Manchester

Bee mosaic in Manchester Town Hall
Image from wikipedia.

Everywhere you go in Manchester, you’ll find bees - carved into buildings, decorating bollards and fountains, printed on flags, bumper stickers and tee-shirts, even tattooed on people’s arms.

Originally the worker bee symbolised the hard-working and productive labourers in the factories, those hives of activity during the industrial revolution. It was officially adopted into Manchester’s coat of arms in 1842.

More recently it has become a symbol of the unity and co-operation of Manchester’s population following the terrorist bombing of Manchester Arena in 2017.

Back when I began researching my family history, it certainly seemed as though Manchester was once a honey pot drawing families in. On almost every branch of the family tree, I discovered at least one family that migrated to Manchester, or the adjacent Salford, during the nineteenth century. On  my father’s side of the family, Thomas Ward's widow, Frances, left Walton le Dale and went to live there when she re-married, along with two of her daughters. Several of her grandchildren also went there to work.

On my mother’s side, Thomas Brown Orton and his family moved to Manchester from Leicestershire, the Bentleys from Yorkshire, the Landers from Dorset, the St Legers and the Hardmans from Ireland, the Holts and the Houghs from Cheshire.

So while my previous posts on "places" have been about towns and villages where one family lived, perhaps for several generations, this post covers many families. They often moved back and forth between Manchester and Salford addresses. Salford has its own distinct history, but in this post I'll consider it as part of Manchester.

Manchester's early history

The city gets its name from Mamucium, the name of a Roman fort built on a small hill in 79 AD to keep out the Celtic Brigantes. It was located close to the River Irwell, which meandered across an otherwise flat plain. After the Romans left in 407 AD, the little town around the fort stagnated until the thirteenth century.

In 1227 it was granted a charter for an annual fair, a sign of its increasing prosperity. By the 14th century a textile industry had grown up under the influence of Flemish weavers. Despite some setbacks due to outbreaks of plague and the English Civil War, the market town and its weaving industry gradually expanded.

Shambles Square, in the medieval quarter
Image from wikipedia

By 1720 Manchester was the most important town in Lancashire, with a grammar school, a collegiate church, a free public library and its own newspaper. The population of about 10,000 people had a single representative in the First Protectorate Parliament under Oliver Cromwell. This seat in Parliament was lost after the restoration of King Charles in 1660.

Manchester and the Industrial Revolution

Beginning in the late 18th century, the industrial revolution brought street-lighting, piped water, and a network of canals to transport coal and other goods. Britain’s first railway station was built in Manchester when the Manchester to Liverpool line opened in 1830.

The station built in 1830

An unprecedented influx of people arrived, drawn by the prospect of work in the building trades, the cloth manufacturing industries or the associated transport and service industries. By 1801 the population had reached 75,000 and thirty years later it had almost doubled again to 142,000. Despite this, the city had no representative in Parliament and most working people had no vote anyway.

Some people made their fortunes in the booming conditions, and used them to build impressive private and public buildings. For others, overcrowding and lack of planning led to poverty and hardship. Outbreaks of infectious diseases such as cholera were able to spread rapidly in the squalid conditions in which many people lived. High taxes and trade restrictions during and after the Napoleonic wars led to a recession and high unemployment. In 1812 food riots occurred in parts of the city.

On 16 August 1819, thousands of protesters gathered in a newly-cleared area known as St Peter’s Field to listen to the radical orator Henry Hunt and express their demand for parliamentary reform. The local magistrates sent the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry to arrest Hunt. They succeeded in capturing him, but in the process a child was killed and a woman was injured.

Map of St Peter's field and surrounds
Image by Jhamez84

The 15th Hussars were then sent to disperse the crowd. They went in on horseback with drawn swords, while other regiments blocked the exits to the square. In the panic and mayhem that followed, up to 18 people were killed and hundreds injured. The event became known as the Peterloo Massacre. It would be another thirteen years before the Reform Act of 1832 gave Manchester two representatives in Parliament, elected by eligible males.

Manchester continued to grow, absorbing the surrounding towns into its municipal borough and connecting to places further afield by rail, road and canal links. It was a place of exciting scientific discoveries, technical innovation, impressive engineering feats, and grandiose buildings, alongside social upheaval and radical political movements. Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx developed some of their political theories after visiting Manchester in the 1840s.

