Frederick Charles Gobert was initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn at its Isis-Urania temple in London on 22 June 1899. He chose the Latin motto ‘Nil scis quod scia’. Eliza Augusta Venner Morris was initiated on the same evening but I don’t think they knew each other. Their social backgrounds were so different that the only way they might have met before, would have been as employer and craftsman. The lack of records means that I don’t know whether Frederick was a keen GD member or whether he let his membership lapse after only a short time. He didn’t play any part at all in the upheavals that shook the GD between 1900 and 1903; and he didn’t join either of the GD’s daughter orders, Stella Matutina or the Independent and Rectified Rite.

IN THE GD

Records are sparse for the GD’s London temple after 1897 when William Wynn Westcott resigned as administrator. Of course, records will have existed, but they haven’t survived. As a result it’s rather hard to tell how far members initiated after 1898 advanced as occultists; or even where they were living while they were members. I think, though, that Frederick Gobert did not reach the level of study that would have allowed him to be initiated into the GD’s 2^nd, inner order.

As to who he knew in the GD who recommended him as a possible initiate: I have no idea. My own feeling is that he may have been employed by the GD to build something for one of the ritual rooms – he was a skilled carpenter. Initiating him would have bound him to keeping silent about what he had seen and done.

ANY OTHER ESOTERIC INTERESTS?

Not that I have found. Unlike many GD members, he was not a member of the Theosophical Society. And the Freemasons’ Library catalogue has no mention of him; meaning that if he was a freemason, he kept his involvement very local.

Sources:

For his not being in the TS: TS Membership Registers 1890-1900.

For his not being a prominent freemason: he’s not in the catalogue of the Freemasons’ Library; though records of lodges are held by the lodge themselves.

ANY OBITUARIES/BIOGRAPHIES?

No.

BIRTH/YOUTH/FAMILY BACKGROUND

Frederick’s parents were William James Gobert and Mary Charvet, who married in Stepney in 1864. Both surnames are rare in the UK. On the 1911 census there were less than 40 people called Gobert, and most of them were Frederick’s close relations. There don’t seem to be many Charvets either. Though William James was born in Bethnal Green and Mary in Bermondsey, the surnames sound French to me. I cautiously suggest that the ancestors of both of them had been French Protestants.

While searching Ancestry and freebmd for people called Gobert, I noticed an Isaac Gobert who died in Bethnal Green in 1870, aged 63 - perhaps William James’ father. And one of the other male Goberts on the 1911 census was a George Gobert born in Bethnal Green in 1842; perhaps William James’ brother.

William James was born in 1839. I couldn’t find a birth registration for Mary Charvet, but she must have been born around 1844-45.

William James Gobert was a cooper - a skilled job. He worked in breweries - obviously - but it’s impossible to say from the available data whether he had one employer during his working life, or several. He and Mary began their married life in Shoreditch; by 1867 they had moved south of the Thames to Bermondsey; in the early 1870s they were back on the north side of the river, in Stepney; before moving south of it again by 1875, to Camberwell. William James and Mary had the large family associated with mid-Victorian Britain: Catherine Eleanor born 1865; Evelyn Mary born 1867; Caroline Elizabeth born 1868; Mary Isabel born 1870; William Charvet - the first son after four daughters - born 1871; Frederick Charles the GD member, born 1873; Eleanor Maud, born 1875; Thomas Alfred, born 1877; and Harry George, the youngest, born 1879. There was also Alfred James, who was born in 1872 and died either at the birth or shortly afterwards.

On census day 1881, the Goberts and their nine surviving children were living at 82 Flaxman Road Lambeth. They had a lodger, Eleanor Hughes, a widow who was working as a needlewoman. A few weeks after census day, Mary Gobert died aged 36; worn out, I should imagine, by at least ten pregnancies in 14 years and all the heavy work of caring for the children. Frederick was seven when his mother died. In 1887 his grandmother, another Mary, died in Limehouse. William James Gobert was her executor - not that she had a great deal to leave. By that time, William James and his children had left Lambeth and were living at 17 Northway Road Brixton.

