Betsey Silvester 1835 - 1913
Betsey was one of those women who seem destined to only ever get a glimpse of, rather than live, a glamorous lifestyle. She was born in the uber-fashionable spa town of Cheltenham, lived in Regent's Park in London, and her son became a wealthy and respected businessman. Yet she was only a spectator to the good life, and in fact spent most of her life eeking out the pennies in tiny terrace houses in Leicester.
Betsey is the first one of my ancestors on my father's side to be featured on my blog - she is my third great grandmother.
She was born in Cheltenham in 1835 to Thomas and Martha Silvester. I am not sure how she came to be born there, as there doesn't seem (as yet) to be any previous familial link with Cheltenham. The Spa town was in its heyday back then, yet she and her family upped sticks and went to live in Leicester. Coincidentally, I was born and brought up in Leicester, and now live in Cheltenham.
In 1841, aged six, she was living in Peggs Yard, St Margaret, Leicester with her father Thomas, then aged 50 and a basket maker; mother Martha, 43; and her siblings Martha, 14; Jane, 11; and Ann, 4.
By 1851 Betsey was living in Regent's Park, working as an undermaid for well-known Victorian painter William Powell Frith. To Betsey, her employers must have seemed to have lived an impossibly glamorous lifestyle. Indeed, in the year that this census was carried out William Powell Frith completed his seaside painting Ramsgate Sands (Life at the Seaside), inspired by a trip taken by he and his family. Apparently he was unsure about it, but Queen Victoria clearly liked it, as she bought it for 1000 guineas.
Two years later Betsey returned to Leicester, and married Robert Hunt, a stocking maker, at St Margaret's Church in Leicester, and in 1861 the couple were living in Vauxhall Street, All Saints, Leicester, with their four-year-old son Thomas George.
The 1871 census shows the family as living in Birstall Street, St Margaret's, Leicester. By now Thomas is aged 14, and working as a shoe finisher. Little did they know at the time that Thomas would end up owning several shoe factories in Leicester - but that's a story for another day. Robert and Betsey also had a daughter now, Martha, aged 7. Also staying with them, no doubt to boost the household income, was lodger Richard Rowley, aged 16 and also a shoe finisher.
Ten years on, and Robert is still working as a framework knitter. Betsey is now working as a seamstress, and Martha, aged 16, is a boot machinist. They have another son, Robert, aged 9, and are living in Shenton Street. Thomas has left home and is married with his own children.
Life for Betsey seems to have carried on pretty much in the same vein for the next ten years - more changes of address - they are in Hart Road in 1891, daughter Martha has moved into the hosiery trade, and son Robert has now joined the shoe trade, working as a clicker, which means he made eyelet holes or uppers in boots using a machine that clicked. Meanwhile son Thomas is starting to make his name as a boot and shoe manufacturer.
By 1901, Betsey is 66 and Robert is 70, but still doing the strenuous job of framework knitting. Thomas was doing very well for himself by now, and living in a rather grand home called The Elms. However I think he must have cut his ties with his parents (or vice versa), otherwise why wouldn't he have helped them out and saved his poor old Dad from having to work so hard at such an age? But I suppose the work can't have done Robert too much harm, as in 1911, aged 80, he was still making stockings on his framework knitter.
Betsey died aged 78 on 13th February 1913. Her husband Robert died just over a year later, aged 83, on 16th June 1914.
Monday 26 May 2014
Monday 19 May 2014
52 Ancestors - Ferryman John Brook
John Brook 1821-1899
Geneology is a funny old thing. You never know where a nugget of information is going to appear, that little extra something that brings your ancestor to life, as it were, suddenly giving you a much clearer picture of how life was for them.
And so it was with John Brook, who was the husband of my fifth great aunt Ann Swift. He and his family lived in Mirfield (as so many of that branch of the family did!), and he, his father Joseph and his brother Thomas all worked as watermen.
This intrigued me - I wanted to know what exactly they did. After various fruitless searches on Google, I hit the jackpot - a mention not just of what water-based jobs there were in Mirfield at the time, but a small piece actually featuring John Brook!
Taken from Pobjoy's History of Mirfield (now out of print, but available for download), it reads: “John Brooke was a barge man who usually plied between Brighouse and Goole, with flour on the outward journey, and grain on the return. This meant Mr and Mrs Brooke living on board sometimes for weeks on end, their children at their Low Littlemoor house being looked after by their elder daughter Ada.
"Later John became a ferryman at Battyeford, before the Ha-penny Bridge was erected there, plying across the river in a small boat holding from four to six. Motive power? An endless rope worked by hand on pulleys. On the completion of the bridge John became the keeper of Battye Lock, sleeping in a little brick cabin, at home only at week-ends."
The piece, and various websites which quote it, also include this photo. Sadly it is not captioned, but it seems likely that the ferryman pictured is John Brook.
