Limerick

One of the main characters in my upcoming book, The Edward Street Baby Farm, was born in Limerick in 1855. Harriet Lenihan moved to Australia in the 1880s and eventually came to Perth. Her father, Maurice Lenihan, was owner and editor of the Limerick Reporter, and was Mayor of Limerick for several years. He had connections with many of the leading political figures in Ireland. Harriet was very proud of the fact that her father had written a history of the city, which was widely acclaimed, though it never made its author any money. It had even received a commendation from the Pope.

As far as I know I’m not related to Harriet Lenihan. But I am related to another outcast from Limerick, John Mason, whose story I’ve told in several posts here. So I feel an attachment to Limerick despite never having been there.

John Mason’s convict records describe him as a ‘native’ of Limerick. He was certainly arrested, tried and transported from that city but I’m not entirely sure that he was born there.

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, the records of the Destitute Board in Adelaide, where he eventually finished up, describe him as English. Possibly he migrated to Ireland, or came from an English family living in Limerick. Whatever the case, at the age of eighteen he was working in Limerick as a boatman.

He must have been one of many boatmen in the water-bound city. Limerick sits some way inland, at the head of estuary of the Shannon river, and is accessible by ocean-going ships. Another waterway, the Grand Canal, makes it possible to navigate from Limerick in the southwest all the way to Dublin on the east coast.

A brief history of Limerick

As the much smaller Abbey River meets a loop of the Shannon, it creates an island, known as Kings Island. The Vikings established a settlement there in the 10th century. They maintained trade links with other settlements in Ireland and Europe and eventually integrated into the Irish population.

In 1195 the Normans from England captured Limerick, and Lord John (later ‘bad’ King John) built a castle on Kings Island and erected walls around the city. Although the city was nominally under English rule, it was fairly independent. In 1413 King Henry V granted it a charter as a city-state.

Henry VIII changed all that. He abolished the Irish monasteries, gave land to his supporters and by 1603 controlled the whole of Ireland. Limerick lost most of its independence.

Limerick in 1587, source unknown

In the seventeenth century the city was besieged four times, in 1642, 1651, 1690 and 1691. The final siege was carried out by the troops of the protestant William of Orange against the supporters of catholic James II, who were holed up in the city. After the Williamites broke through, a treaty was signed.

Under the Treaty of Limerick, James’ supporters were allowed to leave Ireland, in what was referred to as the Flight of the Wild Geese. Alternatively, they could join William’s army. Civilians were allowed to keep their land and property, provided that they pledged loyalty to William.

But the treaty was soon broken. Laws passed by the English and Irish parliaments, known as the Penal Laws, put Irish Catholics at a great disadvantage. Limerick became known by many as the City of the Broken Treaty

The city itself gradually expanded and the walls were dismantled and rebuilt to allow it to grow. The oldest part of the city on Kings Island became known as Englishtown, while the expansion to the south of the Abbey River was known as Irishtown. The two were joined by a bridge, the Baal bridge. In the eighteenth century there was a further expansion to the south, with a planned grid of wide streets, named Newtown Pery after its founder, landowner Edmund Sexton Pery. This area, with its Georgian architecture, became the city’s CBD.



When John Mason was born, in about 1814 or 1815, Limerick was a city undergoing great changes. A port was constructed to serve the growing agriculture and manufacturing industries. New bridges crossed the river. Many churches and schools were being built, along with hospitals, a court house and a gaol. (John Mason would see the inside of both the courthouse and the gaol.) Gas, water and sewerage services became available for the first time.

Limerick in the 1830s
Painted by French artist Alphonse Dousseau.

But in the 1830s, in the poorer Catholic areas, and the rural areas around the city, there was unrest. Not everyone benefited from the growing wealth of the city, and the new bridges tended to divide rather than unite the different economic areas. The wealthy moved to the new suburbs of Newton Pery, while in the old parts of the city many were destitute.

Food prices had been rising across southern Ireland as a result of potato crop failures. In 1830 merchants raised the price of oatmeal in Limerick by 25 percent. For many people, oats provided their only food supply. A riot broke out on 25 June 1830, and the mob raided warehouses, shops and factories. Although the troops were called in, the authorities also set up a relief fund to ensure that food was made available at a fair price to those who needed it and work was provided for the unemployed.

