Frederick William Ansell
Mayor of Oxford 1891–2 and 1907–8
Frederick William Ansell (1840–1932) was born in Burford on 11 October 1840 and baptised on 4 November. He can be found in the 1841 census as a one-year-old baby living in Burford’s High Street with his father Edward (a currier), his mother Elizabeth (née Brooks), and his older siblings Edward (7), John (4), and Elizabeth (2).
Ansell’s mother had three more children after Frederick, but she died of typhoid in 1847 when he was just seven years old. At the time of the 1851 census Frederick was aged ten and still at school, and his father (then a widower of 40) had a servant to help him look after the five children that were still at home.
Ansell attended Burford Grammar School and then the College Home Academy in Southgate. By the time of the 1861 census he was 20 years old and living in Oxford at 135 High Street as an apprentice upholsterer to Richard Embling. Soon after completing his apprenticeship he started up his own business on the other side of the road, and directories from 1866 list Frederick W. Ansell as an "Upholsterer, cabinet maker, & paper hanger" at 44 High Street (which has now been rebuilt).
By the time of the 1871 census, Ansell was aged 30 and living in the house of his aunt, Miss Anne Ansell (then aged 63) at 29 Pembroke Street in St Clements (now renamed Rectory Road: Ansell’s house was demolished to make way for the Rectory Road Centre). He is described as an upholsterer employing six men and three boys. By 1881 Ansell (still a bachelor at the age of 40 and still living in the same house with his aunt) appears to have started downsizing his business, as he now employed just two men, two apprentices, and one boy. He was by this time a City Councillor for the East Ward, and in 1883 he was elected Sheriff of Oxford. He was a Liberal, and at one time was on the executive council of the City Liberal Association. He was also a director of the Oxford Gas Company.
In the late 1870s Ansell took over 45 High Street as well, and continued his business from the double shop for another ten years. In 1888 he then abandoned cabinet making for print-selling and publishing, when he and two partners took over the business of Russell & Co., music sellers at 120 High Street.
Above: horse-drawn delivery for Russell’s music shop when Ansell was proprietor
Ansell is listed as the householder in the St Clement’s house until 1890, the year before his aunt’s death, and thereafter at Lilford Lodge, a much grander house at 99 Banbury Road. This is now the Voltaire Foundation / Europaeum, on the corner of St Margaret’s Road (below).
In November 1891 Ansell was also elected Mayor of Oxford.
In 1889 the boundary of the city of Oxford had been extended as far as the Boundary Brook to match that of the parliamentary borough, but it was not until Ansell’s mayoralty that the new boundary stones were set up. The one on the left stands in Woodlands Road, Headington, and shows the city crest, with "1892 F.W. ANSELL MAYOR" underneath.
On 17 August 1892 Ansell rode the franchises. The journey was a catalogue of disasters, with Ansell ending up in water up to his breast in the Cherwell and the city’s precious 1660 mace at the bottom of the river.
On 27 March 1894, at the age of 53, Ansell married for the first time. The ceremony took place at St Philip & St James Church and his wife was Annie Eliza Downing, who at 30 was 24 years his junior. She was the daughter of Robert Downing, a gentleman of 11 Park Crescent (now Park Town), but had been born at Hinksey.
They had two children baptised at St Philip and St James Church: Annie Janet on 30 October 1895 and Frederick William on 30 October 1896. By now Ansell is described as a "gentleman".
Ansell’s arms (right) are set in stained glass in the Council Chamber.
Because Ansell was on the Municipal Buildings Committee when the new Town Hall was opened in 1897, his head is carved in stone in the Council Chamber corridor (left).
When Oxford was made a county borough in 1899, Ansell was again returned for the East Ward. He was chairman of the Sanitary Committee, and was largely responsible for the provision of an isolation hospital when Oxford was threatened with a severe outbreak of smallpox.
Ansell was a prominent Freemason who served as Master of the Alfred Lodge and was the first Master of the Alfred Mark Lodge. He travelled extensively in Europe.