My family in Manchester

John Fielding is the earliest of my ancestors to have lived in Manchester. He was born there in 1778, and it may be that his family had lived there for several generations. Perhaps he was the same John Fielding whose name is on the list of those arrested at the Peterloo demonstration. In 1802 he married Jane Hughes, from Wrexham in Wales. Their daughter Harriet (born 1811) married William Holt, who was born in Cheshire.

Harriet and William’s son  John married Elizabeth Hardman, who had migrated from Ireland with her parents as a small child. And so it goes on. John and Elizabeth’s daughter Hannah and her husband William Hough were both born in Salford, as was William’s father John Hough, but his paternal grandfather was from Cheshire and his mother, Mary Lander, was from Dorset. The brick-making Houghs and the stone-cutting Landers no doubt helped to build parts of Manchester.

In the 1860s the Lancashire cotton famine caused a lot of hardship. But by the 1870’s, when the Orton family moved to Manchester from Leicestershire, conditions had improved, with less severe overcrowding and poverty and a better life-expectancy. Manchester had a reputation for social innovation, with some of the world’s first free public parks and libraries, and early branches of the Co-operative movement, the Trades Union Council and the women’s suffrage movement.

The city fostered both the arts and education and it was not uncommon for working people to be self-educated through their use of libraries and newspapers. Friedrich Engels left Manchester and moved to London in 1870.

Cotton-milling machinery in the
Science and Industry, Museum, Manchester

Manchester reached its height of industrial activity with the opening of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894. This allowed ocean-going vessels to carry goods right into and out of the heart of the city. The world’s first industrial estate was built on its banks at Trafford Park. By now the population of the city and its suburban area had reached over 500,000.

Manchester in the twentieth century

Even as late as 1913, 65% of all the world’s cotton moved through Manchester. The city’s name was (and still is) synonymous with cotton goods such as sheets and towels. But cotton milling and other textile industries gradually gave way to machinery exports, chemical industries and financial businesses.

The First World War interrupted trade and the Great Depression that followed led to a decline in Manchester’s economy. Its population peaked around 760,000 in the early 1930s, but people had already started to move away.

During the second world war, Manchester and Salford were heavily bombed in what was known as “the blitz”. Children were hastily evacuated to safer areas by the government, with little preparation. My mother and her sisters, after experiencing the trauma of spending their nights in bomb-shelters and seeing their neighbourhood destroyed, were sent away from their parents to Blackpool, on the coast. After some time, the family were re-united when they moved to Crawshawbooth in Rossendale, 20 miles (32 km) from Manchester. They never went back.

Much of Manchester was rebuilt after the war, and it remained the most important city in the region, but it continued to decline economically. When I was growing up in semi-rural Rossendale, Manchester was the place to go to watch a pantomime, to see Father Christmas in one of the department stores or shop for special-occasion clothes, but I never thought of it as a place to live. Even when I returned there as an adult in the 1980s it still seemed a rather grimy, utilitarian place.

Manchester today

In 1996 the centre of the city was bombed by the IRA. Hundreds of people were injured and many retailers went out of business in the aftermath. But the redevelopment associated with the rebuilding, coupled with the Commonwealth Games held in Manchester in 2002, led to a revitalisation of the city. Slums have been cleared, old factories and warehouses re-purposed and public transport modernised.

Manchester's Christmas Markets, a popular annual event

Manchester now advertises itself as a tourist destination, something that would have been considered a joke when I was a child. I was impressed with how much had changed when I returned to Manchester in 2013, and even more so when I revisited it in 2018.

I haven't followed my family tree far enough into the twentieth century to see how many descendants of those original 'immigrants' are still living there. If you recognise any of your own ancestors names here, I'd love to hear from you.


General references used:
Manchester: wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester
A brief history of Manchester http://www.localhistories.org/manchester.html

Albert and Hannah Hough's puzzling family life

The spire, all that remains of
Stowell Memorial church where
Albert and Hannah married in 1878

I've written a little about Albert Hough and Hannah Holt before. Their daughter Alice was my mother's maternal grandmother. But there are several gaps and puzzling details in their story that I've yet to resolve.