Leaving Limerick

This then, was the city in which John Mason lived in the early 1830s. Without knowing where John was born, it’s difficult to trace his background or his life in Limerick. Mason was not a common name in the county. A family named Mason had a property of 772 acres at Cappanihane in County Limerick in the early 1800s, but I haven’t found anything to suggest that John was related to them. The newspaper reports of John's trial say nothing of where he was from. My guess is that if the son of a local landowner had been arrested and brought to trial for stealing, the newspapers would probably have mentioned his family background.

Someone once told me that boatmen in Ireland were employed by the government as coastguards. They were often recruited from England so that they had no local ties that might lead to corruption. It’s possible that John or his father came from England in this way. The National Archives UK website has PDF images of the coastguard records of service available for download. So far I haven't been able to find any mention of anyone named Mason in these handwritten records from the 1800s, but I have many more files still to search through.

In the 1830s, many people from Limerick chose to migrate to Australia, some with assistance from the government or their landlord. John Mason wasn’t given a choice when he was given a one-way trip to New South Wales. He was transported in 1833 for stealing a length of muslin cloth.

I've described in another post (Muslin by the yard) my reasoning for thinking that the cloth that John stole came from a haberdashery shop in George Street, belonging to Thomas Evans and his family. George Street, now known as O'Connell Street, is the main street in Limerick, running from the bridge at the southern end of Kings Island through the Newtown Pery district, parallel to the Shannon.

According to the Limerick Chronicle, John broke a pane of glass to grab the cloth, while the owner's two sons were behind the counter. It seems a rather brazen thing to do, and he was easily caught. Could he have deliberately committed a crime to get himself transported? If so, he certainly wouldn’t have been the only person to do so.

The story of John Mason's life after he left Limerick, and that of his family, appears in other posts on this blog. It's also told in more detail in my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool. It's available on Amazon and other online books stores. To read a preview of the first chapters, click on the cover image.









General references:

Roots Ireland - A brief history of Limerick
Limerick.ie - Our history
Irish walled towns network - Limerick
Wikipedia - history of Limerick
Liam Hogan - The 1830 Limerick Food Riots

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

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

Samuel St Leger's Irish marriage

They say everything comes to the one who waits, and that's certainly true in family history research. Back in 2014, when I last wrote about my mother's great grandfather, Samuel St Ledger (sometimes spelled St Leger) and his defacto wife Alice Dodd, there were all sorts of loose ends and unexplained aspects to the story.

To recap, Samuel was born in Manchester, in the early 1800s, and worked all his life as a fustian cutter. He and Alice Dodd had nine children between 1841 and 1868 (eight if the first of Alice's children, Ralph Dodd, had a different father, as he claimed on his marriage registration). But as far as I or my cousin David could discover, Samuel and Alice never married. We wondered why.

Then David discovered another previously unknown child belonging to Samuel, named Elizabeth St Ledger. She was born in Manchester in 1843, but according to the records, her mother's name was not Alice Dodds, but Bridget Dobbs.

We guessed that if Samuel had been married to Bridget, that would explain why he didn't marry Alice. But we couldn't discover anything about Bridget. Neither she nor the child Elizabeth appeared on any English census records, nor did there seem to be any marriage or death records for either of them.

A while later, while looking for information about Samuel's birth, I came across this announcement in an Irish newspaper, the Dublin Weekly Herald:

"On the 12th inst. in St.Catherine's Church by the Rev. Thos. Gregg, Mr Samuel St Ledger to Bridget, eldest dau. of Mr John Dobbs late Sec. to the Christian Fellowship Soc." 

It was dated 21 March 1840. Several other Irish papers carried the same snippet of news. David and I  couldn't be sure that it was "our" Samuel St Ledger, since St Ledger/St Leger is quite a common name in Ireland. But it would explain not only why Samuel didn't, or couldn't, marry Alice Dodd, but also perhaps why he didn't appear in the 1841 English census. He was probably in Dublin at the time, married to Bridget.

