Back in Weston-super-Mare in the next five and a half years following the census, Daniel and Maria had two further children,  Ann, born between January and March 1882, and Emily born between July and September 1886, both born in Weston-super-Mare. Sadly, on 1st November 1886, just after the birth of Emily, her father, Daniel Madge Dart, died. The death occurred at 29 Palmer Street, Weston-super-Mare, with the death certificate recording Daniel's age as 32, (actually aged 36) and his occupation as "Insurance Agent".

For the census of April 1891, the family had moved to 22 New Street, Weston-super-Mare, and Maria is recorded as a charwoman, although the reference to parish pay suggests she is in receipt of some form of poor relief, not unsurprisingly. As a widow with four children, times must have been hard. The three younger children, Ella Francis, Annie, and Emmily are at school, but her eldest, Herbert, now aged 13, is at least supplementing the family income, working as an errand boy. (Possibly with Mr. Harse the butcher, to whom he was later apprenticed?). This census also gives the correct ages for Ella and Herbert.

On 6th November 1896, after a brief apprenticeship as a butcher with a Mr. Harse, Herbert Dart joined the Coldstream Guards, and on 9th March 1899 he set sail with his regiment for South Africa and the Boer War. After a sojourn of seven months in Gibraltar the regiment arrived in South Africa on 28 October 1899, where he saw active service with his regiment at Belmont, the Modder River, Dreifontein, Johannesburg, Diamond Hill and Belfast, sometimes as a mounted scout. Herbert Dart returned to England with the regiment on 20th July 1902, and five months later, on 16th December 1902, he was demobbed from active service and embarked on a career as a nurse.

A year previous, at the time of the census of 1901, Herbert's mother Maria was still living living in Weston-super-Mare working a a charwoman. It would seem that only her youngest daughter Emmily was still living with her.

33 Alma Street, Weston-super-Mare.

Ten years on Maria aged 66, is still working as a charwoman, living at 9 Sidmouth Cottages, Weston-super-Mare. Her daughter Emily is still with her. Thge census records that she has had 4 children, one of whom has died. This refers to her daughter Ella who died on 23 February 1903 aged 23 after suffering severe burns when she accidentally set light to her cotton nightdress. (For further details of the children of Daniel Dart and Maria Dyer - See Appendix F.) Interestingly she records that she would have been married for 35 years which gives date of 1876 which would seem to be accurate for Daniel and her "getting together", but no record of a marriage has been found. Also she omits a fifth child Maud born a "natural child" in 1869

9 Sidmouth Cottages, Weston-super-Mare.

For the census of 1911 Herbert had left the army and was working as a Male nurse in the Stapleton Workhouse in Bristol. Herbert is listed as a Head Lunatic Attendant and also listed on the same page is Elizabeth Mathieson, Herbert’s future wife, listed simply as a Lunatic Attendant.

1911 Census (1st April) Fishponds, Bristol RG14 Book 20 Page 1

Stapleton Workhouse, Fishponds, Bristol

This census is a reminder of the pre national health days when for the poor and sick the only recourse was to be admitted to the workhouse and placed in the infirmary therein. I suspect that both Herbert and Elizabeth probably got little of the training that we would now expect for people involved in mental health care, and from other sources it would seem that the occupants of these Lunatic Wards ranged from individuals with serious mental health problems through to unmarried mothers who were classified as morally deficient simply due to having fallen pregnant outside of marriage.

On 11th August 1911, Herbert Dart, a nurse, married Elizabeth Young Rutherford Mathieson, also a nurse, the eldest daughter of James Mathieson and Rachel Grieve, (SEE MATHIESON & GRIEVE FAMILY HISTORIES). The marriage took place at Christ Church Stapleton, Fishponds, Bristol, and the witnesses were Mr. William & Mrs. Emma Creagh, (also attendants in the Fishponds Institution in 1911), and Alexander Mathieson, the bride's younger brother. Elizabeth Young Rutherford Mathieson had moved south to England also to work as a nurse, and tradition has it that she and Herbert Dart met on a railway platform and it was "love at first sight", although it is also believed that the size of Elizabeth Young Rutherford Mathieson’s chest formed a large part of that initial attraction!!

