described how he regretted leaving while the decline continued. Today, Northampton and the county’s shoemaking industry are thriving once again, and the town is still recognised across the world for making high-quality footwear.

Bert Comerford was made an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1981 New Year Honours list. In retirement, he was an honorary member of the Clothing and Footwear Institute. He died in July 2005; his widow Ella died on 28 January 2011.

The former G Webb & Sons factory in Brockton Street, Northampton … three generations of the Comerford family worked in the shoe industry in Northampton

Four boys growing up in Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’ and a synagogue fire

The former synagogue on Lennox Street in Little Jerusalem, Dublin … four children almost set it on fire 100 years ago in 1925 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

As a boy in Dublin, Clanbrassil Street and the labyrinth of streets leading off it offered a certain mystique and intrigue that stirred my youthful imagination. The area between Leonard’s Corner and Kelly’s Corner, and the streets nearby, was still known as ‘Little Jerusalem,’ and was still the heart of Dublin’s Jewish community in the 1950s and into the 1960s.

Although the drift to the southern suburbs of Terenure, Rathfarnham and Churchtown was already happening in the mid-1960s, Little Jerusalem was still an area with small kosher shops, fascia signs in mixtures of English and Hebrew lettering, and small terraced houses that included synagogues for tiny congregations even after the new synagogue opened on Rathfarnham Road, a few doors from the house where I was born.

The Levitas brothers, Max, Morry and Sol, lived on Longwood Avenue and Warren Street in Little Jerusalem Their friend Chaim Herzog lived on Bloomfield Avenue. These four boys were of my father’s generation. The Levitas brothers were the sons of Harry Levitas from the shtetl of Akmeyan in Lithuania and his wife Leah Rick from Riga in Latvia. Both parents fled the pogroms in Tsarist Russia in 1913. They met in Dublin, where both had family members, and they were married in Camden Street Synagogue in August 1914.

Harry Levitas became a prominent activist in the Amalgamated Jewish Tailors’, Machinists’ and Pressers’ Union. It was known in Dublin as ‘the Jewish Union’ and had offices in the same building as the Camden Street Synagogue, so that the house was said to have ‘Jerusalem on one floor, and the New Jerusalem on another’.

The childhood years of the Levitas brothers was marked by poverty, hardship and discrimination. From 1915 to 1927, the family lived in rooms in one house after another in Little Jerusalem: 15 Longwood Avenue (1915), 8 Warren Street (1916-1925) and one single room at 13 Saint Kevin’s Parade (1925-1927).

Max Samuel Levitas was born at 15 Longwood Avenue on 1 June 1915; his brothers, Maurice (1917-2001) and Sol (1917-2001), were born at Warren Street. Another brother Isaac, who was born at Warren Street in 1922, died as a thirteen-month-old infant in a tragic accident in the family home in March 1923. A sister Celia was born at Warren Street in 1923, and a daughter Toby was born later after the family emigrated.

During those childhood years in Little Jerusalem, the Levitas boys attended Saint Peter’s Church of Ireland National School on New Bride Street, beside the Meath Hospital. Their father struggled to earn a living, sometimes dealing in scrap metal, at other times as a travelling salesman, but more often as a tailor’s presser. But he was always an active trade unionist.

The Camden Street Synagogue closed in 1916, and the Levitas family then attended Lennox Street Synagogue, around the corner from their home on Warren Street. It was founded in 1887, and was one of the many small hebroth or shuls in the area set up by recent immigrants from Lithuania and Poland.

Late one Saturday in 1925, the synagogue almost went up in smoke. It was not, however, attempted arson. Four young boys had been anxious to bring the Sabbath to a speedy conclusion in order to go back to playing on the street. They came back into the synagogue to hastily say the final prayers, and accidentally knocked over a candle that set a cloth alight. Other versions of the incident say they knocked over a candle while trying to access the synagogue wine. Whatever the cause, the small blaze was quickly extinguished.

The four ‘culprits’ were the three Levitas brothers – Max, Maurice and Sol Levitas – and Chaim Herzog, the son of the Chief Rabbi, Dr Yitzhak Herzog. The fourth boy, Chaim Herzog (1918-1997), was born in Belfast but had moved to Dublin with his parents in 1919 and lived on Bloomfield Avenue.