St Catherines, Thomas Street, Dublin

That was as far as it went until this week, when I decided to write about Samuel and Alice for my series about unexplained mysteries. While I was checking to see if any new information was available, I found a possible baptism for Samuel on the Lancashire Online Parish Clerk site:

Baptism: 7 Oct 1816 St Chad, Cheetham, Lancashire, England
Samuel St Legear - Son of Samuel St Leager [sic] & Ann (formerly Mooney)
Born: 2 Nov
Parents' Marital Status: conj.

And a possible sister to Samuel too, previously unknown:

Baptism: 21 Aug 1818 St Chad, Cheetham, Lancashire, England
Elizabeth Sinleger - Daughter of Sam. Sinleger & Ann (formerly Mooney)
Born: 20 Aug
Godparents: John McNally; Ellen Flinn
Parents' Marital Status: conj.

If nothing else, these entries demonstrate why searching for the name "St Leger" proves so difficult!

On the Irish Genealogy.ie site I found a record for Samuel St Leger and Bridget Dobb's marriage in 1840, confirming the newspaper report, although her name was recorded as Dodds rather than Dobbs.

The same site also produced this marriage record (click to enlarge):

It shows Elizabeth St Leger marrying a widower, John McNeill, in Dublin on 24 December 1871. Her father is recorded as Samuel St Leger, fustian cutter. So it looks as though Elizabeth, and probably her mother Bridget, returned to Ireland, leaving Samuel to continue his affair with Alice in Manchester.

Samuel and Bridget had a child born in Dublin, before Elizabeth was born in England. Sarah St Leger was born on 13 December 1840, at 28 Thomas Court, Dublin, and was baptised at St Catherine's on 28 March 1841. I haven't been able to discover what happened to her. Perhaps she died in infancy.

So now I know quite a bit more about Samuel's family than I did last time I wrote about him. But there's a new mystery to solve - what was the relationship, if any, between Alice Dodd and Bridget Dodd/Dobbs? Alice claimed to have been born in Manchester, and Bridget was apparently born in Dublin, so perhaps it's just co-incidence that they have the same, or very similar, surname. Or perhaps not.

The unfortunate Bridget Jules

As a family historian, I often find myself researching the lives of people who are not genetically related to my family. Friends, neighbours, in-laws and god-parents are all of interest, since their lives often illuminate the lives of my forebears. I've mentioned how tracing the friends of John and Catherine Mason helped me to finally prove (at least to my own satisfaction) that John was an Irish convict.

One of the unrelated people who has fascinated, but eluded, me up to now is Bridget Jules, the friend of Susan Mason. She appeared in the Adelaide court with Susan, David Whybrew and Richard Hughes in 1868. I wrote a little about her in my book "Susan: convicts daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool" but since then I've discovered more details of her life.

Bridget began life either in Galway or Clare (both are mentioned) in the west of Ireland, as Bridget Bradley, the daughter of Henry Bradley. She arrived in Adelaide aboard the Rockcliff in 1864, at the age of 19. She came with hundreds of other English and Irish migrants, including 16 year old Mary Bradley, who was perhaps a younger sister. Bridget was looking for an opportunity to create a better life. But like many young single women from Ireland she probably had little education or experience in the sort of domestic work that employers wanted.

Adelaide Hospital in the 19th century

Despite this, Bridget apparently found work. In March 1866 she was admitted to the Adelaide Hospital. The admission index doesn't say for what reason, but it does reveal that she was working as a domestic servant in Bowden, in the north of Adelaide.

The Genealogy SA database shows that in 1866 a child was born  to Bridget Bradley, so perhaps her hospital admission was related to that event. Neither the baby or the father's names are recorded. I haven't been able to trace any further records for the child, but certainly it doesn't seem to have been in the care of Bridget.

Some time before 1868 she changed her name to Jules, or Julius (both versions appear in the records). Whether this was through marriage is unclear. If a Mr Jules existed, he seems to have disappeared from her life very quickly. Nevertheless, she kept the name for several years, and she is variously described as married or widowed in the records.

Bridget seems to have stayed out of trouble with the law until the episode in 1868, when she and Susan and the two soldiers were involved in relieving the sleeping Frank Jones of his pocket watch. Susan Mason managed to wriggle her way out of being tried for larceny, but poor Bridget was not so lucky. Fortunately she and the two soldiers were acquitted.

