FWK Wallis - Does anybody know what FWK stands for?

[Paul Boote]

So, this one from above is looking good:

Frederick Wallis, 35, Nottingham; Nottinghamshire; Nottingham; Lace Curtain Draughtsman


And this one might just be a 'possible', too:

24, Notts Nottingham; Notts; Nottingham; French Polisher


Lace Curtain Draughtsman, the first, huh? A designer not a 'mere' machine-operator.

I wonder...

 

[Paul Boote]

The plot thickens...

Fred Wallis

1)

Fred Wallis
27, Nottm; Nottingham; Nottm; Hosiery Warehouseman

2)

38, Leicester Quorn; Nottingham; Nottingham; Lace Machine Fitter


Enough for now -- I have some other stuff to do.

 

[Glenn]

Sherlock Holmes where are you? )

Interesting though isn't it - he was such a famous angler, yet nobody knows his true identity!!!

 

[Paul Boote]

Indeed.

Before come back to this, I visited the 1901 Census search area again and found:

Frederick Wallis

17, Born: Derbyshire Long Eaton; Nottinghamshire; Nottingham; Joiners Apprentice

Born c. 1884 then. 53 years of age when he caught that Royalty barbel... My friends Gordon & Ken (the latter a Nottingham man himself) calling him "the old man" ... to them he probably was... Gordon was born in 1912, and started fishing the Royalty in the early 1930s, when he was in his early twenties, where he very soon met a great fisher from Nottingham who was in his late forties then...

A 17-year-old joiner's apprentice who made good...?

I wonder.

 

[Paul Boote]

Now compare the Wallis immediately above with Glenn's "Frederick William K Wallis, Born c1858 in Long Eaton" on the first page, and we have a possible link - almost certainly different generations of the same family. Whether they are the 'right' Wallis's, however, is quite a different matter -- seem to have been a heck of a lot of them in Nottinghamshire at that time, and probably still are.

 

[Glenn]

Well, if it comes down to it, I'll pay the ?7.50 joining for the geneology website and email this woman who is trying to trace details of FWK to see if she knows any more. Perhaps we could help her and vice-versa.

Perhaps "MY" FWK is the angling-FWK's father or grandfather perhaps.

I've no real need to know what is real name is, but now I'm fascinated by the subject. I think it's a shame that so little is known about him. Hopefully if I/we can track some details down it would be a nice thing to publish on a webpage somewhere so he's remembered.

Thanks to all who are helping in this thread by the way.

 

[Glenn]

Well, I signed up to genesreunited and have e-mailed the person who is also searching for an FWK Wallis from Nottingham...

I've also e-mailed my contact who knows Dave Steuart...

The search continues......!

 

[jp]

I've not found anything exciting on the 1881 census, but if the birthdate is after that then obviously I won't.

I have had a thought on the K.and I'm wondering if it could actually not be a name but if it's part of Frederick.

Frederick was, and still is often written as Fredk., so perhaps somehow Fredk. W. has got transposed to Fred W K.

I do know from researching my own family that names and even initials are often not as you expect to find them.

 

[Ron Troversial Clay]

On page 13 & 14 of "Mr Crabtree Goes Fishing", Mr Crabtree attempts to describe the "F.K. Wallis Cast" to young Peter on the Hampshire Avon.

Venables leaves out the "W" in both cases.

Venables description of the cast is atrocious as you don't set the reel spinning with your little finger. You set the reel spinning by pulling on the line with your left hand.

 

[Glenn]

Bernard did admit later that when he wrote Crabtree he'd only heard of the cast, he'd never actually seen it done for himself!

 

[Ron Troversial Clay]

One of the biggest problems of all of course is that I don't think Wallis ever set down any of his vast knowledge in print. I do not recall any articles written by him, certainly no books.

The other problem I have is the naming of the cast.

I have this idea that this method of casting was described years before and was probably being executed by a number of other anglers who fished the Trent in the Victorian period. I also think that JW Martin himself may have used this casting method.

