The sad finale of Alfred Pearson Bentley

Back in 2015, I told the story of Alfred Pearson Bentley, my maternal great great grandfather. Alfred left his wife Annie (nee Reed) and four young children in Salford, Lancashire in about 1878, and sailed to America. Ostensibly he planned to establish himself in the States before bringing his family to join him. But in 1879, having settled in Boston, he bigamously married another English migrant, Annie Jane Smith. 

The first Annie was left in financial hardship to raise her family alone. Family lore has it that she was led to believe that Alfred had died in America. It's unclear whether or not deliberate deception was involved, but having listed herself as 'married' on the census of 1881, she declared herself a widow on the 1891 census. She died in 1899, apparently still believing that Alfred was dead.

Alfred and the second Annie returned to England some time in the 1880s with their Boston-born son, John Alfred (who shared his name with one of Alfred's other children). They settled in Annie's home county of Cheshire, only 33 miles from Salford, and there Alfred continued his career as an engraver. John, who worked as a clerk in an insurance office after leaving school, remained living with his father after his mother's death in 1914. 

I noted in my previous post that Alfred was baptised into the Church of England in 1890 at the age of 41. He died in September 1922, aged 73. My cousin records on his family tree that his death was said to be due to 'senile debility and cardiac failure'. 

The next record I had of John Alfred appeared in the 1939 England and Wales register, when he was an inmate of the County Mental Hospital in Cheshire. The last sad trace I could find of John was his death in a Cheshire mental hospital in September 1971. He left a considerable estate of over 12,000 pounds, presumably inherited from his parents. As far as I could tell, he remained unmarried and had no descendents. 

A new twist in the story

That was as far as the story went when I wrote about it ten years ago. But recently I've come across newspaper accounts and court records from 1922 that give a dramatic twist to the life of John Alfred and the death of Alfred Pearson Bentley.

On 12 November 1921, John Alfred Bentley, described as a 38 year old insurance clerk, was arrested for 'attempting to procure the commission of an act of gross indencency with males.' (Homosexual activity, even in private between consenting adults, was a criminal offence in England until 1967.) After appearing in the Birkenhead County Court on 24 November 1921, he was committed for trial three months later. His father, named in newspaper reports as Alfred Pearson Bentley, put up bail of 200 pounds. But rather than going home with Alfred, John disappeared.

A bench warrant for John's arrest was issued when he failed to show up in court in Chester both on 28 February and on 1 March 1922. He again failed to appear on either 10 July or 14 July. By now the judges' patience had run out. Bail and surety was 'estreated' i.e. forfeited. 

The Halifax Evening Courier reported on 15 July that the judge called John's elderly father, Alfred Pearson Bentley, to the witness box to explain why his son had not appeared. Alfred said he had made every endeavour to trace his son and to persuade him to turn up at his trial. 

'I am sorry that any act of mine should be done to defeat justice. When I went bail for my son, it was solely with the idea that he would be more comfortable at home than in confinement,' he said. 'He was always a very good son, considerate, generous and helpful; in fact all that a son could possibly be...He deceived me as he evidently had not the courage to come and face his trial... '

The judge asked, 'Did you write the letter I told you to write? I gave you an address in Paris.' 

To which Alfred replied, 'I wrote on Monday.'

'And you have had no reply?' 

'No.'

It's unclear what this address in Paris was about, or whether Alfred's letter had any effect. It doesn't seem to have prompted John to return immediately. According to a report in the Belfast Telegraph of Saturday 9 September, John was eventually arrested at his father's home two months later, on Tuesday 5 September. Alfred is reported to have collapsed at home the same day and died in hospital the following day, Wednesday 6 September 1922.* 

Perhaps the shock of John's arrest had hastened his death. Or possibly John had returned home in response to hearing of his father's imminent demise. Either way, it seems certain that the strain, and disappointment of the recent months had a dreadful and tragic impact on Alfred's health. He literally died of a broken heart.

Today it's difficult to imagine the depth of embarrassment and concern a parent in the 1920s would feel if a son was publicly exposed for homosexual activity. Alfred claimed he put up bail so that his son could await trial in the comfort of home. But it's also likely he wanted to spare John the experience of spending time in prison. Men accused of 'gross indecency' did not fare well in the prison environment.