A downward spiral

Part of the Destitute Asylum in Adelaide
(now the Migration Museum)

After that her name appears regularly in the Adelaide newspapers. She was charged with larceny, the use of bad language, prostitution and disturbing the peace. In the newspaper account of one court appearance in January 1870 she was described as "an unfortunate", a term used for women with no means of support. Several times she was sentenced to imprisonment for a few days or weeks. In 1871 she spent time in the Destitute Asylum, where her usual occupation was listed as "prostitution".

In 1873 she gave birth to another child, a boy named James. The father was also named this time, as John Ross. The baby died before the age of two. Bridget's name is associated several times with that of John Ross in the newspapers, at least once as a result of a fight between them.

Bridget was in hospital again in March 1876 (as Bridget Julius). The hospital records show a 6 year old child named Mary Jane Julius from Bowden was admitted in April the following year - perhaps another of Bridget's children. Her age suggests a date of birth of about 1871, which co-incides with the birth of a Mary Jane McCarthy, whose parents are listed as John McCarthy and Bridget Julius Bradley. Again there is nothing to suggest that the child was in Bridget's care.

By 1878 Bridget was seldom out of trouble. In September she was charged with larceny in company with John Ross, They were said to have been living together for five years. Ross was discharged, she was sentenced to two months imprisonment with hard labour. The South Australian Police Gazette for 6 November 1878 provides a description of Bridget when she was about to be released:

Bridget Jules, married woman, native of Ireland, aged 34 years, height 5ft 2in, sandy hair, grey eyes, small scar above nose.

In September 1881, when she was in her thirties, Bridget married Henry Tilley, a "cow keeper" from Somersetshire in England, and the son of George Tilley. They were both witnesses the following year during a coroner's inquest into the death of a young man, Thomas Maloney, from a head injury. It seems Maloney had accosted Bridget late at night, when she was out in the street, and two other men had come to her defence. During the fight Maloney had hit his head on the ground and fractured his skull.

Henry Tilley denied being involved. He explained the blood found on his clothes by saying that he had hit Bridget across the mouth when she was drunk. Despite this, he was exonerated, while her conduct was described as "disgraceful".

Last appearance

During the 1890's Bridget had several spells in hospital. She was listed as Bridget Tilley, married, but her address was constantly changing and she was employed as a charwoman, so she may not have been with Henry. In 1892 and 1893 she was back in the Destitute Asylum, which suggests Henry had died by then, or they had separated.

The last appearance I can find for Bridget is a hospital admission in 1897, when she was 49 years old. What became of her, or her children if they survived, is (so far) unknown. A Bridget Tilley died in South Australia in September 1919, but I'm not certain that this is her. Henry also disappears, so possibly they left South Australia.

Susan Mason, my great great grandmother, had a hard life as a soldier's wife, as I've described in the book. But compared to her friend Bridget, it seems she had much to be thankful for. Had she remained in Adelaide she might well have followed poor Bridget into chaos and destitution.

====================================

For more about Bridget and Susan, see my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool. It's available on Amazon and other online books stores. To read a preview of the first chapters, click on the cover image.

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). 

Muslin by the yard - John Mason's trial

Limerick c 1900

John Mason was 18 years old when he was transported to Australia aboard the Parmelia. Until recently all that I knew about his crime came from his convict records, which stated that he had been sentenced in Limerick for 'stealing cotton'. The Limerick prison records (available at Find My Past) showed that he had been tried on 27 June 1833 and sentenced on 11 July, but gave no other details.

This week the British Newspaper Archive posted a new batch of pages from Irish newspapers, including the Limerick Chronicle, and I was finally able to discover a little more about John's trial. On 13 July 1833, under the heading "Limerick City Sessions" this appears:

John Mason, for stealing 29 yards of muslin goods from Thomas Evans.
James Evans sworn - He was behind the counter when he heard a pane of glass broken in the window; jumped over the counter and saw the prisoner outside with the piece of muslin in his hand; his brother coming out, they took the muslin from him.
George Evans sworn - corroborated the evidence of his brother, whom he saw struggling with the prisoner outside the window.
Thomas Evans; fully confirmed the testimony of the two preceding witnesses, young boys, who gave their evidence in a most correct and intelligent manner. Verdict - Guilty.

