I think they were referring to 'The Sandpit' a public land/park area adjacent to Weybridge outskirts and may have been considered part of it at the time, or again a press inaccuracy. It's in Sheerwater now considered part of Woking. It was apparently the inspiration for H.G. Wells’ novel, ‘The War of The Worlds' just as another weird side bar factoid in this story.
So he arrived back from a White Star run on the 5th, was *somewhere* for 2 days before visiting home, after being in constant contact with letters and cards, and then effectively disappeared after that for nearly 3 months and they never sought him out, wondering what happened? After frequent comms they no doubt thought this was out of character to not hear anything.
If he was away the entire time between Sept 1900 and Jan 5 1901 and did not visit them when back in London (it seems if I'm right on how long a run took he didn't really have time between turnarounds) they may have assumed that 11 weeks was expected. But no communication?
The press would not have remarked on it as 'strange' unless the family had conveyed that opinion, so they did think it was remiss and knew he was not around of his own volition.
I think Arthur must have lost his job at this time, or sometime soon after, explaining why they were described as 'almost destitute.'
I dunno, something about all of this doesn't add up.
I think the family knew what was going on. If they didn't ask him to move out...he may have told them he had accommodation with his job. But what I think actually happened is he spent time with Polly for the days between 5-7 and then went to tell his family what the situation was and they were not happy about it at all. So there was kind of a falling out over the whole thing and they actually weren't really looking for him.
Yet the uncle who noticed the news article because he was aware Arthur was 'missing' lived in Charlton kind of adjacent, not that far away in the scheme iof things from Plumstead and Woolwich so that's a little curious. He just happened to know Arthur was missing? I guess the family didn't tell him, he didn't know where Arthur was at all and was just kinda psychic.
Now we know the father was a deacon and they were big in the local church, it makes sense why the father left out so many details in an attempt to sort of cover up the situation. They literally would have seen the ring so, regardless they knew he was wearing a ring from Polly and other details such as, she was pregnant.
But they had the privilege to pretend not to know and leave a bunch of stuff out. The whole thing was probably shocking, and embarrassing given their position in the community and church. Their prerogative i guess. John Grant's whitewashing makes sense now. At least Arthur got proper burial, the same cannot be said of Mary.
'The Baker Street Schools' plural is a bit nebulous. There were two schools in Weybridge at that time neither in Baker St, and both primary I believe. The other Baker St in the Marylebone area did not seemingly have a school.