Chaim Herzog later went to secondary school in Wesley College, and would become the President of Israel (1983-1993). The other three boys in the incident, the Levitas brothers, moved with their parents that year to one room in 13 Saint Kevin’s Parade. A few doors away was another small shul, the ultra-orthodox Machzikei haDas, founded at No 7 in 1883. But the Levitas family stayed there for less than two years, and eventually moved to the East End of London, where the boys would become heroes in the Battle of Cable Street.

When Harry Levitas was blacklisted by employers for his union activism, the family was forced to move to Glasgow in 1927. In 1930, they moved to Whitechapel in the East End of London, where Harry had two sisters. As teenagers in the East End, the three Levitas boys from Dublin became active in politics. At 19, Max became an East End hero when he was arrested with Jack Clifford for daubing anti-Fascist slogans on Nelson’s Column in 1934.

When Oswald Mosley tried marching through the largely Jewish East End with his blackshirts in 1936, the Levitas brothers resisted and took part in the Battle of Cable Street. By then Max was 21, working as a tailor’s presser in a small workshop in Commercial Street, but Maurice and Sol were still in their teens.

Maurice ‘Morry’ Levitas joined the Connolly Column of the International Brigade in 1937 to fight against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. He spent eleven months in jail, where he suffered violent interrogations, arbitrary beatings, and mock executions before he was released in a prisoner exchange in 1939. During the Second World War, he served in India and Burma with the Royal Army Medical Corps. He later worked as a plumber, teacher and lecturer.

Max led a twenty-one-week rent strike in Whitechapel in 1939, and in September 1940 he led the occupation of the Savoy Hotel’s deep bomb shelters that were reserved for Savoy patrons. The protest forced the authorities to open up Underground stations as bomb shelters for the rest of World War II. Max was elected as a Communist borough councillor in Stepney in the East End in 1945, and he held his seat for a further seventeen years.

Members of the extended Levitas family suffered the fate of many Jews during the Holocaust. Their aunt Sara was burnt to death along with fellow-villagers in the synagogue of Akmeyan; their aunt Rachel was killed with her family by the Nazis in Riga; an uncle was murdered in Paris by the Gestapo.

Max and Maurice Levitas frequently returned to the Dublin of their childhood. Maurice was honoured with Spanish citizenship in 1996 and was among the surviving veterans of the International Brigade who received a civic reception in the Mansion House in 1997. He died in 2001.

Max was in Ireland for the last time in 2015 to re-visit Little Jerusalem, the houses that had been childhood homes, and the former synagogue on Lennox Street. He too received a civic reception in the Mansion House. Max celebrated his 100th birthday in Whitechapel in 2015, when he received personal greetings from President Michael D. Higgins. He died on 2 November 2018. A block of flats on Jubilee Street in Stepney was named Levitas House in 2020 in his honour.

As for the former synagogue that almost burned down 100 years ago, it closed its doors in 1974 and the congregation moved to Stratford College on Zion Road, Rathgar, where it continued to worship until 1981.

Further reading:

Nick Harris, Dublin’s Little Jerusalem (Dublin, 2002).
Cormac Ó Gráda, Jewish Ireland in the Age of Joyce: A Socioeconomic History (Princeton NJ and Oxford, 2006).
Manus O’Riordan, ‘Citizens of the Republic, Jewish History in Ireland,’ Dublin Review of Books, 2007, avaiable at: https://drb.ie/articles/citizens-of-the-republic-jewish-history-in-ireland/ (accessed 15 September 2025).
‘So Long, Max Levitas’, Spitalfields Life (4 November 2018), available at: https://spitalfieldslife.com/2018/11/04/so-long-max-levitas/ (accessed 15 September 2025)

The house on Bloomfield Avenue where Chaim Herzog lived as a child (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This essay was published as ‘Four Boys Growing up in Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’ and a Synagogue Fire’, pp 153-156, Chapter 36 in Childhood and the Irish, A miscellany, ed Salvador Ryan (Dublin: Wordwell, 2025), xviii + 344 pp, ISBN: 978-1-916742-19-2, lauched at the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, last Monday (1 December 2025)

Biographical note (p 340):

Patrick Comerford is an Anglican priest and a former professor in Trinity College Dublin and the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. He lives in retirement in Milton Keynes

With Professor Salvador Ryan (editor, second from left) and some of the other contributors at the launch of ‘Childhood and the Irish, A miscellany’ in the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, last Monday (1 December 2025)

Nicholas Comberford’s maps of the ‘Bay of Mexico’ defy Trump’s delusions about the ‘Gulf of America’

Manuscript map of North America, ca late 1630s, pen and ink and watercolour on parchment (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund) … Nicholas Comberford was using the name ‘Bay of Mexico’ almost 400 years ago

Patrick Comerford

The Trump regime’s petty insistence on labelling the Gulf of Mexico as the ‘Gulf of America’ is both mendacious and egregious, imposing a name that has been concocted to mollify a petulant man who continues to pursue imperious gestures and to sign egregious edicts for no other reason than to compensate for his inner insecurities and his low self-esteem.