Albert Hough and Hannah Holt married in Salford, Lancashire, in August 1878. At the time Albert was working as a brickmaker like his father William.  When they married they both gave their address as 51 Jane Street in Salford. For some reason Albert’s name was recorded as ‘Alfred Hough’, although his name was registered as Albert both when he was born and when he was baptised. He was also listed as Albert on his children's baptism records.

Their first child, Alice, was born in 1879. But when the census was taken in 1881, Hannah and little Alice were living with Albert’s brother John Hough and his family in Lynton Street in Salford. Albert wasn’t with them. I thought I’d found Albert/Alfred boarding with another family in Ardwick Street, not too far away. Now I'm not so sure. This man was listed as Alfred, and was described as a dyer, which would be quite a leap from being a brick maker. Albert’s occupation was listed as ‘labourer’ when his children were baptised. So far I haven't found any trace of him in 1881.

So why were Albert and Hannah not living together? The obvious explanation would be that as a young working-class couple they couldn’t afford to rent a place for themselves, and found lodging where they could. Little Alice and her brother Albert (born 1882) weren’t baptised until 1885, another hint that the family might have been hard up. Although, as we'll see, there may have been other reasons for the delay in baptising them.

Other possibilities come to mind. Was Albert working somewhere away from home for long periods? Was he perhaps in prison, or the workhouse? None of these ideas have produced any results so far.

Still missing, or missing again?

By the time of the 1891 census Hannah had four living children (another died in infancy) and she and the children were all boarding with a family in Siever Street in Pendleton, Salford. She was working as a charwoman. Again Albert is nowhere to be found. That’s not to say he wasn’t living somewhere in Salford or Manchester, but I haven’t been able to find him.

It seems strange that the couple should still be living apart. They had obviously spent some time together in the previous ten years to produce five children! The census is only a snapshot on a single night, so perhaps they had been living together for most of the intervening ten years.

Still, it would be interesting to find Albert’s whereabouts in 1881 and 1891. By 1901 Hannah had died and the widowed Albert was living with his eldest daughter Alice, her husband, their son and four of his own younger children – nine people in a four-roomed house. He was employed as a labourer.

Some unexplained baptism records

The Lancashire Online Parish Clerks site offers another strange puzzle related to this family. Most of Albert and Hannah’s children were baptised at St Ambrose church in Pendleton. Until 1902 this was a mission church of the parish of St Thomas, an Anglican (C of E) church. But James, born 26 June 1889, appears to have been baptised on 20 November at the Catholic Mother of God and St James church. There’s no photo of the record available, but the transcription reads:

Baptism: 20 Nov 1889
Mother of God and St James, Pendleton, Lancashire, England
Joannes Jacobus Hough - filius Alberti Hough & Hannae (formerly Holt)
Born: 26 Jun 1889
Abode: 40 Dawson St.
Godparents: Julia Anna Donovan
Baptised by: P. J. Markey
Source: Salford Diocesan Archives

(Catholic churches at the time recorded baptismal names in Latin).

Even more strange, Albert and Hannah’s next son John, born on 16 October 1892, was also baptised in the Mother of God and St James church in Pendleton on 1 November 1892. But then on 2 November 1892 he was apparently baptised again, this time at the Anglican church of St Ambrose in Pendleton.

Baptism: 1 Nov 1892 Mother of God and St James, Pendleton, Lancashire, England
Joannes Hoff - filius Alberti Hoff & Annae Rosae (formerly Holt)
Born: 16 Oct 1892
Godparents: Helena Bower
Baptised by: Henrico Van Wtberghe
Source: Salford Diocesan Archives

Baptism: 2 Nov 1892 St Ambrose, Pendleton, Lancashire, England
John Hough - [Child] of Albert Hough & Hannah
Born: 16 Oct 1892
Abode: 24 Buckingham St.
Occupation: Labourer
Baptised by: G. Morgan
Register: Baptisms 1881 - 1894, Page 175, Entry 1393
Source: Parish Register

The names are spelled a little differently, but it certainly looks like the same child. But why would he be baptised twice? As far as I’m aware, the Catholic and Anglican churches have always recognised baptisms carried out in each others’ churches as valid, so there would be no reason to have a child “done” in both churches, even if the parents were of different denominations. I've heard of baptism records being accidentally duplicated in the same church register, but not across two different churches. Any suggestions would be most welcome.