Many years ago I had a rather battered old copy of a book called "The Angler's Instructor" written by William Bailey or "Nottingham Bailey" as he was often called. In this book, Bailey describes the "Nottingham Cast" which meant pulling loops of line by hand from between the rod rings. He also described other variations of this cast including how to use the Nottingham reel for spinning.

This is how the "Wallis Cast" may have developed.

Certainly, even in those days, anyone who claimed to have invented anything could have been on dodgy ground.

By the way for goodness sake do not accept what I have just written as gospel.

They are just the wanderings of my mind at the moment.

 

[Peter Jacobs]

Freakin'Wonderful Kaster?


More seriously, Ron,
Can you shed any light on the differences then between the Nottingham and the Sheffield methods of casting?

 

[Ron Troversial Clay]

I have just had another idea.

One of the greatest collections of old angling books and as far as I know, every copy of the "Fishing Gazette" are in the offices of "The Cape Piscatorial Society" who are based in Cape Town. They have just about every first day cover of every book on angling published since about 1850.

I might be able to contact them through a friend of mine.

 

[Ron Troversial Clay]

A little I think.

One must first of all consider the two styles of fishing. The Nottingham style was developed primarily for long trotting on the Trent. The rods used were fairly through actioned, up to 12 feet long and lines were quite robust to enable them to land big fish in fast currents.

The Sheffield style was based on canal and fenland drain fishing for small fish in very slow moving or still water.

The Sheffield Style rod was never more than 11 feet, in some cases as short as 10 feet. It was light with a pronounced tip action. The terminal tackle generally consisted of a small crowquill float which was cocked by a single shot or "Half Moon Lead", the idea being to make the bait, a single gentle (maggot) sink slowly through a cloud of fine groundbait.

Casting this light set up was difficult. The Nottingham cast was a sideways swing using quite heavily shotted float tackle and line shot from loops taken from between the first two or three rings.

The Sheffield style cast was an overhead flick, the line being shot by a single loop drawn from the reel.

I don't think I am too far out with these descriptions.

 

[Glenn]

Ron

Wallis wrote a chapter in a book called "Fine Angling For Coarse Fish", the chapter titled "The Modern Light Float Cast From the Reel. Nottingham Style". The book has some pictures of him too.

Other than that I've only seen passing references to him.

There is a picture on the web that I found the other day of a glass-cased pike that he caught in 1905.

 

[Glenn]

I uploaded the pics of Wallis here:

http://www.questoutdoors.net/phpBB2/about168.html

(which is the thread I wrote which started my mind wondering what FWK stood for).

 

[Paul Boote]

Wallis contributed a somewhat less than perfect account of the Cast in this book:

"Fine Angling for Coarse Fish"
Ed. Eric Parker, with various contributors
Lonsdale Sporting Library series, published by Seeley Service, 1930

I also remember Kevin Clifford telling me, years ago, that FWK also turned out a much better piece for another publication -- it might have been the old "Fishing Gazette" magazine / newspaper.

In turn, I myself produced a well-illustrated article, "The Wallis Centre Pin Cast", for "Angling" magazine in the late 1970s. Tackle-fiends and -collectors still pursue that issue, I hear.

 

[Glenn]

Paul

It just so happens a friend has passed on to me a pile of "Angling" magazines two-foot high!

Any idea which issue/year roughly that article appeared in? Otherwise I'll start wading through the pile to see if I can find it!

Glenn

 

[Paul Boote]

I still have everything WOT I EVER WROTE, Glenn, but it is all safely packed away.

Now, I did a series of articles, "Mahseer Mission", about my nine-month-long fishing trip to India in 1978/9, which were published for certain in the August - November 1979 issues of "Angling"...

So, I reckon that the Wallis Cast article probably appeared before these, maybe sometime in the middle months of 1978, before I left for my India epic. I remember that my girlfriend of the time's father took the pics of me doing the casting, on the Middlesex Colne in wintertime, either late 1977 or early 1978.

Have a look, then, in mid-1978 issues of Angling, though I might be wrong.

 

[Paul Boote]

PS to the above: also try Angling's early 1980 issues -- those photos might have been taken AFTER I returned from the big India bash in 1979. My girlfriend and I had had nowhere to live when we got back to Britain, so her parents offered us a room at their place...