Executive Order 14172 on 20 January tried to the change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America in US federal government usage, despite the fact that it has been known as the Gulf of Mexico since the 1550s, a name derived from Mexica, the Nahuatl word for the Aztecs.

Associated Press journalists have been banned indefinitely from the Oval Office and Air Force One because AP decided to continue using Gulf of Mexico. The White House accused AP of ‘commitment to misinformation’ and ‘irresponsible and dishonest reporting’, and Trump says AP continues to be barred ‘until such time as they agree that it’s the Gulf of America.’

Historians, geographers and cartographers, as well as journalists, have produced maps that are centuries-old using names such as the Gulf of Mexico, the Great Bay of Mexico, or simply the Bay of Mexico. No historical map names the place the Gulf of America. Why? Simply because there was no USA back then.

The names Gulf of Mexico and Bay of Mexico appear on maps long before Jamestown, before Plymouth Rock, and over 200 years before the Declaration of Independence, and more than 250 years before the Louisiana Purchase, which was the first time the US controlled any land even bordering the Gulf.

The name Mexico refers to the people later referred to as Aztecs, when what is now Mexico was part of Colonial Spain. The name ‘Golfo de Mexico’ first appears in 1550 on a map now in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and in an historical account in 1552.

Europeans have used the name the Gulf of Mexico, and the corresponding terms in Spanish and French, Golfo Mexicano and Golphe du Mexique, with consistency from the mid-17th century, although Spanish geographers continued for a time to also use the name of Golfo de Nueva España.

In recent days, I have come across two versions of the earliest English-language maps to refer to the Bay of Mexico or Gulf of Mexico. They have been dated to the 1630s or, more likely, the 1640s or the 1650s, and the cartographic historian and antiquarian Philip D Burden has recently identified Nicholas Comberford (ca 1600-1673) of Stepney, the 17th century Kilkenny-born map maker as the creator of these maps.

One version of the map with the name ‘Bay of Mexico’ is a manuscript map of North America in pen and ink and watercolour on parchment. It is in the Yale Center for British Art, thanks to the Paul Mellon Fund, and it has been dated to the late 1630s.

Another version, recently sold by Clive A Burden Ltd of Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire, has been labelled ‘Map of the Bay of Mexico &c’, has been dated to London ca 1650, and has been identified as the work of Nicholas Comberford.

This second map measures 220 x 430 mm on a sheet measuring 250 x 465 mm, and is in ink with green and yellow watercolour wash on parchment. It is in good condition and has an ink notation, ‘This vellam and paper I brought with me out of England as I remember about 18 yeares past the vellam decay’d through the moisture of the place’.

It was sold recently as stock number 9601 by Clive A Burden Ltd rare map dealers. The business was founded by the late Clive A Burden in 1966 and is one of the longest established dealers in antique maps, atlases, books and rare decorative prints, with a particular focus are the British Isles and North America.

Nicholas Comberford’s works have been catalogued in the British Library and are found in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, the New York Public Library, the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University, and some other museums and libraries. He is a widely-acclaimed, leading and important member of the London group of chart-makers, who used similar colours, patterns and techniques, worked on vellum, and lived close to the dockyards at Stepney and Wapping on the Thames. They have come to be called the Thames School.

He was born in Kilkenny ca> 1600, and, according to his own account, his father was Nicholas Comerford, the ‘King’s Gaoler’ at Kilkenny, and his grandfather was Garret Comerford (ca 1550-1604) of Inchiolohan or Castleinch, the Queen’s Attorney-at-Laws for Connaught, MP for Callan, Second Baron of the Exchequer and Chief Justice of Munster.

Nicholas was a life-long member of the Drapers’ Company in London and his maps charted the world from the East Indies and India to Brazil and the coast of North America. He may well have been the first person to create English-language maps that show Borneo, including the area that is now Sarawak and the place where Kuching would later develop.