I am so pleased to have found this. It tells me so much more about my fifth great aunt and her family. I can imagine her and her husband travelling up and down the canals. No doubt it was hard work - I have heard stories of bargemen's wives pulling the boat along in some place, harnessed up like a horse. It would certainly have often been cold, wet and miserable too. But I like to think there were also days like today, where the sun was shining and they got the opportunity to admire the scenery and the wildflowers blossoming along the canal banks.
I'm not sure how Ada could have looked after the children as she was, according to the censuses of the time, the youngest but one. However this reminiscence came from her brother George, so maybe despite her young years she still took on the role of mother when her parents were away.
And I think that being keeper of the lock must have been quite a nice job to do in your later years. Still hard work, but perhaps John Brook had the chance to sit outside his little brick cabin, pipe in hand, reflecting on his life on the water. Yes, a bit of shameless romanticism, but nice to indulge in inbetween the tragic stories that we so often come across.
Anyone else interested in Mirfield's history can view and download A History of Mirfield by H N Pobjoy here: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9sDypJpJzRCZUlHbE05enQzdFE/edit. There are also several websites, and a Facebook page, devoted to the town's past.
Geneology is a funny old thing. You never know where a nugget of information is going to appear, that little extra something that brings your ancestor to life, as it were, suddenly giving you a much clearer picture of how life was for them.
And so it was with John Brook, who was the husband of my fifth great aunt Ann Swift. He and his family lived in Mirfield (as so many of that branch of the family did!), and he, his father Joseph and his brother Thomas all worked as watermen.
This intrigued me - I wanted to know what exactly they did. After various fruitless searches on Google, I hit the jackpot - a mention not just of what water-based jobs there were in Mirfield at the time, but a small piece actually featuring John Brook!
Taken from Pobjoy's History of Mirfield (now out of print, but available for download), it reads: “John Brooke was a barge man who usually plied between Brighouse and Goole, with flour on the outward journey, and grain on the return. This meant Mr and Mrs Brooke living on board sometimes for weeks on end, their children at their Low Littlemoor house being looked after by their elder daughter Ada.
"Later John became a ferryman at Battyeford, before the Ha-penny Bridge was erected there, plying across the river in a small boat holding from four to six. Motive power? An endless rope worked by hand on pulleys. On the completion of the bridge John became the keeper of Battye Lock, sleeping in a little brick cabin, at home only at week-ends."
The piece, and various websites which quote it, also include this photo. Sadly it is not captioned, but it seems likely that the ferryman pictured is John Brook.
I am so pleased to have found this. It tells me so much more about my fifth great aunt and her family. I can imagine her and her husband travelling up and down the canals. No doubt it was hard work - I have heard stories of bargemen's wives pulling the boat along in some place, harnessed up like a horse. It would certainly have often been cold, wet and miserable too. But I like to think there were also days like today, where the sun was shining and they got the opportunity to admire the scenery and the wildflowers blossoming along the canal banks.
I'm not sure how Ada could have looked after the children as she was, according to the censuses of the time, the youngest but one. However this reminiscence came from her brother George, so maybe despite her young years she still took on the role of mother when her parents were away.
And I think that being keeper of the lock must have been quite a nice job to do in your later years. Still hard work, but perhaps John Brook had the chance to sit outside his little brick cabin, pipe in hand, reflecting on his life on the water. Yes, a bit of shameless romanticism, but nice to indulge in inbetween the tragic stories that we so often come across.
Anyone else interested in Mirfield's history can view and download A History of Mirfield by H N Pobjoy here: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9sDypJpJzRCZUlHbE05enQzdFE/edit. There are also several websites, and a Facebook page, devoted to the town's past.
Monday 12 May 2014
52 ancestors - the life and death of a young miner.
Henry Spivey 1849-1873
Poor Henry never really had much of a chance of a good life. Born illegitimate, he was already working in the mines by the time he was 11 years old, and just 12 years later succumbed to disease brought on by the lethal coal dust.
Henry was born to spinster Hannah Maria Spivey in 1849, when illegitimate children and their mothers were ostracised. Employers wanted nothing to do with the mothers of illegitimate children, in the workhouse such women were kept separate from others to avoid contaminating them, and even illegitimate orphans were turned away from orphanges for fear their base start in life would somehow have an adverse affect on the legitimate orphans. As if that were not enough, he was born too late to benefit from previous bastardy laws which would at least have entitled him to some charity from his parish.
Fortunately, Hannah's mother and step-father Sarah and John Eastwood seem to have been the forgiving type, for they took Henry in, and cared for him while his mother went on to build a new life as a wife and mother to five legitimate children.