In 1890, William James Gobert got married again, to Elizabeth Wear. When they married, Elizabeth was 41; she and William James didn’t have any children. Elizabeth moved in to 17 Northway Road and this is also where Frederick was living on census day 1891. He had left school, and was apprenticed to a carpenter. His younger brothers Thomas and Harry were still at home; and so were three of his sisters - Catherine, who was between jobs; Caroline, who was working as a dressmaker; and Eleanor. The younger members of the family had been able to take advantage of the 1870 Education Act: Thomas was still at school at age 16; and Eleanor had gained sufficient education to train as a teacher. On census day 1891 she was working in a school; later she confirmed that she was employed by a County Council, probably London County Council (the LCC) but possibly Middlesex.

Sources: freebmd; census 1881, 1891; Probate Registry entries 1887.

WORK/PROFESSION

Frederick finished his apprenticeship and worked as a qualified carpenter. In 1911 he was employed by a building firm – by which I mean that he was not self-employed. I suppose it might have been the same firm that his brother Harry George later worked for as a manager, though in 1911 Harry George was working in the offices of a hardware and ironmongery firm.

With the younger children in the family getting rather more schooling than their elders, in the late 19^th and early 20^th century, Frederick’s siblings straddled the class system. On the day of the 1901 census, Harry George and Eleanor were doing work that would place them in the lower-middle-class. The older girls, having left school before the 1870 Education Act was rolled out, were restricted to working as dressmakers or servants: work typical of the working-class woman. And William James and Frederick were on the cusp of the classes - working with their hands, but as trained artisans.

By 1901 Frederick was no longer living with his father and step-mother. On census day 1901 - about 18 months after his GD initiation - he was lodging with John Stone and his wife Mary, at an address I couldn’t read but the road is in the Wandsworth/Streatham area. By 1911 he was one of two lodgers in the household of Fanny Godbold at 25 Vining Street Brixton. Fanny Godbold was a widow. She wasn’t well-educated and had trouble filling in the census form - the first which the head of household had to complete by themselves. She had had 11 children; only four were still alive and only one of her daughters was still living with her. She’d had a hard life and the hard times were continuing: as well as having lodgers, Mrs Godbold took in washing to help make ends meet.

William James and Elizabeth Gobert had moved to 9 Wellington Road Stockwell, where some at least of their children were still living in the 1940s. On census day 1911 Evelyn, Eleanor and Harry George were living with them. Evelyn was at home between jobs; Eleanor and Harry George were still in the jobs that they had had in 1901. Catherine and Mary Isabel were living elsewhere, working as servants. Catherine was the only servant in the household of John Abraham Ore and his niece, at 93 Elm Park Brixton; and Mary Isabel as nursemaid to the two small children of Rev Thomas Gilling-Lax and his wife, at St Thomas’s Vicarage, Stourbridge in Worcestershire, a household where there was also a cook and a housemaid.

Mention of a Church of England cleric as an employer of Frederick’s sister is perhaps the right place in this biography to say that the Goberts were Anglicans: in 1911 an employee and representative of the established church was not likely to take on a non-Anglican to look after his children. More confirmation - see below - Frederick’s brother Thomas Alfred is buried in an Anglican cemetery.

William James Gobert was still working as a cooper in 1911; and he probably continued to work until his death early in 1914.

Sources: census 1901, 1911; freebmd.

LATER LIFE

Frederick was 40 when the first World War broke out. I haven’t found any evidence that he fought in it; his skills and experience might have saved him from being called up. He continued to live apart from his family, moving from lodging to lodging. In 1918 he was one of five people on the Electoral Register at 42 Talma Road Norwood: a married couple called Cope, who were probably the householders; and three people – one woman, Frederick, and one other man – who were probably lodgers. On the day of the 1921 census he was boarding at 5 Jessop Road Lambeth; with Damuel Dargent, a mason and labourer, his wife Annie, and their four children. He had moved on to a much more challenging but more interesting job – he was employed at the London Coliseum in St Martin’s Lane. The London Coliseum was built in 1903/04 for the impresario Sir Oswald Stoll and was still managed by him in the 1920s. It was a place where carpentry on a big scale was required – its stage was 55 feet by 92 feet; it had London’s widest proscenium arch; and a stage that could turn though it usually didn’t. Best known now for opera, musicals and ballet, it was built as a variety theatre and was being used as a music hall in 1921, involving the staff in making rapid changes of scenery work perfectly. If Frederick was still working there in 1930 he will have taken part in an early television broadcast; and in the 1930s it was used as a cinema.