Ansell had retired by the time of the 1901 census when he was 60. As well as Annie (6) and Frederick (4), and he and his wife now had another three children: Edward Roy (3), Gertrude (1), and George (one month). They had four domestic servants living with them: a cook, a housemaid, and two nurses. Ansell had another two sons when he was in his sixties (Humphrey and Walter Philip) making seven children in all.
Mrs Ansell with her seven children in 1909
Ansell continued to represent the East Ward until 1905, when he was defeated in an election. He was however elected an Alderman and so remained on the council, and in 1907 he was elected Mayor a second time.
In about 1919 Frederick’s youngest son, Philip, joined him in the music business. In October 1920 Ansell’s son Frederick William Robert (known as Derrick) died of phthisis. He too was a "piano and music dealer’s assistant", and his illness was believed to have been the result of injuries received in the First World War.
The Russell mobile loudspeaker system at Oxford cricket
In 1921 Ansell added the Treble bell to All Saints Church, which was then the City Church. It is inscribed:
THE GIFT OF
ALDERMAN F. W. ANSELL, J.P.
EX-MAYOR OF OXFORD.
M. & S. London, 1927.
(M. & S. stands for Mears & Stainbank, the Whitechapel Foundry. Another former mayor, G. Claridge Druce, presented the Second bell at the same time.)
Ansell lived to be 91, and died of influenza and chronic bronchitis on 25 March 1932 at 99 Banbury Road. His funeral was held at the City Church (All Saints). The Mayor and High Sheriff headed the Corporation procession. Family mourners included his four surviving sons (Humphrey, Roy, George, and Philip), his daughter Miss Geda Ansell, and his brother-in-law R. Downing. He was buried at Wolvercote Cemetery with his wife Annie and son William.
Ansell’s six surviving children
- Annie Janet Ansell in 1919 married Norman Fisher Newton (a Canadian Army officer wounded in the First World War and convalescing in Oxford). She went to Canada with him in the spring of 1920 and lived in Parkhill, Ontario where her sons Derek and Ross were born. (There was also another son who died in infancy.) Janet and Norman moved to London, Ontario in 1924 where she lived until her death in the spring of 1946.
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George Richard Ansell and his brother Walter Philip Ansell (known as Phil) both remained bachelors and shared a house. George served in Burma during the Second World War, while Phil spent most of his working life at MG car works in Abingdon.
- Miss Gertrude Elizabeth Dorothy Ansell (known as Geda from her initials) shared a house with her bachelor brother Edward Roy (always known as Roy) until he died in 1960s. Geda died on 20 January 1999, aged 99 (described as a retired secretary living in Botley)
- Humphrey Sylvester Jordan Ansell (known as Hump) took over the family music business after Frederick’s death in 1920. He married Barbara Joan Warburton and they had three children (Russell, Graham and Janet) and lived on Cumnor Hill. He worked up to a month before his death at the age 93 on 9 May 1998
The music shop Russell & Co remained with the Ansell family, later merging with Sydney Acott at 124 High Street. In 1988 Graham Ansell moved out of the old shop at 124 High Street into new premises on the ring road
See also:
- Oxford Journal Illustrated, 20 October 1920, p. 9d (photograph of the Mayor’s son, Derrick Ansell, and short report of his death)
- Oxford Mail, 26 March 1932, p. 1d–e (obituary)
- Oxford Mail, 29 March 1932, p. 1d (report of funeral)
- Susan Wollenberg, "Pianos and pianists in Nineteenth-century Oxford" in Bennett Zon (ed.), Nineteenth-Century Music Review, Volume 2, Issue 1
- 1841 Census: Oxford (Burford) H0107/0872/017/05
- 1851 Census: Oxford (Burford) H0107/1731/741
- 1861 Census: Oxford (All Saints) RG9/0893/062
- 1871 census: Oxford (Cowley) RG10/1435/007
- 1881 Census: Oxford (Cowley) 1497/91
- 1891 Census: Oxford (Cowley) RG11/1497/091
- 1901 Census: Oxford (St Giles) RG12/1166/066
Margaret and Kathryn Ansell have added details that they have discovered whilst researching their family tree