Albert, the father, was baptised in St Phillip's Salford, an Anglican church. I haven’t found a baptism record for Hannah,  but her mother Elizabeth Hardman was Irish, so perhaps she was brought up Catholic. By the time Albert and Hannah's youngest child Elizabeth (a.k.a. Lily) was born they seem to have resolved the issue and she was baptised just once, at St Ambrose Anglican church.

The hard-to-find Hardmans

Shop Street, Galway, Ireland
Photo by Peter Gorman*

After my success in discovering new information about the St Leger family, I decided to see if I could find out more about another Irish family in my mother's line, Patrick and Margaret Hardman or Hardiman (nee Jenkins.) The Hardmans apparently arrived in England between the birth of their daughter Elizabeth (my maternal grandmother's great grandmother) in 1835 and their son Thomas in 1840. They were in Salford, near Manchester, in time for the 1841 census.

Unlike migrants to North America, the names of Irish people travelling to England, Scotland or Wales were not recorded, since Ireland was part of the British Isles at the time. All we can say is that Patrick and Margaret left Ireland with Elizabeth before the great famine of 1845, probably as part of an on-going movement of people looking for work and a better life in the new industrial areas.

Old buildings, Chapel St, Salford
Photo by Alfred Brothers, 1878, courtesy of British Library

They settled first in Church Court off Style Street in Manchester. This was part of the rabbit-warren of decaying buildings around St Michael's Church yard known as Angel Meadow. Many of their neighbours were Irish. Samuel St Leger and Alice Dodd also lived in the area at one stage, though it would be several generations later that the two families were linked by marriage. Patrick found work as a labourer.

By 1851 he and Margaret had added Bridget (1843) John (1847) and Margaret (1850) to their family and had moved to number 10, Briercliffe Buildings in Chapel Street, Salford. Patrick was working as a brick layer's labourer both in 1851 and 1861. He died in 1868, in his mid fifties. Margaret lived on until 1888.  Before she died she was an inmate of the Manchester Work House in Crumpsall.

This much I already knew, but I had no information about the family before the 1841 census. According to all the census records, Patrick, Margaret and daughter Elizabeth were born in Galway, Ireland. Since no other location is listed, my guess is that Galway refers to the town, not just the county.

Unfortunately the Irish Genealogy site doesn't yet have many parish records for Galway. Nor can I find any trace of the family in Irish records on Ancestry or FindMyPast. At one point I thought I'd found Patrick in the Royal Hospital Chelsea Military records, but that Patrick Hardiman (born in Galway in about the right year, 1813) is said to have died in Manchester in 1853.

The names Hardman and Jenkins are not particularly common in Galway. From the internet I found several variants of both names (Hardiman, Harman, Hardogan etc, for Hardman, along with Jennings, Junkin, Johnson and even Shinkwinn for Jenkins). But using those in my search hasn't helped to discover anything.

I'm still quite a novice at researching Irish records, so perhaps if I keep learning more about it and searching, something will turn up. Just this week, Chris Goopy provided a link on her amazing blog That Moment In Time, to the Irish Genealogy Toolkit, which has lots of useful information about Irish research. Meanwhile I've been looking at pictures of Galway and thinking it would be great to do some on-the-ground research for the missing Hardmans!

*Photo used under a Creative Commons licence

More on boatmen and baptisms

The Leeds Liverpool Canal at Wigan Pier

Never publish in haste! I wrote my last article based on research I'd done quite a while ago, but after digging into things a bit more, I find I now need to correct a couple of statements in my previous post about Hannah Holt and her family.

First, I said that her father John Holt was a boatman, and guessed that this meant he was a labourer on the docks. But after doing more research I've realised that it's more likely that he worked on the actual canal boats.

Even before the Manchester Ship Canal opened in 1894, there was an extensive network of canals all over England, which were used for transporting raw materials and goods. It was much more efficient to have a horse (or a man) pull a fully laden boat along a canal than it was to have the horse pull a cart along an unpaved road.

Some of the canals dated back as far as Roman times, but the canal system was greatly expanded during the industrial revolution. The port in Liverpool was linked to industry in Manchester and Yorkshire by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and there was an extensive network of canals linked into this. Eventually the railways took over as the main means of transporting goods. But the canals still exist and it's apparently still possible to travel from London to Lancaster without setting foot on dry land.

