204 CHRISTY : JOHN GIBBS, AN ESSEX BOTANIST.
lady in question married a Franklin, and Gibbs' grandmother
bore the name of Ann Millington Franklin.
Gibbs' grandfather started a wool-stapling business in
Bermondsey, which came later to Gibbs himself, and he
carried it on for a time ; but, for some unexplained reason, it
came to grief. Then Gibbs obtained employment with Messrs.
Johns, of Chelmsford (as stated already), with which firm he
had previously had business relations. This explains how he
came to settle at Chelmsford.
Again, I was wrong in assuming that Gibbs was self-educated.
I might have known otherwise, in view of the excellence of his
handwriting and diction, to which I allude. He received,
in fact, quite a good education, though of an inexpensive kind,
at the Grange Road Academy, in Bermondsey. This was
kept by one Abbott, a member of the Society of Friends, which
has long been famed for the excellence of its schools. Gibbs
had no family connection with Quakers and was never one
himself, but was sent to the school in question because it was
accounted the best in the district, which was then largely resi-
dential and very different in every way from what it is now.
As to the events of Gibbs' life at Chelmsford and the botanical
work he did whilst living there, I have nothing to add.
In another respect also, I was, I find, a good deal out—
namely, in respect of the date of Gibbs' death, which I believed
to have taken place about February 1892. That was, however,
only the time when he left Chelmsford and I lost sight of him.
As a matter of fact, he lived some eleven years longer, but he
accomplished, I understand, no further botanical work. To
me, with my recollection of his frail appearance during his
later years at Chelmsford, it seems almost impossible that he
could have survived so long.
On leaving Chelmsford, Gibbs and his wife (his second) went
to live with his married daughter (the Mrs. Larkin above
mentioned), who, being a teacher, followed her profession at
sundry places, settling ultimately at a little village near Shelton,
in Bedfordshire, five or six miles from Kimbolton (Hunts.).
Here Gibbs lodged in the house of a Mrs. Whitehead, who
treated the old gentleman with much kindness. She and his
daughter looked after him, indeed, so well that he survived his
removal from Chelmsford until 2 March 1903, when he died