However, unlike the other members of the Thames School, Nicholas Comberford was not an Englishman, but a Kilkenny-born Irishman, who, as well as being overlooked until recently by cartographers and art historians alike, has been overlooked too in his native county.

The Town Hall in Callan, Co Callan, once held the Civic Mace presented by Edward Comerford … Edward Comerford and Lord Maltravers were MPs for Callan in 1634-1635 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Philip D Burden joined his father in the business in 1979. He wrote and published in 1996 and 2007 a definitive two volume work, The Mapping of North America. It was the first work to list all known printed maps relating to North America up to the year 1700.

Burden argues convincingly that this remarkable English manuscript map of North America was probably prepared ca 1650, in conjunction with a proposal to establish a colony in North Carolina (‘Carolana’). The fact that the manuscript was drawn on costly vellum, as opposed to paper, strongly suggests it was prepared as an official document for a key figure involved in the proposed settlement.

He says the idiosyncratic detail of the map strongly suggests a connection with John Farrah, mapmaker, and former Deputy Treasurer of the Virginia Company, who was very active in ‘Carolana’ affairs at this time.

The English colony of ‘Carolana’ originated in a grant by Charles I in 1629 to Sir Robert Heath, Solicitor General of England (1621), Attorney General (1625) and a member of the council of the Virginia Company.

Charles I named the new territory ‘Carolana’ after himself. Heath had no success in attracting settlers and in 1638, he assigned his rights to Henry Frederick Howard (1608-1652), Lord Maltravers and from 1640 Earl of Arundel, and MP for Callan, Co Kilkenny, Edward Comerford in the Irish Parliament in 1634-1635; Edward Comerford was MP for Callan again in 1639-1649

Lord Maltravers had many interests in the American colonies. He was a member of the New England Company and sought royal support for the English West India Company in 1637. Interest in North Carolina expanded after the trial and execution of Charles I in 1649.

A promotional tract was published in May in a London newspaper, The Moderate Intelligencer, entitled ‘A Description of ‘Carolana’ by a ‘Well-Willer’. A similar tract, William Bullock’s Virginia Impartially Examined, was published a few weeks earlier and was dedicated to Lord Maltravers and Lord Baltimore.

Lord Maltravers, was MP for Callan with Edward Comerford, and planned to colonise Norh Carolina

By far the most important of the ‘Carolana’ promotional tracts came in 1650 as Edward Williams’s Virgo Triumphans, or Virginia richly and truly valued; more especially the South part thereof: viz. The fertile Carolana … (London: John Stevenson, 1650).

Williams’s publication was associated with John Farrar of Geding, Huntingdonshire, formerly Deputy Treasurer for the Virginia Company. He was the author of a number of maps of Virginia at this time, when ‘Carolana’ was often regarded as South Virginia.

Farrar’s map in 1651 uses the name ‘Carolana’ to the region between the Roanoke and the Chowan Rivers. His map is most famous for its inclusion of a great ‘The Sea of China and the Indies’ immediately beyond the Appalachian Mountains. This detail would have been of great interest to Lord Maltravers, who held nominal title to all the land included in the original grant, which extended far beyond those mountains. Farrar’s map claims any successful colony in ‘Carolana’ would have access to ports on this western sea, and with trade with ‘China and the Indies’.

The English manuscript map includes a much vaster area than Farrar’s map – virtually all of North America. However, on the Englishman manuscript, the great trans-Appalachian sea is called ‘The South Sea’, not ‘The Sea of China and the Indies’.

Both the Farrar map and the English manuscript map include the Nansemond River, in Southside Virginia. The Nansemond is one of only four placenames given for Virginia on the English manuscript, along with Chesapeake, Jamestown and ‘Accomack. Burden says all the evidence points to the English manuscript as having been prepared in conjunction with the 1649 proposal to establish a permanent colony in ‘Carolana’.

The fact that there is no sign of the English colonies of New York and New Jersey (founded 1664, and the entire region between the Hudson from the Delaware is labelled the New Netherland helps Burden to be even more precise in dating the map. Fort Orange (founded in 1624), the Hudson River and Helgate are named. Long Island is shown divided by a channel and is similar in form to Sir Robert Dudley’s map of New England (1647), while Delaware (‘De la Warr’) Bay and River are given their present name, first introduced on Lord Baltimore’s map (1635).