The sentence, transportation for seven years, given a few days later, appears on page 3 of the same paper.

Since reading this I've been trying to find out more about the shop owned by Thomas Evans. Where was it? What did it sell? On a genealogy site I found a Thomas Evans in Limerick with sons named George and James, born in  1817 and 1818 respectively. That seemed promising

The Evan's family in the 1846 Slater's directory p 264

Then I came across an entry in the 1846 Slater's National Commercial Directory of Ireland for Thomas Evans in William St, Limerick  (pg 264). But according to this he was an ironmonger, and the correct and intelligent George and James were hardwaremen in Rutland Street. Another entry showed Thomas Evans and his sons also held a license to sell gunpowder (p 274). It didn't seem likely that either of these stores would sell muslin by the yard. Had Thomas Evans changed his business in the thirteen years since 1833, or was this a different family?

George St, Limerick c 1880

The mystery was solved when I noticed a Hannah Evans listed as the owner of a haberdashery store in George Street, Limerick. Thomas Evans' wife and James and George's mother was named Hannah, so I'm guessing that it was the Evans' haberdashery shop rather than the hardware or gunpowder store that John Mason robbed. 

John was not the only Limerick resident sentenced on 11 July to being transported. Just below the newspaper account of John's trial is one for Mary Lynch, who stole a coat. She freely admitted that she was guilty, adding that she had deliberately stolen the coat in the hope of being transported, since so many of her family and friends were now in New South Wales. She was found guilty and had her wish granted.

Photos from National Library of Ireland on Flickr

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You can find out more about John Mason, Susan and David Whybrew and their family, in my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool, available on Amazon and other online books stores

And it's done!

View the book

The book I've been writing about Susan Mason and her family is finally complete and published on Amazon worldwide. It's available as an e-book which can be read on any Kindle device or Kindle app. A paperback version is also available (although sadly not through the Australian Amazon site, which doesn't stock printed books yet). I'm still looking into other e-book options such as epub and ibooks.

I hope if you've enjoyed reading my articles about the Mason and Whybrew families here on Clogs and Clippers you will find this much expanded and chronological version of their stories interesting and enjoyable. The book has extensive endnotes and a bibliography.

I've had great fun writing it. My sincere thanks to all who have helped with the research, editing, and revising of the book. Thanks especially to Katie for the cover and Amy for her editing.

For UK readers, the Kindle edition is available here.
For customers of the Australian Amazon site, it can be found here.

Visit my new "author page" on Amazon for more information.

Certificates, transcriptions and Brexit

Well, here's some positive news at last about Brexit. As a result of events on June 23, it has become less expensive for Australians like me to purchase certificates from the UK General Registry Office (GRO). This time last year one British pound was equivalent to roughly $AUD 2.0. Now it's down to $AUD 1.70. That takes about $3 off the cost of a certificate.

Politics aside, ordering copies of birth, marriage or death certificates is an expensive way to do family history research. If I can find reliable information about the people I'm researching by some other means, I'm usually content with that. But there are times when the only way to find information, or check dubious sources, is to order a copy of the certificate.

Copy of Lily Whybrew's birth certificate from the UK GRO
Lily was the youngest child of Susan and David Whybrew.
She died in infancy.

Each country has its own approach to the issuing of certificates. The UK GRO allows orders to be made online or by mail, then sends a certified copy of the original registry entry by mail. Curiously, the cost (currently £9.25 each) is the same whether you provide complete details, including a reference to the GRO index, or just a few details such as a name, place and year, requiring the GRO to do the research themselves to find an entry on the index. Even more strange, the cost is the same whether it's posted to Highgate in London or to Highgate in Perth, Australia. There's no option to have copies delivered electronically.

Despite the ready availability of family history sources online, there's still something exciting about finding a long brown envelope in your letter box marked with Her Majesty's Government seal. If family history is your 'thing', nothing beats the thrill of seeing a certificate issued a hundred years ago and finding that vital piece of information that you were looking for inscribed in handwritten scrawl. Occasionally there's the disappointment of finding the certificate belongs to someone different than you were expecting, or it contains information that blows a long-cherished theory apart.