Many boatmen lived on their boats, since the journey between the port and their destination could take several days. In some cases their families lived with them. But it seems from the census returns that John Holt and his father William had homes that they returned to regularly.

John and Elizabeth Holt's children

The second thing I need to correct is my statement that Mary Ann, the first child of John Holt and Elizabeth Hardman, appeared to have died in infancy. In fact I've now found her as a seven year old in the 1861 census, staying with her grandparents Patrick and Margaret Hardman in Eagle St, Pendleton. Whether she was there just for the night of the census or more permanently is unclear. I haven't been able to trace her in the 1871 census, but she would have been a teenager then and may well have been working away from home. In March 1876 she married Thomas Ogden in St John the Evangelist Church in Salford. She was still living in Salford, though widowed, in 1911.

While on the topic of John and Elizabeth Holt's children, I've recently discovered their baptism records on the Lancashire Online Parish Clerk site (which is where I also found Mary Ann's marriage). They were all baptised in the Catholic Cathedral Church of St John the Evangelist, in Salford, except for the youngest, John, who was baptised in Christ Church, Salford, which is an Anglican church.

Perhaps this was because his mother Elizabeth, an Irish Catholic, had a say in where the other children were baptised, but she had already died before John came for baptism. I haven't been able to find a burial record for Elizabeth but her death was registered in the first quarter of 1870 and John was born on 13 March 1870, so she probably died towards the end of March. When John was baptised on 6 April, his father, or his father's family, apparently chose to have him "done" in the Church of England.

I usually try to check my facts before posting, but if you come across any errors in any of my blog posts, do please let me know, either by posting a comment or messaging me.

Hannah Holt and her family

Salford Quays today would be unrecognisable
 to Hannah Holt and her family

When I wrote about Alice Hough, I mentioned that she was the child of Alfred (aka Albert) Hough and Hannah (or Anna) Holt. I've already described the Hough side of her family, who were brick makers in Salford. Now it's time to say something about the Holts. Unfortunately there's little to tell about them besides details of births, deaths and marriages, and even some of those are hard to find. They seem to have been one of the many families living in crowded, poor conditions in Salford during the late 19th century.

Hannah's background

Hannah's father John Holt was described in the various census returns as a boatman or waterman, which probably means he worked as a labourer on the docks in Salford (but see below).  He was born in Salford in about 1831. His father, William Holt, was also a boatman.

Hannah's birth registration indicates that her mother's maiden name was Hardman.* Elizabeth Hardman arrived in Manchester from Galway, Ireland with her parents, Patrick and Margaret Hardman (nee Jenkins), around 1840 when she was about 6 years old. Patrick was a labourer, so it's likely that John and Elizabeth began their married life in July 1853 with very little.

John and Elizabeth's first child, Mary Ann (born 1854) seems to have died in infancy, since she doesn't appear in the 1861 census (but see below). The next child, Harriet, was two years older than Hannah (born in 1858). In the 1861 census Hannah is listed as Anna, and the family were living in "Slater's building" which seems to have been some sort of tenement off Hampson St, not far from the docks.

Elizabeth gave  birth to five more children after Hannah, (James 1861, Sarah 1863, Samuel 1865, Elizabeth 1867 and John 1870) but it's not clear how many survived. I can't find the family in the 1871 census. Elizabeth herself died during or soon after giving birth to John in March 1870. Hannah would have been about 12 years old at the time.

In December 1870 Hannah's father remarried, to a woman named Margaret Gill who was 27 at the time. I haven't been able to find the family in the 1871 or 1881 census. Possibly a child, Mary Ellen, was born to Margaret in 1871, but I can't find any others, so John or Margaret may have died soon after that. (The name John Holt was common in Salford so it's difficult to know for certain which death registration is his.)

Marriage and children

Hannah Holt married Albert Hough, a brickmaker, at the Stowell Memorial church in Salford on 18 August, 1878. She was 20. When they married they both gave their address as 57 Jane St. This was in a typical Salford row of two storey brick houses built "back to back" on a cobbled street with flag-stone pavers.

When the census was taken three years later Hannah and her daughter Alice were living with her bother-in-law John Hough and his family in Lynton St, Salford. Albert was lodging with another family in Ardwick St. Was this for financial reasons, or had they separated? They had another child, Albert, the following year, and another five children after that, so perhaps it was for practical reasons.