He points out too that name ‘Carolana’ was used consistently in England for the region south of Virginia until 1663, when a new grant from Charles II used the spelling Carolina.

In conclusion, Burden suggests the map is no earlier than 1634, the date of the founding of Maryland, and no later than 1664, when the English conquest turned New Netherland into New York.

Burden also believes that the map’s calligraphy was the work of ‘two distinct hands’. He a ‘major chart maker’ would have been a logical choice for such a seemingly important map, and says: ‘A study of the Thames school reveals that it is not uncommon for charts to be unsigned or undated … Chartmakers tended to have geographical areas of expertise and a study of the time frame and region would tend to point to Nicholas Comberford. He was the only map maker identifiable during this time frame who produced charts of North America. There are similarities of lettering also, particularly noticeable with the ‘R’ and ‘A’.’

Nicholas Comberford, however, was known for being decorative, so this would not have been a major production of his, and seems to suggest the map may date ca 1649 to 1651.

‘The South Part of Virginia’ (Nicholas Comberford, 1657)

The connection that Lord Maltravers shared with the Comerford family and with Callan may partly explain the commissions Nicholas Comberford received for maps associated with Carolina, and subsequently he completed two further maps showing Carolina.

His map of the ‘The South Part of Virginia’ was produced in 1657. It is a single sheet of vellum, measuring 38 x 50 cm is mounted on two hinged boards, each 39 x 25 cm.

This chart is in the Heathcote collection. Another copy with slight differences but of the same date is in the New York Public Library.

‘The south part of Virginia now the north part of Carolina’ (Nicholas Comberford, 1657)

Another map of ‘The south part of Virginia now the north part of Carolina’ was made by Nicholas Comberford in 1657. This map in the New York Public Library, is similar to his map, ‘The south part of Virginia’ (1657) and is in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, but the signature reads: ‘Nicholas C[o]mberford fe[c]itt anno 1657.’

These two maps record for the first time many names that are still in use. Some of them, such as ‘Battis Ponte’ on Pamlico River, were probably given by Captain Nathaniel Battis, an early explorer, landowner and settler.

In the title of the New York map, the words ‘now the north part of Carolina’ were added in a later hand some time after the grant of Carolina in 1663.

Nicholas Comberford is a key figure in 17th century art in England, but he is also an important figure in explaining how we came to understand the way the world was explored, mapped, charted and named by Europeans and by English-speaking travellers and adventurers in the mid-17th century.

Only the foolhardy ignore the facts of history, and only the deluded ignore the reality of geography. As I continue to learn more about how his work was so influential as a mapmaker, cartographer and geographer, I can only muse if the name ‘Bay of Mexico’ was good enough for Nicholas Comberford and the Comerford family almost 400, thn thee name ‘Gulf of Mexico’ should be good enough today for an upstart like Donald Trump, his acolytes and sychophants in the Oval Office and his MAGA minions.

Nicholas Comberford, ‘Map of the Bay of Mexico &c’, London, ca 1650, 220 x 430 mm on a sheet 250 x 465 mm, ink with green and yellow watercolour wash on parchment

Nicholas Comberford and one of the earliest English-language maps of Borneo, made in 1665

Nicholas Comerford’s map of the East Indies, made in 1665, may be the earliest English-map showing Borneo, including Kuching and Sarawak (© National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London)

Patrick Comerford

Inevitably, once I had arrived in Kuching, I started searching for Comerford family links in the past with Kuching, in Sarawak, or in Borneo, or in Malaysia.

We arrived in Kuching two weeks ago (15 October 2024), but in the two weeks since I have found very little about any Comerford presence here before me as I trawl the internet and pored over academic papers, news reports and the historical research of others in the past.

There wis the occasional academic paper with a Comerford co-author, but none of them amounted to a long-standing connection with this part of south-east Asia. There is an Australian racing commentator, also called Patrick Comerford, who has worked here occasionally, but he has also worked in Singapore as well as Abu Dhabi and other parts of the Middle East. Once again, though, there were no long-standing associations.

I extended my research a little further in Malaysia and found Comerfords who had been here on business trips or who had on-off business connections with Malaysia as part of their interests in south-east Asia. In my initial searches I could find no Comerford involved in colonial administration, no Comerford involved in rubber plantations, oil exploration, or missionary engagement in Malaysia, or in the Brooke administration in Sarawak.