Not long after their marriage Herbert and Elizabeth would seem to have moved West Bromwich, as there is the registration of the birth of a birth of Rachel M. Mathieson Dart in West Bromwich (6b 1802) but sadly it would seem that the baby did not survive as there is also the registration of the death of a Rachel M. Dart, aged 0 in the same quarter for West Bromwich (6b 951)

I suspect 1914 must have started on a optimistic note as it would seem that Elizabeth had fallen pregnant again. Sadly things were to go horribly wrong both on a national and personal level. In the July of that year Europe entered into a huge and senseless conflict the scale and intensity of which were unprecedented. About 70 million soldiers took part in the fighting, and the war claimed over 40 million casualties, including approximately 20 million civilian and military dead! Herbert  re-enlisted in the Coldstreams (knocking a year of his age in the process!) to play his part, and on 7th October 1914 went with the battalion and the British Expeditionary Force to the front in France. In one sense he was one of the lucky ones as fifty days later Herbert was "back in blighty" having received a gun shot wound to the head, the result of which he was invalided out of the Army, 11 months later, on 1st October 1915. It is sobering to reflect that had the German rifleman who shot Herbert Dart been an inch or two more accurate, I would not be writing this today. At the same time as Herbert was going of to war and coming within inches of loosing his life, at home Elizabeth was giving birth to a baby boy, as there is the registration of the birth of a Herbert Mathieson Dart in West Bromwich (6b 1637) in the Oct-Dec quarter of 1914. Sadly history seems to have repeated itself with the registration of the death of a Herbert Mathieson Dart, aged 0 in the same quarter for West Bromwich (6b 923)

On 14th March 1917, Maria Dart, Herbert's mother, died, aged 70, whilst resident at 9 Sidmouth Cottages, Weston-super-Mare. She was buried alongside her husband Daniel Madge Dart in Weston-super-Mare graveyard, (plots 737 & 2436 respectively). There have been further burials in those plots, and the headstones on the plots refer to the later burials. It is likely that as a relatively poor family, they never had proper headstones, more likely wooden grave markers, long since gone.

The birth, two months later, of their one and only child to survive infancy, Dorothy Phyllis, must have alleviated some of the sadness felt by Herbert on the death of his mother. Their daughter, my mother, was born on 2nd May 1917, at 88 Hallam Street, West Bromwich, in the West Midlands, which was then a similar establishment to the Fishponds institution. At the time Herbert Dart was still working as a male nurse and I would imagine that Herbert and Elizabeth had taken up similar positions as to those they had at Fishponds back in 1912 when there first child was recorded as born in West Bromwich. (For a family photo album of Herbert Dart - see Appendix I.)

In the 1930's Herbert and Elizabeth at Sandfield House in Wordsley. I believe they were the Master and Matron of the children’s section of Sandfield House, Certified Institution and Infirmary, at Wordsley, near Stourbridge. It too was originally a Workhouse.

Sometime prior to 1945 Herbert and Elizabeth retired to Walsall where I believe he briefly (and unsuccessfully?) ran an off licence. At the time of ) They were at Walsall at the time of marriage of their daughter to my father on 18 July 1945, they were recorded at 27 Harden Road, Leamore, Walsall.

Both Herbert and Elizabeth came to live with us in Glasgow in the late 1950's but moved out to live on their on after the death of their daughter, my mother in October 1960. Elizabeth Dart, nee Mathieson died on 9 Oct 1963 in Glasgow. Herbert lived on at 6 Caird Drive, off Byres Road died until the last year of his life when he went into the Erskine Hospital for soldiers in Erskine, Renfrewshire, where he died on 13 Mar 1969 in aged 91.