By 1891 Hannah was boarding with another family, along with four of her children, and she was working as a charwoman, which suggests that she was in very difficult circumstances. Albert is nowhere to be seen on the census.

In 1899, at the age of just 41, Hannah died. Albert went to live with his daughter Alice and was with her family in 1901, but he seems to have died before 1911.

NOTE: I've updated and corrected some of the information in this post in my next post. See More on Boatmen and Baptisms

*(GRO Reference: 1858  S Quarter in SALFORD  Volume 08D  Page 77). 

Albert Hough 1858-c 1905

Individual Summary

26 April 2015

Name:	Albert (aka Alfred) Hough
Sex:	Male
Father:	William Hough (1831-1887)
Mother:	Mary Lander (1833-1879)
Individual Facts
Birth	Jul 1858	Salford, Lancashire, England1–6
Baptism	6 Feb 1859 (about age 0)	Salford, St Philip, Lancashire, England7
Residence	1861 (about age 3)	Relation to Head of House: Nephew; Salford, Lancashire, England3
Residence	1871 (about age 13)	Relation to Head of House: Son; Salford, Lancashire, England4
Residence	1881 (about age 23)	Relation to Head of House: Lodger  Occupation: dyer; Salford, Lancashire, England6 (This may not be the correct person)
Residence	1901 (about age 43)	Name: Albert Hough  Relation to Head of House: Father-in-law  Marital status: widower  Occupation: labourer; Pendleton, Lancashire, England1
Death	bef 1911 (before about age 53)	Possibly 1905 in Salford. Does not appear on 1911 census
Marriages/Children
1. Anna (Hannah) Holt (1859-1899) married 18 August 1878 Stowell Memorial, Salford, Lancashire, England
Children	Alice Hough (1879-1909)
	Albert Hough (1882-    )
	Mary Hough (1886-1886)
	Harriet Ann Hough (1887-1894)
	James Thomas Hough (1890-    )
	John Hough (1893-    )
	Lily Elizabeth Hough (1895-    )
Notes

        1. 1901 England Census (Ancestry.com Operations Inc), Class: RG13; Piece: 3718; Folio: 121; Page: 31.

       2.. Manchester, England, Marriages and Banns, 1754-1930 (Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.).

        3. 1861 England Census (Ancestry.com Operations Inc), Class: RG 9; Piece: 2924; Folio: 32; Page: 11; GSU roll: 543050.

        4. 1871 England Census (Ancestry.com Operations Inc), Class: RG10; Piece: 4026; Folio: 81; Page: 30; GSU roll: 846325.

        5. FreeBMD, England & Wales, FreeBMD Birth Index, 1837-1915 (Ancestry.com Operations Inc).

        6. 1881 England Census (Ancestry.com Operations Inc), Class: RG11; Piece: 3973; Folio: 55; Page: 7; GSU roll: 1341949.

        7. Manchester, England, Births and Baptisms, 1813-1915 (Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.).

More about Albert Hough:

Alice Hough - a hard life cut short

Alice Hough - a hard life cut short

Salford Quays, (Manchester Dock no 9) in 1900

Alice Hough, my maternal great grandmother, was the fourth generation of her family to be born in Salford, Lancashire. Salford had changed drastically in those four generations. Alice, born in 1879, would have been in her teens when the Manchester Ship Canal opened in 1894, leading to the development of the Salford docks. This major inland port would employ thousands of people, including her future husband, Walter.

Alice's father, Albert Hough, was a brickmaker, a trade that would have been much in demand as Salford and Manchester grew explosively. Despite that, brickmakers were not well paid nor much respected. Until the process was mechanised, brickmaking was seasonal work that often meant being itinerant.

Perhaps that's why Alice seems to have had such an unsettled childhood, from the little I can find out about her. Her parents Albert and Anna* were not living together when the census was taken in 1881. Whether for financial or other reasons, Anna and little Alice were boarding with her brother-in-law, John Hough and his family, while Albert seems to have been boarding with a family named Mcelory (sic).

Alice and her brother Albert (born 1882) were not baptised until December 1885 when she was 6 and he was 3 years old, again suggesting that the family might not have been very stable before then. Even in 1891 Anna, along with her children Alice, Albert, Harriet (born 1887) and James (1890) was boarding with a family named Lockett, while Albert senior's whereabouts are unknown.