I even wondered whether there was a possibility that the Brooke family, one-time Rajahs of Sarawak, were related to Comberford Brooke (1675-1711), who lived at Madeley, Shropshire, and Comberford Hall, Staffordshire, and who was also known as ‘Mr Brooke of Cumberford’ and ‘Captain Cumberford’.

He was living with his sisters and his grandmother, Catherine Comberford, at Comberford Hall in 1705. He became an English Jacobite and a captain in the German Regiment of Saar. But he maintained regular contact with his family and friends, and as Comberford Brooke of Comberford he made his will in 1711.

Comberford Brooke married Rose Austen, daughter of Sir John Austen of Bexley, Kent. But his descendants in the male line came to an end with the death of his only son Basil Brooke, who died in 1727, and the line of descent of these Comberfords and Brookes passed into the Smitheman, Edwardes, Giffard, Salughter and Mostyn family.

A portrait of Basil Brooke, Comberford Brooke’s son, painted in 1727 … I could find no links with the Brookes of Sarawak (Photograph courtesy Paul and Kathy Schaefer, Fairfield, Iowa)

The legacy of the Brooke family can be seen throughout Kuching to this day. But it does not include a descent from the Comberford family of Comberford Hall.

And then I remembered the work of the Nicholas Comberford or Comerford, the 17th century mapmaker in London, who worked in Radcliffe and Stepney.

Returning to the work of Nicholas Comberford, I also returned to the paper I wrote 25 years ago in the Old Kilkenny Review, the Journal of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society (‘From India to Brazil: Nicholas Comerford, a seventeenth-century Kilkenny-born cartographer’, 1999, pp 92-102).

Nicholas Comerford’s maps charted the world from the East Indies and India to Brazil and the coast of North America. However, unlike the other members of the Thames School, he was not an Englishman, but a Kilkenny-born Irishman, who, as well as being overlooked until recently by cartographers and art historians alike, has been overlooked too in his native county.

Nicholas may well have been the first person to create English-language maps that show Borneo, including the area that is now Sarawak and the place where Kuching would later develop.

Two versions of his colourful map, East Indies, have survived. They are both on vellum and similar in every detail apart from their size, including the materials and colours Nicholas used, his spelling of place names and the inscriptions: ‘Nicholas Cumberford dwelling at the Signe of the Platt neare the weste end of the School House in Ratcliffe, 1665’.

The larger version, measuring 70.5 cm x 55.5 cm, is in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London; the smaller version, measuring 40 cm x 32 cm, is in the Braga Special Map Collection of the National Library of Australia. The map in Greenwich is a single sheet Portulan made of vellum and mounted on two hinged boards, each 70.5 cm x 27.5 cm. The signature reads: ‘Made by Nicholas Comberford dwelling at the signe of the platt neare the west end of the school house in Ratcliffe anno 1665.’

Nicholas Comberford’s smaller map in the National Library of Australia is in colour, measuring 40 x 32 cm, with a similar inscription and also dated Ratcliffe, 1665.

Borneo is at the very centre of these two maps, and it is possible to identity the location on the map where Kuching later developed. Other places included in the maps include the West Pacific, Malaya, Sumatra, Siam, China, Taiwan, Japan, New Guinea, Timor, the Philippines and north-west Australia. Cambodia is named as Camboea an seems to include Laos and Vietnam; Java is identified as Iava Maior; the Philippines as Laphillpinia, and Korea as Coray. A clear line indicates the Equator.

Inside Saint Dunstan’s Parish Church, Stepney, facing east … Nicholas Comberford and Mary Kithen were married here on 10 June 1624 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Nicholas Comberford was a leading member of the Thames School of chart makers who drew manuscript plane charts on vellum. Although he lived most of his working life in Stepney and Wapping, he was born in Kilkenny. He was a member of the Drapers’ Company all his life. His maps charted the world from the East Indies and India to Brazil and the North coast of America.

But in the 1650s, at the height of his career, he was poor and was paid little for his work. Although he had charted much of the world, he never travelled much further than the journey from Kilkenny to London, a journey that he appears to have regretted in the closing days of his life, when he longed to return to Ireland once more.

Part of the difficulty in the past in identifying Nicholas Comerford as a member of the Kilkenny family arises because many English map cataloguers have spelled his name Comberford, leading to confusion and his identification with the Staffordshire family. Nor was the historian of the Diocese of Ossory, William Carrigan, aware of Nicholas Comberford, his important contribution to 17th-century life, and his place in the Inchiholohan or Castleinch branch of the family. The manuscripts relevant to tracing Nicholas Comerford’s life were not published and available to readers until after Carrigan’s four volumes were published in 1905.