The data for the 1939 Register was collected on 29 September 1939. By that time Frederick had retired. He’d probably moved many times since 1921 but in 1939 he was lodging with Reginald and Lucy Gilbert at 28 Kemerton Road in Denmark Hill. Reginald was a carpenter; perhaps Frederick had met him through their work.

Frederick Charles Gobert died in April 1947 in St Francis Hospital East Dulwich. He’d been taken to the hospital from the Gilberts’ house. His brother Harry George was his executor; as he was with many other family members. As far as I can tell, Frederick never married; and thereby hangs a rather curious tale about his family.

Sources: Electoral Registers 1918 and 1921 census at Ancestry.co.uk; 1939 Register; Probate Registry 1947.

For the London Coliseum: its wikipedia page.

Baedeker’s London and its Environs: Handbook for Travellers 1915 p38 has it listed under music halls.

Musical Standard volumes 21-22 1923 p191 profile of Alfred Dove, longtime conductor at the Coliseum; describing the challenges of conducting music-hall performances.

Television and Short-wave World volume 3 1930 p312 responses of the media to an experiment in which a singer giving a performance elsewh in London was televised to an audience in the Coliseum.

DESCENDANTS? AND WHAT (IF ANYTHING) HAPPENED NEXT.

The only child of William James and Mary Gobert who married was Thomas Alfred; and he was also the only child who left England. He went to Canada, where he married Emily Hannah Griffin. He died in Canada in 1951. A quick look on google hinted that Thomas and Emily do have descendants - the only descendants of all William James and Mary’s ten children.

Frederick’s brother William and his sisters Mary Isabel and Catherine Eleanor were living at 9 Wellington Road Stockwell when they died, unmarried; William in 1936; Mary Isabel in 1942; and Catherine Eleanor in 1947. Unlike Frederick, none of the three of them left a Will. Harry George sorted out their small estates. Harry George and Caroline moved to Worthing, perhaps when Harry George retired; neither of them had married. Caroline died in 1951; and Harry George in 1964.

Sources: freebmd for marriages of Frederick and his siblings: I found none. Probate Registry entries though not for Caroline or Harry George.

At //billiongraves.com a photo of a headstone in St Mark’s anglican cemetery Niagara-on-the-Lake Ontario; Thomas Alfred Gobert and his wife Emily Hannah née Griffin. His dates given as 21 July 1876 to 6 November 1951.

BASIC SOURCES I USED for all Golden Dawn members.

Membership of the Golden Dawn: The Golden Dawn Companion by R A Gilbert. Northampton: The Aquarian Press 1986. Between pages 125 and 175, Gilbert lists the names, initiation dates and addresses of all those people who became members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn or its many daughter Orders between 1888 and 1914. The list is based on the Golden Dawn’s administrative records and its Members’ Roll - the large piece of parchment on which all new members signed their name at their initiation. All this information had been inherited by Gilbert but it’s now in the Freemasons’ Library at the United Grand Lodge of England building on Great Queen Street Covent Garden. Please note, though, that the records of the Amen-Ra Temple in Edinburgh were destroyed in 1900/01. I have recently (July 2014) discovered that some records of the Horus Temple at Bradford have survived, though most have not; however those that have survived are not yet accessible to the public.

For the history of the GD during the 1890s I usually use Ellic Howe’s The Magicians of the Golden Dawn: A Documentary History of a Magical Order 1887-1923. Published Routledge and Kegan Paul 1972. Foreword by Gerald Yorke. Howe is a historian of printing rather than of magic; he also makes no claims to be a magician himself, or even an occultist. He has no axe to grind.

Family history: freebmd; ancestry.co.uk (census and probate); findmypast.co.uk; familysearch; Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage; Burke’s Landed Gentry; Armorial Families; thepeerage.com; and a wide variety of family trees on the web.

Famous-people sources: mostly about men, of course, but very useful even for the female members of GD. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Who Was Who. Times Digital Archive.

Useful source for business and legal information: London Gazette and its Scottish counterpart Edinburgh Gazette. Now easy to find (with the right search information) on the web.

Catalogues: British Library; Freemasons’ Library.

Wikipedia; Google; Google Books - my three best resources. I also used other web pages, but with some caution, as - from the historian’s point of view - they vary in quality a great deal.

31 March 2016

26 January 2026

Email me

Find the web pages of Roger Wright and Sally Davis, including my list of people initiated into the Order of the Golden Dawn between 1888 and 1901, at:

www.wrightanddavis.co.uk

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