In May 1861 a disastrous explosion rocked the Royal Gunpowder Mills at Waltham Abbey; the accident was widely reported in the national press. Two months earlier in Government House – the imposing residence of General William Harrison Askwith, the Superintendent of the Mills – another event took place, but much more quietly. It was the birth on 17 February of a second son, George Ranken, to the general and his wife Elizabeth.

William Harrison Askwith was descended from hardy stock, generations of Yorkshire yeomen. In their native town of Ripon, the Askwiths were respected members of the community, holding office as aldermen and mayor. William Ask-with, born on 7 September 1811, was the eldest of a family of nine, but both his parents died within months of each other in 1824, leaving their children to the care of relations. Soon after this William Askwith moved south at the tender age of fifteen to take up a cadetship at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He was essentially a self-made man, owing his promotion through the ranks to his own efforts. He was appointed Superintendent of the Royal Gunpowder Mills, and became responsible for overseeing an expansion of the mills and ensuring large supplies of ammunition for the army during the Crimean War.