Nicholas Comberford’s father was Nicholas Comerford, the ‘King’s Gaoler’ at Kilkenny, and he was a grandson of Garret Comerford of Inshilholan (Inchiolohan or Castleinch). Garret Comerford (1550-1604) was the Queen’s Attorney-at-Laws for Connaught, MP for Callan, Second Baron of the Exchequer and Chief Justice of Munster. Just a year before his death, Garret was the third or fourth richest person with lands in Co Cork.

Nicholas Comberford’s father is the third son named in Garret Comerford’s will and was the ‘King’s Gaoler’ at Kilkenny. Nicholas Comberford the mapmaker was probably born in Kilkenny ca 1600. He moved to London in his teens, long before 1620, and settled in Stepney, where a number of Comberfords were living for a few generations. They may have been Irish cousins, or members of the Comberford family from Staffordshire, who would have accepted him as kin; in either case, they probably made it easy for him to find a place to live, and to find an apprenticeship with the Company of Drapers as a ‘plat-maker’ or map-maker.

The coat-of-arms of the Drapers’ Company at Drapers’ Hall … Nicholas Comberford was a member of the livery company founded in 1361 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

As Nicholas Commerford or Comberford, he was apprenticed to the mapmaker John Daniel in the Drapers’ Company school of portolan chart makers. John Daniel was the first draper-chartmaker of the Company of Drapers, and Nicholas completed his apprenticeship with him in 1620.

As Nicholas Commerford, he married Mary Kithen of Ratcliffe in Saint Dunstan’s Parish Church, Stepney, on 10 June 1624, when he is described as a ‘Draper.’ He continued to live in the parish, where he was ‘of the precincts of St Katherine,’ was active in parish life, and is recorded as attending a vestry meeting in 1645. In the parish records, he is described as a draper and is named variously as Nicholas Cumberford and Commerford. At the February 1645 Vestry, there were no less than 11 captains from Ratcliffe and Limehouse among an attendance of 30 parishioners.

Later, when he was living in London, Nicholas would tell visitors from Ireland that his kindred had many good estates in Ireland, but they also included a priest who by then was in Spain, and another who was a drunk and who robbed him. The priest in Spain may have been either Thomas Comerford (1583-1636) or James Comerford (1583-1640), two of his three Jesuit uncles who were sons of Garret Comerford. He may have been unaware that his second cousin, Patrick Comerford, had become Bishop of Waterford and Lismore.

According to his signature on most of his maps and charts, Nicholas Comberford lived at Radcliffe in Stepney, although a visitor in 1655 says he lived in Wapping. We are left with a very full description of Comberford’s living conditions and family circumstances from an almost mocking account of a visit to him contained in a letter from that visitor, William Dobbyns, to his cousin John (later Sir John) Percivale, written on 17 December 1655.

Dobbyns and his friends located a ‘rich’ uncle, who turned out to be Nicholas Comberford, the poor mapmaker, who had left Kilkenny and who was now living in squalor.

Nicholas is mentioned by Samuel Pepys in his diary in 1663. Yet, at the height of his career in the 1650s, Nicholas was poor and was paid little for his work. Nicholas worked in a garret in the house in Wapping, and was paid 25 shillings for a map that would take about three weeks to make. His works remained unclaimed until the mid-20th century. In recent years, he has been fully identified as a member of the group of London chart makers now called the Thames School.

In all, 28 of his charts have been recoded. The British Museum Library collection in London includes seven charts, dating between 1647 and 1665, the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London, has seven Comberford maps, there are five Comberford maps or charts in the Sterling National Library in Yale University, the University of Kansas has four, and there is one each in the New York Public Library, the Antigua Museum, the National Library of Australia, Lincoln Cathedral and the Bodleian Library in Oxford, which has what is probably his last traceable map, dated 1670.

He was working until 1670, but I have traced no further works by Nicholas Comerford after 1670. He died in 1673 in his early 70s, still living in poverty in Wapping. The historic and artistic importance of his work and the work of other members of the ‘Thames School’ have come to be appreciated only in recent years, and his work has come to the attention of many scholars.