The Irish GRO also issues certificates by mail, which can be ordered by post or electronically, for €20. Alternatively they will send a photocopy of the record by email, for a reduced price (about €4). If all you want is the information, rather than something to hang on the wall, that's a good option. For some reason, emailed photocopies can't be ordered online, but have to be ordered by fax or mail after downloading the request form and ticking the box that says 'photocopy'. Odd, but that's the way it is.
Another of Brexit's effects is the appearance on the Irish GRO site of a warning that "Due to a significant increase in orders for certificates as a result of the recent referendum in the United Kingdom (UK), the delivery time for certificates from this service will be up to thirty (30) days from the date of order." A sudden increase in interest in family history? Maybe not.

Rosina Whybrew's death in Ireland in 1874.
This is a photocopy of the original entry from the Irish GRO.

Birth, marriage and death records in Australia are kept by each State's own registry offices, and certified copies are generally very expensive. (The NSW registry charges $32 for an emailed copy of a birth entry. That's twice the price of a hard copy British certificate mailed overseas.) One way around this is to order a modified version of the certificate through a transcription agent. They will send all the information that's found on a registry entry, usually laid out on their own attractive presentation form, for about half to two thirds of the price. Transcription agents can be found by searching online.

Transcript of Mary Mason's birth in NSW,
provided by a transcription agent from the original entry.

If you have ancestors in South Australia, and live outside the state, you're in luck. The City of Unley Library has a wonderful bunch of family history volunteers who will look up births, marriages and deaths in that state free of charge. All that's required is the details of the person you're researching, mailed or emailed on one of their request forms (up to a limit of 3 requests at a time) and a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Since they are volunteers, it can take several weeks to get a result, but they'll often add helpful comments to the report. A fantastic service. (I'm not aware of similar services in any other state, but if you know of one, please let us know about it in the comments box.)

Facts can sometimes ruin a good story

Old records - where it all begins

A few months ago I started writing a book about Susan Mason and her family. In a way, I've already written most of her life story on this blog, but it's quite fragmented. I wanted to draw together all the information I've discovered about her into a continuous narrative. She's such an interesting character, and her life, while not remarkable in any historical sense, provides insights into many different situations and places. It's a great story.

I've just finished the first draft, and now I'm in the process of rewriting and editing it. But I found myself with a dilemma. Some time ago I discovered a record on ancestry.com that seemed to indicate that in 1876, while the family were stationed in Ireland, Susan had given birth to a child, a boy named Charles. The child wasn't David's.

The father, named on the record as Charles Newman, was a soldier from David's regiment, the 50th. The record gave the date (October 1 1876) and the place of birth, and it seemed quite feasible that it could be true. The child's birth (but not his parents names or the date) was also included on the the index to the Irish Civil register on Ancestry and the British Nationals Armed Forces Register of Births on Find My Past.

An affair with another soldier would certainly add colour to the story, but should I be revealing such details about Susan or the Newmans? (You've probably guessed by now that the reason I'm telling you this is that it isn't actually true.) And besides, the more I thought about it, the more I felt that something about the record didn't seem quite right.

Bantry, Co Cork, where David Whybrew
was stationed in 1876.

© Copyright Pam Brophy and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Susan was in the right place and could have had another child in October 1876 after giving birth to Alice late in the previous year. But the two births would be quite close together, and Rose Whybrew was born only fifteen months later. The soldier's wife, Mary Newman, on the other hand, had one child who was two years old at the time and she had another child two years later. Charles' birth would fit neatly into her family. From later censuses I knew that Charles Newman had been brought up by the Newman family in Bristol after his father left the army.

There was also no image of the actual documents available. It was just a transcript, details copied by someone at some time. Where had the information come from? The army's records? The Irish Civil Register? How reliable was it?

I posted that question on the British Genealogy forum, which is always a good place to get other opinions and advice. "Get the original documents from GRO (the General Register Office in England) and the Irish Civil Register" was the predictable response, along with some equally predictable "hmmphing" about the reliability of sites like Ancestry. Someone also provided me with helpful advice about how to go about ordering the documents for the least expense.

