We are pleased to print this shortened version of David Parker s presentation to the November symposium. His book on the subject, Hertfordshire Children in War and Peace, 1914-1939 (2007) offers a fuller account of the effects on elementary school policy of two world wars.

Paul Mauger (surname pronounced in a French manner) was born on 7 January 1896. A Quaker, he at/ended the Friends' School at Saffron Walden, Essex and during World War One worked with the French Red Cross assisting refugees. As a conscientious objector he joined the Friends' Ambulance Service, and in later years was a member of CND.

An older man's infatuation with a teenage girl, bankruptcy, scandal, a threatened shooting and a ring thrown at the groom on the wedding day ... this story has it all ... 'Plus ça change', one might say. The formal entry for Arthur Sebright in one genealogical website gives the following information. 'Arthur Edward Saunders Sebright, born on 30 March 1859, was the son of Sir Thomas Gage Saunders Sebright 8th Bt. and Olivia Henry. He married first Emily Eva Bowen, daughter of John Bowen, in 1889, and second Alice Marion Luke in 1922. He died on 22 August 1933 at age 74.' What it fails to mention is the scandalous affair described below, proving that one never gets the full picture from just one source. Here we have a different sort of hidden history.

This article looks at further research into Hertfordshire's links with the slave trade and its abolition, including the discovery of previously unknown documents relating to its slave-owning past, and a very different interpretation of a source in the county's archives.

In my previous article I stated that little evidence had been found for the direct involvement of Hertfordshire people in the slave trade itself. It is now clear that Hertfordshire people did play a key part in the capture and enslavement of people on the west coast of Africa, and in transporting them across the Atlantic to be sold into plantation slavery. ...

Maurice Thompson, of Watton-at-Stone, and the Guinea Company

Sir Lyonel Lyde, of Ayot St Lawrence, and the Merchant Venturers

Thomas Wilshere's Account Book, Hitchin, 1789 [Not what it seems ...]

John Mills, of Nevis, and Hitchin Grammar School

Mrs Sarah Radcliffe, of Hitchin Priory, and Barbados

The Chaunceys of Dane End and Green End, Little Munden

The Lucas family of Hitchin and Susannah Watts

Eliza Condor, of Watford, and the World Anti-Slavery Convention, 1840