‘East Indies’ by Nicholas Comberford of Ratcliffe, 1665 (Braga Collection, National Library of Australia)

Daily prayer in Lent with early English saints: 28, 12 March 2024, Saint Dunstan of Canterbury

Saint Dunstan depicted in a stained glass window above the High Altar in Saint Dunstan-in-the-West Church, Fleet Street, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

We are more than half-way through the Season of Lent, which began on Ash Wednesday (14 February 2024), and this week began with the Fourth Sunday in Lent (Lent IV), also known as Laetare Sunday and Mothering Sunday or Mother’s Day (10 March 2024).

Throughout Lent this year, I am taking time each morning to reflect on the lives of early, pre-Reformation English saints commemorated in the Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship.

Later this afternoon, I am taking part by Zoom in an academic meeting in Cambridge, and in the evening I am attending a meeting of the Town Centre Working Group in Stony Stratford. But, before this day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, A reflection on an early, pre-Reformation English saint;

2, today’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

Saint Dunstan (second from left) with Archbishop Lanfranc, Saint Anselm and Archbishop Langton depicted in a window above the High Altar in Saint Dunstan-in-the-West Church, Fleet Street, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Early English pre-Reformation saints: 28, Saint Dunstan of Canterbury

Saint Dunstan (988), Archbishop of Canterbury and Restorer of Monastic Life, is commemorated in Common Worship on 19 May. He was born near Glastonbury ca 910 into a noble family. He received a good education and spent time at the court of the King of Wessex.

A saintly uncle urged him to enter the monastic life; he delayed, but followed the advice in time, on recovering from an illness. Returning to Glastonbury, Dunstan lived as a monk, devoting his work time to creative pursuits: illuminating, music, and metalwork.

The new king made him abbot in 943, and this launched a great revival of monastic life in England. Starting with Glastonbury, Dunstan restored discipline to several monasteries and promoted study and teaching.

Under two later kings, he rose to political and ecclesiastical eminence, being chief minister, Bishop of London and then Archbishop of Canterbury under King Edgar. This enabled him and his followers to extend his reforms to the whole English Church.

As Bishop of London and lord of the manor of Stepney, Saint Dunstan, replaced an existing wooden structure with a stone church ca 952 and dedicated it to All the Saints.

Dunstan fell from political favour in 970, but he continued as Archbishop of Canterbury, preaching and teaching. He died in 988.

Saint Dunstan was canonised by acclamation in 1029, and the church in Stephney was rededicated to Saint Dunstan and All Saints, a dedication it retains to this day.

Saint Dunstan’s Church, Stepney … dates back to long before 952 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

John 5: 1-3, 5-16 (NRSVA):

1 After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

2 Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. 3 In these lay many invalids – blind, lame, and paralysed.

5 One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’ 7 The sick man answered him, ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.’ 8 Jesus said to him, ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk.’ 9 At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.

Now that day was a sabbath. 10 So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, ‘It is the sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.’ 11 But he answered them, ‘The man who made me well said to me, “Take up your mat and walk”.’ 12 They asked him, ‘Who is the man who said to you, “Take it up and walk”?’ 13 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. 14 Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, ‘See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.’ 15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. 16 Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the sabbath.

The carvings of a ship (left) and the devil and Saint Dunstan’s tongs (right) above the west door (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 12 March 2024):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Lent Reflection: JustMoney Movement.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by Matt Ceaser, Movement Builder, JustMoney Movement.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (12 March 2024) invites us to pray in these words:

Help us Lord to be advocates for a fairer economy which prevents poverty and the lack of freedom that comes along with this.

The Collect:

Merciful Lord,
absolve your people from their offences,
that through your bountiful goodness
we may all be delivered from the chains of those sins
which by our frailty we have committed;
grant this, heavenly Father,
for Jesus Christ’s sake, our blessed Lord and Saviour,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Lord God,
whose blessed Son our Saviour
gave his back to the smiters
and did not hide his face from shame:
give us grace to endure the sufferings of this present time
with sure confidence in the glory that shall be revealed;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Merciful Lord,
you know our struggle to serve you:
when sin spoils our lives
and overshadows our hearts,
come to our aid
and turn us back to you again;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday: Alfred the Great

Tomorrow: Saint Alphege of Canterbury (1012), Martyr

The ruined Church of Saint Dunstan in the East is a tranquil oasis in the heart of the City of London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Saint Dunstan in the East is now a popular venue for parties, receptions and photoshoots (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)