To be fair, sites like Ancestry and Find My Past are now providing access to more and more  images of original documents on-line and not just transcripts, as was once the case. The original hand-written census documents, army enlistment and medical records, church registers of baptisms, marriages and burials, convict records and ships' passenger lists can all be seen and checked against the transcripts provided (which are occasionally quite inaccurate.) It's not Ancestry's fault if people don't check the original documents and think about the plausibility of information before adding it to their family trees.

So I sent for certified copies of the information on the registers. The Irish Registry Office hasn't replied, probably because they couldn't find any record of a birth with the details I provided. The GRO sent me full details from the Army Register of Births, Baptisms and Marriages, which show that not only was Susan Whybrew not the child's mother (Mary Newman is named as mother) but the date of birth was also different from the on-line transcription (July 1, 1876, not October 1). The father's name and regiment are the same, so it seems to be the right child.

It's possible that whoever transcribed the details of the birth from the Army Register inadvertently copied Susan's name from the previous entry. Few army wives travelled with their husbands when they went overseas, and it may well be that Alice Whybrew was the last child born to a family from the 50th regiment in Ireland prior to the one in question. Or at least her entry appeared on the same page.

I'm pleased to know that Susan didn't have a love child in Ireland, even if it does remove a potentially interesting chapter from my book. But it did serve to remind me how important it is to check facts with reliable and original sources when you're doing family history research.

__________________

You can find out more about Susan and David Whybrew and their family, in my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool.
It's available on Amazon and other online books stores

Eliza Whybrew - a life in two armies

Eliza in her Salvation Army uniform

 In my post on David and Susan Whybrew's fourteen children I skimmed over Eliza, saying that I'd devote a whole article to her. I've just realised that two years have gone by, and I still haven't done it. So my next few posts will be about Eliza Whybrew, her husband Bill Beales and their family.

Eliza had an unsettled childhood. She was born in Adelaide, South Australia, on 10 December 1869. Soon after her birth her mother Susan (nee Mason) moved to England to be with her husband David Whybrew, a soldier in the British army. It's possible that David returned to England almost immediately after their marriage in July, having been charged with deserting his regiment and successfully arguing in court that he was only 'absent without leave'. If so, Susan would have made the long sea voyage on her own with her new baby.

Susan was apparently not 'on the strength' as an army wife, meaning that she was not eligible to live with David in the barracks and receive rations from the army. She had to find her own accommodation and support herself as best she could. It's likely that her circumstances were quite poor.

Childhood - following the British Army

When the 1871 census was taken she and Eliza (listed as 'Emily' on the census form) were in Redan Gardens, Aldershot, living with a retired couple named Hudson. Susan had work as a general servant. David was in the barracks, a thirty minute walk away.

Eliza was five years old when her two younger siblings David and Rosina died, and she and her mother moved to Ireland with her father's regiment. She would have been almost 6 years old when Alice was born in Ireland in 1875. Those deaths and the 6 year gap meant that she had no siblings close to her in age as she grew up.

Nor were there any grandparents in her life. She would have known her aunt and uncle, Eliza and Jeremiah Murphy, and their children, since Jeremiah was in the 50th regiment and they were in Ireland at the same time as David. However, they moved to Scotland in 1878. Was Eliza aware that she had an older sister, Harriet, still living in Australia? Given the attitudes to illegitimate children at the time, it's possible that it was never discussed.

After a few years of being uprooted regularly, from Dublin to Birr, from Birr to Bantry, then back to England, first to Dover then Canterbury in Kent, the family finally settled in Colchester in the mid 1880's. But even in Colchester they moved houses several times, before settling in Pownall Cresent. Along the way Susan and David added a child to their family every couple of years, though not all survived.

Harriet's arrival in Colchester sometime between 1885 and 1888 must have been a time of upheaval and adjustment for the whole family, whether or not Eliza and the other children knew of her existence. For Eliza especially it must have been strange to suddenly have this older sister in her life after she had been the eldest child in the family for so long. Harriet's experiences at the Industrial School and prison made her more street wise than Eliza, but Eliza was likely to be the more mature of the two.

