History

Born to a murderer and a desperate woman, Johnny was never meant to amount to much having arrived to the world within the inner, deeper sanctum of the Birmingham Union Workhouse. The situation was dire, a place in which his parents were forced to turn when his father lost his job and his mother grew plump with his child. But violence was rife, and it didn’t take long for Johnny’s father, Arthur, to grow intertwined with danger itself, leaving his son without a guide as he was sent to the slick of the gallows. His mother, Fanny, wasn’t much better, for without her lover she resorted to stealing and playing tricks, which left their superiors ripping through her belongings to find stolen goods that had belonged to other residents instead. As such, Fanny was sent to the West Midlands Prison for Women with Johnny balanced on her hip.

The prison was no place for a baby, but it was not rare or unheard of to see single mothers nursing their tender and crying offspring beside killers, swindlers and the innocent. By the time her sentence was up, his mother left Johnny on her cousins’ doorstep. Some like to say that Fanny was selfish and stupid in her final act…. Even fewer claimed that she suffered the fate of many women, and that she would have hurt her child if left alone. Most, however, thought it unfair for the Miller household to take care of their infant nephew, but what were they to do? Out of the love for family, and the reluctance of letting an innocent toddler disappear into the system, his cousins all but adopted Johnny as their own.

Raised on leftovers and hand-me-downs, Johnny clung to life with the stubbornness of a tick. At ten years old (taller than most, who ate more than his cousins and stood out like a sore thumb), his uncle got him a position to work alongside him on the grounds of Birmingham Botanical Gardens — a place in which he came to learn about hierarchy, time-keeping and the natural world. Menial labour was not for the faint hearted, but Johnny grew broad and strong, each day was a test to his resilience, each hour a testament to what he could become. Even Anthony, the fair-hearted Uncle who gave him a chance, was impressed with the level of duty and hard work installed in his sister’s son. Perhaps it all came down to the world he had been born into, having seen the dire lives lived out in the Workhouse through young eyes, or maybe it was simply to earn the attention of those who had been forced to feed him in those early years.

Either way, when the Smallpox epidemic hit Birmingham, the family was reduced once more with the many deaths of his cousins. And when his Aunt dies after years of being bedridden by illness Anthony Miller, his dear uncle, finds himself driven to the point of madness. Having lost his children and now his wife, he makes a snap decision to uproot himself and his nephew from Birmingham to find work elsewhere. As his handsome and hard-working apprentice, the two are employed at Ashby Castle, Northamptonshire, a world in which Johnny finds himself introduced to those in power. It’s rumoured that the daughter of the Marquess had fancied him awfully, so much so that Johnny was forced to work at night! Still, rumours come and go. Don’t they?

By his eighteenth birthday, his Uncle is found dead after coming home drunk from the pub. Alone again (but with the added weight of funerary bills), Johnny finally asks for help. Due to his known reputation of being a hard-worker and steadfastly loyal, the Marquess himself leads him to the direction of the Earl Brownlow at Ashbridge House, Hertfordshire. From one house to another, Johnny is employed as a gardener there till he meets a certain Mr Hill, who is on the lookout for young hands to help him in the renewal project of a grand house in London. Whilst taking a chance, and if in some vain hope of finding another person to act as a role model, Johnny follows Mr Hill to Somerset House on the Thames in Central London instead.

The city was a new experience, a world in which opens up a wide chasm of opportunities, so much so that for a while Johnny is close to both sinking and drowning due to the weight of such a change. But he remained stoic in his survival, dipping and diving till he came up fresh and ready for the new world he has found himself among. With Mr Hill’s retirement, Johnny asked for the opportunity to become his successor… And so he does, by some miraculous turn of events. Though it’s to be said that Johnny’s loneliness is sharp and unavoidable, even if he tends to bury his head beneath the roses of Somerset House in the meantime.