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Lost Stitches: The Bostitch Legacy and My Crazy Jamaican Family
Danny Melville was content with his laid-back life in Jamaica. He spent his days playing polo with friends and other locals at his famed Chukka Cove, sipping on rum or maybe a Red Stripe, and living every day to the fullest. He knew how fortunate he was to have this life of privilege, which came from old family a legacy from his American great-grandfather Thomas Briggs, who over a hundred years ago perfected and mass-produced the stapling machine and made his Boston Wire Stitcher Company, which came to be known as Bostitch, a household name worldwide. Beyond that, though, Danny knew little about Briggs, Briggs's daughter Berenice (Danny s grandmother), or any other relatives outside his own immediate family, for that matter. And in all honesty, he really wasn't all that curious about it until the day a stranger walked onto his polo grounds looking for him. That's when a seed was sown. The man knew a lot about Danny's family history and wanted to tell him all about it. He especially wanted to tell Danny about the secret life of the man Berenice had Danny s grandfather, Harold Melville. What the stranger revealed was so shocking that Danny would eventually be drawn into a tangled family web that he became determined to unravel. Lost Stitches is a remarkable book that is part family memoir full of family intrigue and heartbreak, part American history, part romance, and part love-letter to Jamaica. Told in a heartfelt yet humble, candid and relatable way, Danny recounts the amazing legacy of great-grandfather Thomas Briggs and how it was that his heiress daughter, a debutante of Boston society, came to marry Danny's grandfather Harold Melville and move with him to Jamaica to raise a family. Then there are the scandalous stories told of The Major, grandfather Harold Melville, and his seemingly many progenies within and outside his marriage; the tragic stories of the Bostitch sisters Helen and Berenice; of kissing cousins Harold and Josephine, outside families and children, lawsuits and affairs. Danny speaks openly about privilege, legitimacy, prejudice, colour, and class and gives a rare glimpse into the high society lives of white colonial and post colonial Jamaicans. As Danny puts together the puzzle of his ancestry, his admiration for his great-grandfather, Thomas Briggs grows with every piece of newly traced information. Not so for his grandfather, Harold, who turns out to be a pretty unlikeable character. But his grandmother Berenice is someone Danny wishes he could know better. And ultimately, getting to meet them all through exhaustive research and interviews, Danny learns a lot about himself. He understands why he has done certain things, and behaved in certain ways. Lost Stitches is more than a reclamation of family history. It is a story of generations and of both the Bostitch and Jamaican histories.
242 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 26, 2021
This book was a good read. It’s a lot like the book I wrote actually, as it is not just about the main characters (in the case of Lost Stitches that would be Danny Melville and his progenitors), it is also about Jamaica.
Review published in Jamaica Observer (newspaper)
“You should write a book.” We often say this to people who’ve led intriguing lives. They’ve triumphed over a difficult setback—a serious illness, bankruptcy, tragic loss of a loved one. Their career has taken them to far flung corners of the world, or they’ve crossed paths with historical figures, or they inadvertently got trapped in a war zone. Or they have a unique perspective on some ordinary life experiences, a perspective that it would benefit, or enlighten, or even just amuse others to hear about. Or, maybe you are the one who is told this, that you really ought to commit to putting your story down on paper, so the world can know it.
There’s another notion, in somewhat the same vein: “Everyone has at least one book in them.” That in each person’s life there’s a story that worth telling, worth sharing in a book.
Either, or both of these might true, of any person.
But with a caveat. Let it be written well. If the person whose story ought to be told, or who feels compelled to tell their story, is not a good writer, either get help, or please, don’t do it.
Danny Melville did it right. He had a story to tell—a very good one. He not only got help to tell his story, he got the help of one of Jamaica’s most gifted and experienced writers of memoir and biography, Rachel Manley. And the result was Lost Stitches: The Bostitch Legacy and My Crazy Jamaican Family.
The book is best categorized as Danny’s memoirs. As distinct from an autobiography, which is a story of a person’s life, or a memoir (no s) which usually sticks to one theme, or selects out one aspect of a life to explore in depth, in a literary style, distinguished by the author’s voice. An autobiography is history, requiring research, dates, facts double-checked—all of which are in Lost Stitches—but it’s not just about Danny’s own life, or him remembering his life. Instead it is more of a scrapbook of what he has found about the lives of his parents and their parents, and very importantly, their parents, other family members, interspersed with bits and pieces of Jamaican history and society and culture, and so it is best thought of as his memoirs (with an s).
At the centre of the scrapbook is Danny, youngest of four brothers, born to a white Jamaican father and, what in days gone by would be called a high brown Jamaican mother. But the real star of the story is Danny’s maternal great-grandfather, Thomas Briggs, who perfected the stapler (among other things), and mass produced it, making his company Bostitch a household name around the world. Yes, Danny Melville, from Ocho Rios, former Jamaican parliamentarian, founder of the Chukka Adventures tour company, well known in the world of polo, is the descendant of the man who essentially invented the stapler.
Thomas Briggs had two daughters. Helen, the firstborn, died young, after a botched abortion. The other, Berenice, married one Harold Melville, known to all as Major, a white Jamaican. She moved to Jamaica with him, though she returned to Boston frequently to visit her family. Major is the co-star of this story, and Danny makes it clear from the outset that Major was, as we would say, “a piece of work.” A scoundrel, serial philanderer (he had a second and probably a third family while married to Berenice), and bully, he cuckolded another man of his wife, and tried to rinse his own children’s inheritance (he was partially successful).