The chances are that the family were living in a standard "two up, two down" house. The presence of three adult women, (Susan, Eliza and Harriet) along with two younger sisters and three young boys in such a small space must inevitably have led to tensions and disagreements, especially as Susan and Harriet seem to have shared a volatile temperament. I've described previously how this erupted on at least one occasion.

Eliza seems to have had a more peace-loving personality, observing what went on and trying to calm the situation. Harriet soon moved out, but Eliza seems to have stayed at home until she married. She was employed as a 'tailoress' when the 1891 census was taken.

Marriage - a different army life

Eliza and Bill in later life

In late 1891 she married William (Bill) Beales, a porter from St Osyth, south east of Colchester. How they met is one of those fascinating questions that will probably never be answered. Perhaps it was through a Salvation Army street meeting. Bill Beales  and his family were dedicated members of the Salvation Army in Colchester.

Like his father, Bill played in the Salvation Army Band, and later became band master. A family member tells me that before Bill moved to Colchester, he used to walk the 12 miles (nearly 20km) along the railway line from St Osyth to Colchester to attend band practice each week. Eliza joined him in the Salvation Army, if not before they married then certainly afterwards.

It would be interesting to know what David and Susan made of their new son-in-law and this strange 'religious' army that he belonged to. Meetings of the Salvation Army, especially those held outdoors, were often interrupted by hecklers and people throwing bottles and other objects. Just the use of the word 'army' must have created some heated discussion in an army garrison town like Colchester.

Susan, still in her early forties, would have had Eliza's sister Ellen as a toddler in tow when the marriage took place. Eliza already had two children of her own (Alice and Rosina) when her youngest sister Ada was born to Susan in September 1895.

Eliza and Bill had seven children between 1893 and 1906. One child, Ernest David (born 1901), died when he was five years old, but the others all lived into adulthood. Initially they lived in Albion Grove, then later moved to Campion Street in Colchester. Eliza was said to be a firm but kind mother.

When the 1911 census was taken the family had a soldier, James Ford, and his Irish-born wife Carrie, living with them as boarders. Apparently they also cared for Eliza's niece, Emily, (daughter of John Whybrew) for a while, though she doesn't appear with them on the census.

In 1914, at the outbreak of the First World War, their eldest son William joined the Essex Yeomanry, then transferred to the Royal Reserve Regiment of Cavalry and then to the Machine Gun Corps. Eliza and Bill must have spent many anxious hours during the war, waiting for news of him. Eliza's brother-in-law George Howard (Ellen's husband) died in France in 1917. Her brother William Whybrew was killed in action only weeks before the end of the war. It must have been a huge relief that William Beales survived, returning home after serving in Afghanistan in 1919.

Salvation army worker writes
a letter home for a wounded US soldier*

The Salvation Army were well known for their ministry to soldiers both on and off the battle field during the war. My father tells me that Eliza and Bill used to invite soldiers who were doing their training in Colchester to afternoon tea on Sunday, particularly those who were a long way from home. That was how their daughter Rosina (my grandmother) met her future husband, Thomas Henry Ward from Lancashire.

Rosina left Colchester and the Salvation Army when she married, but at least two of Bill and Eliza's children remained in the Salvation Army as adults. Alice and Ada married Salvation Army officers and were very active themselves in the Army's work among the poor.

Some time after David Whybrew's death in 1917, Susan moved in with Eliza and Bill, and stayed there until her death from pneumonia in 1921. Presumably Eliza nursed her in her final illness. She and Bill continued to live in Colchester for the rest of their lives. Bill died just after the end of the World War II in  1945. Eliza lived into her 80th year, dying early in 1949. In more ways than one, she had come a long way from her mother's early life in Adelaide.

*Image: Salvation Army worker writing a letter to the home folks for the wounded soldier. Salvation Army. , ca. 1917 - ca. 1918
Still Picture Records LICON, Special Media Archives Services Division (NWCS-S), National Archives at
College Park, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD 20740-6001 

Copied from https://www.flickr.com/photos/ooocha/2576203531

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To read more about Eliza and her family, see my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool. It's available on Amazon and other online books stores. To read a preview of the first chapters, click on the cover image.