However when Alice's brother John was born in 1892 he was baptised fairly promptly and the family's address was recorded as 24 Buckingham St, Pendleton. They had moved to 24 Hayfield St, Pendleton by the time the youngest child Elizabeth was baptised in 1895. Sadly Alice's sister Harriet had  died in the previous year, at the age of 6.

In February 1898, when she was 18 years old, Alice married Walter Horatio Bentley. Walter was a crane driver, who like Alice was born in Salford, though neither of his parents were local.

Their first son, Walter, was born in June of that year. Within 12 months Walter senior's mother Annie (aged 50) and Alice's mother Anna (40) both died. This left Alice's younger siblings without a mother.

It seems that the 19 year old Alice stepped in to fill the gap. In the 1901 census she and Walter had her father, Albert Hough, and her four siblings Albert (18), James (10) John (8) and Elizabeth (5) living with them. The siblings are described on the census as 'step brothers' and 'step sisters', but this is probably a mistake.

A second child, Alice Hannah, was born to Alice and Walter in July 1901, followed by Margaret Annie in April 1904, Harriet Ann in 1906 and Albert in December 1907. Alice's brothers and sister were still living with them, so the house must have been very overcrowded.

Like her mother Anna, the hard-working Alice did not live to see her children grow up. In November 1909, at the age of 30, she died. According to my cousin David, her death certificate gave the cause of death as "Acute dementia and exhaustion (after childbirth)".

The phrase "acute" dementia suggests that her illness may have been a complication of giving birth to another child in 1909, as Albert would already have been nearly 2 years old by then. However, I haven't been able to find any record of a such a child. Possibly Alice had a stillborn child who was never registered.

Another possibility is that the death certificate is describing what we would now call post-natal depression or psychosis  that began after Albert's birth. Many medical terms have changed their meaning over time and it's sometimes difficult to know what was meant.

Whatever the cause, Walter was left with five young children to care for. His father-in-law, Albert Hough, had died sometime earlier, (possibly in 1904 or 1905) but the 1911 census indicates that Alice's four siblings were still living with Walter in Penny St, Pendleton - a total of ten people in a three roomed house.

Alice's sister Elizabeth, known as Lily, seems to have taken over the care of the young ones. Walter never remarried.

Salford Quays 2006
(used under a CC license from wikimedia)

*Alice's mother, Anna Holt, married Albert Hough in Stowell Memorial church, Salford, in 1878. There is some uncertainty about what they should be called, since Albert's name was recorded as "Alfred Hough" on the church marriage register, while Anna also appears as 'Hannah' on the 1881 census and some of the children's baptism records. For consistency I will refer to them as Albert and Anna.

Alice Hough (1879-1909)

Individual Summary

29 March 2015

Name:	Alice Hough1
Sex:	Female
Father:	Albert (Alfred) Hough (1858-    )
Mother:	Anna (Hannah) Holt (1859-1899)
Individual Facts
Birth	10 May 1879	Salford, Lancashire, England1–5
Baptism	30 Dec 1885 (age 6)	Pendleton, St Ambrose, Lancashire, England2
Residence	1891 (about age 12)	Relation to Head of House: Boarder; Pendleton, Lancashire, England5
Residence	1901 (about age 22)	Relation to Head of House: Wife; Pendleton, Lancashire, England1
Death	Oct 1909 (about age 30)	Salford, Lancashire3
Marriages/Children
1. Walter Horatio Bentley (1876-1917) Married 5 Feb 1898
Children	Walter Horatio Bentley (1898-1978)
	Alice Hannah Bentley (1901-1969)
	Margaret Annie Bentley (1904-1994)
	Harriet Ann Bentley (1906-1928)
	Albert Bentley (1908-1915)

More about Alice Hough:





Notes:

        1. 1901 England Census (Ancestry.com Operations Inc), Class: RG13; Piece: 3718; Folio: 121; Page: 31.

        2. Manchester, England, Births and Baptisms, 1813-1915 (Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.).

        3. FreeBMD, England & Wales, FreeBMD Death Index, 1837-1915 (Ancestry.com Operations Inc).

        4. England, Select Marriages, 1538–1973 (Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.).

        5. 1891 England Census , Class: RG12; Piece: 3204; Folio: 99; Page: 23; GSU Roll: 6098314.(Ancestry.com Operations Inc)