By the age of 11, Henry was working in one of the 30 or so coal mines in the Kirkburton area of West Yorkshire. At that age he was likely to have been a hurrier, responsible for pushing or pulling corves (trucks) full of coal to the pit bottom. This was a tough and demanding job. The corves could weigh between two and five hundredweight, and in some places the gates (underground railways) were only around two feet high. Physical punishment was common, and the working environment was dangerous and unhealthy.
At 21 Henry was still living with his step-grandfather (his grandmother died in 1866), and still working down the mines. I imagine that by this time he had worked his way through the various mining ranks, and was quite possibly a hewer, slogging away at the coalface to fill those same corves he had pulled as a younger lad.
But life down the mines took its toll on Henry, and he died aged just 23 from phthisis. This was either miners' phthisis, which is now known as silicosis; or perhaps tuberculosis - those working down the mines were more susceptible to this disease. Either way, it seems a tragic waste of a young life.
Poor Henry never really had much of a chance of a good life. Born illegitimate, he was already working in the mines by the time he was 11 years old, and just 12 years later succumbed to disease brought on by the lethal coal dust.
Henry was born to spinster Hannah Maria Spivey in 1849, when illegitimate children and their mothers were ostracised. Employers wanted nothing to do with the mothers of illegitimate children, in the workhouse such women were kept separate from others to avoid contaminating them, and even illegitimate orphans were turned away from orphanges for fear their base start in life would somehow have an adverse affect on the legitimate orphans. As if that were not enough, he was born too late to benefit from previous bastardy laws which would at least have entitled him to some charity from his parish.
Fortunately, Hannah's mother and step-father Sarah and John Eastwood seem to have been the forgiving type, for they took Henry in, and cared for him while his mother went on to build a new life as a wife and mother to five legitimate children.
By the age of 11, Henry was working in one of the 30 or so coal mines in the Kirkburton area of West Yorkshire. At that age he was likely to have been a hurrier, responsible for pushing or pulling corves (trucks) full of coal to the pit bottom. This was a tough and demanding job. The corves could weigh between two and five hundredweight, and in some places the gates (underground railways) were only around two feet high. Physical punishment was common, and the working environment was dangerous and unhealthy.
 |
| A young hurrier pulling a corve full of coal. |
At 21 Henry was still living with his step-grandfather (his grandmother died in 1866), and still working down the mines. I imagine that by this time he had worked his way through the various mining ranks, and was quite possibly a hewer, slogging away at the coalface to fill those same corves he had pulled as a younger lad.
But life down the mines took its toll on Henry, and he died aged just 23 from phthisis. This was either miners' phthisis, which is now known as silicosis; or perhaps tuberculosis - those working down the mines were more susceptible to this disease. Either way, it seems a tragic waste of a young life.
Monday 5 May 2014
52 Ancestors - Mumps and marriage!
Just a short story this time, one of many that I am lucky enough to be able to tell about my maternal grandparents Geoff and Elsie Doughty.
Looking back at his memoirs, it seems that wartime heralded the start of a new life for my Grandad. He hadn't had a good childhood - he was the youngest but one of nine children, there was often no money, there were even days where he couldn't go to school because his clothes had been taken to the pawn shop so his mother could feed the family.
In 1941, aged 20, he joined the RAF. It wasn't an easy process - a congenital heart defect meant he was passed around several doctors and in the end he was given the option - he could join up, but would have to stay in the UK, or he could go back to civvy street.
Having been a member of the St John Ambulance Brigade for several years, he asked to join the medical side of the RAF, and was accepted.
As soon as he joined up, he changed his name from Percy to Geoffrey - he felt his childhood name was just a reminder of what was, in his words, a "miserable childhood".
After training, and passing as a nurses orderly, he was posted to 16.M.U. (Maintenance Unit ) which supplied parts for the Air Force.The total of personnel on six sites was about 4,000 mixed Airmen and W.A.A.F.’S. He had to report to the Small Station Sick quarters which dealt purely with illnesses such as flu - and mumps.
My grandmother, Elsie, was in the WRAF and although she had already had mumps twice she managed to get it a third time. Third time lucky though, as - you guessed it - she was taken to the small station sick quarters where my Grandad was serving. She was in quarantine, and bored stupid, and my Grandad used to pull faces at her through the ward windows to cheer her up. (Note - he was always good at pulling faces, I can remember him doing that to me as a child!).
Once she recovered, he got the courage together to ask her out - and after just six months they were married, in Elsie's home town of Wakefield. As you can see from the photo, rations meant my Grandmother was unable to get a full weding dress, but my Grandad did manage to get a pin-striped suit. Their reception was also fairly typical of wartime weddings, a small affair held at Elsie's parents' home.
Thirteen months later, my Mum was born - but that is another story for another day.
Geoffrey (Percy) Doughty 1921 - 2011
Elsie Doughty (nee Bottomley) 1920 - 1986
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