Then there was the worry that he might forfeit the money he had put up as bail. While he was quite well off, 200 pounds was still a considerable sum in 1922. And unless he was complicit in John's disappearance, he would surely have been concerned about his whereabouts and well-being.

Finally, another great anxiety for Alfred must have been the possibility that someone from his first family might see and recognise his name in the papers. The same story carried in the Halifax Evening Courier appeared in newspapers across the country.  'Alfred Bentley' was a common enough name, but 'Alfred Pearson Bentley' was unique. He faced the possibility that his previous deceptive life might be exposed.

It was a dreadful situation for Alfred. Yet it's difficult not to see the irony of his words in court, 'He deceived me as he evidently had not the courage to come and face his trial'. How might his first wife Annie, had she been alive, have responded to that? The betrayer had surely been betrayed.

An unclaimed fortune?

John, who probably knew nothing of his father's past life, finally came to trial on 24 October 1922, and was found guilty of 'attempting to procure acts of gross indecency'. He was sentenced to twelve months imprisonment. How this 'crime' and his imprisonment related to his mental health issues is one of those things that can be imagined but never be known. It seems he led a very lonely life. 

Nearly three years after John's death in 1971, Bell and Joynson, a company of solicitors, advertised in The People magazine of 12 May 1974 for relatives of John Alfred Bentley, 'no matter how distant', to contact them, as they 'may hear something to their advantage'. By 1974 all of Alfred's other children were long deceased. I wonder if anyone ever enjoyed the benefits of Alfred Pearson Bentley's fortune?

*According to the probate record, Alfred died on 9 September. But if the newspaper was already aware of his death on that date, it seems more likely that 6 September is correct.

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

Colchester, Essex

In this series of posts on places where my ancestors once lived, we now travel across many counties, from Lancashire in the north-west of England to Colchester, in the south-east.

Colchester is one of the oldest towns in Britain. It has had a military presence since the Twentieth Victorious Valeria Legion established a garrison there in 43 AD, during the Roman conquest of Britain under Emperor Claudius. For a while it was the capital of Roman-occupied England, despite the best efforts of Queen Boudica to see them off. Over the centuries other armies followed in making Colchester their base. One end of the main street is still dominated by the great Norman keep, and the later castle, built on the mound of a Roman temple.

By the end of the 18th century, several barracks had been built in Colchester to house troops and cavalry regiments coming and going from wars on the continent. Wounded men were also brought to the military hospital in Colchester to recover. The townspeople were used to seeing the population of infantry and officers in the barracks swell in times of war, followed by an emptying out in peace time.

But they had probably never experienced anything like the influx of soldiers that occurred with the outbreak of World War 1. Volunteers flooded in. Two hundred men arrived in Colchester each day, to be trained as part of "Kitchener's Army" before being sent to the battlefields of Europe and the Middle East. At times there were as many soldiers in the town as local residents. The barracks couldn't house them all, so they were put in huts and tents, or even billeted with families.

Thomas Henry Ward goes to Colchester

Thomas Henry Ward
(Photo courtesy of M. Lucas)

As the war dragged on, the number of volunteers dwindled and in 1916 conscription was introduced. It's not clear whether my grandfather, Thomas Henry Ward, joined up as a volunteer in 1914 or found himself conscripted later on. But whatever the case, he would have been in his early thirties when he travelled by train to Colchester, to join the Army Ordnance Corp.

He would no doubt have found the flat Essex countryside, with its broad fields of wheat and other crops, quite unfamiliar after living in the hilly moorlands of eastern Lancashire all his life, among the mills and factories. Colchester itself was a pleasant, prosperous-looking town, with hardly a mill or a smoke stack in sight.

Before the war, engineering works such as Paxman's, which made steam engines and boilers, were among the main employers in Colchester. They turned to making armaments during the war. The presence of the army also helped keep a brewery and bottling works in business. But Thomas, by all accounts, was not a great drinker. A rather quiet, perhaps even shy man, he was also older than many of the recruits around him.