The rest of the details you have to read for yourself, and you should. A great deal of research obviously went into providing a complete and historically accurate story, accounting for every child in the family tree, and their children, even those who left Jamaica decades ago and are now in places like Tahiti and Australia. And it’s not often you get the inside story of how the rich, white elite of Jamaica live. Just reading about what it was like to grow up never having to work because you have a trust fund to support you was, for me, fascinating.
The voice is conversational. While not jarring or inauthentic, it is obvious where Danny’s contribution ends and Rachel’s writerliness picks up, but it does not matter. Together they tell the story in a way that engages the reader and—the sine qua non of any book worth its salt—makes you want to keep reading.
Review published in Jamaica Observer (newspaper)
“You should write a book.” We often say this to people who’ve led intriguing lives. They’ve triumphed over a difficult setback—a serious illness, bankruptcy, tragic loss of a loved one. Their career has taken them to far flung corners of the world, or they’ve crossed paths with historical figures, or they inadvertently got trapped in a war zone. Or they have a unique perspective on some ordinary life experiences, a perspective that it would benefit, or enlighten, or even just amuse others to hear about. Or, maybe you are the one who is told this, that you really ought to commit to putting your story down on paper, so the world can know it.
There’s another notion, in somewhat the same vein: “Everyone has at least one book in them.” That in each person’s life there’s a story that worth telling, worth sharing in a book.
Either, or both of these might true, of any person.
But with a caveat. Let it be written well. If the person whose story ought to be told, or who feels compelled to tell their story, is not a good writer, either get help, or please, don’t do it.
Danny Melville did it right. He had a story to tell—a very good one. He not only got help to tell his story, he got the help of one of Jamaica’s most gifted and experienced writers of memoir and biography, Rachel Manley. And the result was Lost Stitches: The Bostitch Legacy and My Crazy Jamaican Family.
The book is best categorized as Danny’s memoirs. As distinct from an autobiography, which is a story of a person’s life, or a memoir (no s) which usually sticks to one theme, or selects out one aspect of a life to explore in depth, in a literary style, distinguished by the author’s voice. An autobiography is history, requiring research, dates, facts double-checked—all of which are in Lost Stitches—but it’s not just about Danny’s own life, or him remembering his life. Instead it is more of a scrapbook of what he has found about the lives of his parents and their parents, and very importantly, their parents, other family members, interspersed with bits and pieces of Jamaican history and society and culture, and so it is best thought of as his memoirs (with an s).
At the centre of the scrapbook is Danny, youngest of four brothers, born to a white Jamaican father and, what in days gone by would be called a high brown Jamaican mother. But the real star of the story is Danny’s maternal great-grandfather, Thomas Briggs, who perfected the stapler (among other things), and mass produced it, making his company Bostitch a household name around the world. Yes, Danny Melville, from Ocho Rios, former Jamaican parliamentarian, founder of the Chukka Adventures tour company, well known in the world of polo, is the descendant of the man who essentially invented the stapler.
Thomas Briggs had two daughters. Helen, the firstborn, died young, after a botched abortion. The other, Berenice, married one Harold Melville, known to all as Major, a white Jamaican. She moved to Jamaica with him, though she returned to Boston frequently to visit her family. Major is the co-star of this story, and Danny makes it clear from the outset that Major was, as we would say, “a piece of work.” A scoundrel, serial philanderer (he had a second and probably a third family while married to Berenice), and bully, he cuckolded another man of his wife, and tried to rinse his own children’s inheritance (he was partially successful).
The rest of the details you have to read for yourself, and you should. A great deal of research obviously went into providing a complete and historically accurate story, accounting for every child in the family tree, and their children, even those who left Jamaica decades ago and are now in places like Tahiti and Australia. And it’s not often you get the inside story of how the rich, white elite of Jamaica live. Just reading about what it was like to grow up never having to work because you have a trust fund to support you was, for me, fascinating.
The voice is conversational. While not jarring or inauthentic, it is obvious where Danny’s contribution ends and Rachel’s writerliness picks up, but it does not matter. Together they tell the story in a way that engages the reader and—the sine qua non of any book worth its salt—makes you want to keep reading.
March 24, 2021
This is a fascinating book and a page-turner.
Travel with the writer as he discovers the misadventures of his grandfather who married an American heiress and socialite and brings her back to his exotic island. Along the way, the writer discovers new relatives and all their stories make interesting reading.
An informed addition to Caribbean history and a good book proving that privilege and plenty of money does not save us from family tragedies. Read it and become immersed!
Travel with the writer as he discovers the misadventures of his grandfather who married an American heiress and socialite and brings her back to his exotic island. Along the way, the writer discovers new relatives and all their stories make interesting reading.
An informed addition to Caribbean history and a good book proving that privilege and plenty of money does not save us from family tragedies. Read it and become immersed!
July 19, 2025
I honestly couldn't put down "Lost Stitches" by Daniel Melville. It just pulls you right into this family's complicated past through this old quilt they discover. Melville's writing feels so intimate, like he's telling you a secret over coffee. The way he connects all those threads of memory and what we choose to remember versus forget really stuck with me after I finished it.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews