In an era when professional musicians – that is, those who earned their living through music – were often born into families of the same, the conditions surrounding the birth and childhood of John Ella seem distinctly unusual. He was born on 19 December 1802 in Leicester, to a confectioner and his wife, Richard and Kitty (Catherine) Ella, and at least initially was intended for his father’s trade. How and why, given these circumstances, he came to prosecute music and, later on, to move in high London society; what marks were left on him by the events of his childhood and youth; and why he later chose to suppress some of his family connections, while vaunting others, are among the intriguing questions his life story poses – a story that must therefore start with his family’s social background.

❧Leicestershire beginnings

The Ellas had their origins in Yorkshire, in the north of England, right back to Saxon times, but in the eighteenth century part of the family went south, presumably in search of better prospects. John Ella’s father, Richard Ella (1769–1822), moved to Loughborough, not far from Leicester, in 1774, while still a child. Richard was taken there by his mother and father (also a John, and a farmer) at the suggestion of Michael Ella, his father’s enterprising brother, who had already settled in the town and was trading as an innkeeper, later establishing a successful business in canal boats – the new and growing means of transporting goods around the country. Richard’s father soon found work in the area, and Richard himself learned through apprenticeships his trade as a baker. By 1796 Richard Ella was set up in Leicester, taking on his own apprentices; and by 1800, possibly earlier, he was living and working in the Market Place, in the centre of the town (Fig. 2). His marriage to Kitty, daughter of a local man, Joseph Goddard, probably a carpenter, came in February 1801.