The Beales family in Colchester

One Sunday afternoon (according to my father) Thomas was invited to have tea with a local family. The Beales were members of the Salvation Army, which had a strong presence in Colchester from the late 1880s, although it was not always well received. The family made it their ministry to look out for lonely-looking soldiers who were far from home

William and Eliza Beales had lived in Colchester all their adult lives. Except for Eliza's mother, Susan, who was from Australia, all their forebears came from villages around Colchester. Eliza's parents, David and Susan Whybrew, came to live near the Beales in Colchester after David retired from active service in the army.

Rosina Beales

The Beales' daughter Rosina, still in her late teens, may well have been dressed in her Salvation Army uniform when Thomas Henry, in his army uniform, met her for the first time over Sunday afternoon tea. Or perhaps not - family lore says nothing about what they were wearing. They would have had little time to get to know each other before Thomas went off with his battalion to serve overseas, but they evidently managed to keep their friendship going during the war.

In 1921, after Thomas was discharged from the army, they married at St Botolph's Anglican church in Colchester. It was then Rosina's turn to find herself in a strange environment when she and Thomas went back to his home village of Milnrow in Lancashire. She was leaving behind her Salvation Army roots as well as her childhood home in Essex.

Thomas Henry died several years before I was born, but my grandmother Rosina still lived in Milnrow when I was growing up. As a child I knew that she was born "down south" somewhere, and used to belong to the Salvation Army, but she seemed a natural part of what I called "home". It wasn't until I began researching my family's history that it occurred to me that Grandma Rosina must have undergone quite a cultural change when she married. How long did it take her to adjust? How did it affect her? Unfortunately I never had chance to ask her such questions.

Rosina's parents, William and Eliza Beales, continued living in Colchester for the rest of their lives, surrounded by children, grandchildren, and members of their wider family. Their role as officers in the Salvation Army and members of the Salvation Army band shaped their daily lives as much as their location.

In the next few posts I'll look at some of the Essex villages where the Beales and Whybrew families came from.

This series of 13 slides by Xav Marseilles shows what Colchester looked like 100 years ago, overlaid with more recent images. It appeared in the Daily Mail, 2 January 2017. (Click on the photo or the link above to see all the slides).







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, available on Amazon and other online books stores

Littleborough in Lancashire

The so-called Roman Road on Blackstone Edge near Littleborough.
Photo by Humphrey Bolton

Let's follow John and Mary Ward, as they leave Walton le Dale in the 1870s and move to Littleborough, close to the Lancashire border with West Yorkshire. How different they must have found this village in the hilly, sheep-grazing moorlands of the Pennines, to the flat farmland and market gardens around Walton le Dale, where they had both spent most of their lives.

Like Walton le Dale, Littleborough had been a quiet village until the 19th century. It was on a trade route that crossed the Pennines into Yorkshire, with the remains of an ancient road (once thought to be from Roman times) still visible in places on the moorland of Blackstone Edge. The main industry in the 18th century was woollen milling and weaving. Wool "pieces", woven on handlooms in people's homes in Littleborough and the nearby hamlets of Calderbrook, Smithybridge, and Summit, would be carried over the hills to the Piece Hall in Halifax, in Yorkshire, for sale.

Map of Littleborough and surrounds
from Vision of Britain 

Littleborough remained an important link in several trade routes as the industrial revolution got underway. In the early 1800s,  the Rochdale Canal, linking Sowerby Bridge in Yorkshire with Manchester in Lancashire, was completed. Littleborough became the site of one of the locks along the canal. A large reservoir, Hollingworth Lake, was constructed nearby to feed water into the canal, and this became something of a tourist attraction over time.

Hollingworth Lake
Own photo

In 1839 the first section of the new Manchester to Leeds railway was built as far as Littleborough. It was extended to Leeds by 1841. Soon the home-based woollen weavers were replaced by steam-powered mills and factories. By the late 1870s, when my great grandparents John and Mary Ann Ward moved to Littleborough, there were numerous cotton and woollen mills in the area, along with associated industries such as bleaching and dyeing, and the population was growing. By 1879 there were nine schools, many of them denominational, with over 1000 students between them.

I still have no clear idea why John and Mary Ann decided to move their family from Walton le Dale sometime between the birth of their fifth child, Edward, in 1874 and their sixth, Mary Ann, in 1877. Was it something to do with the depression in the cotton industry around Preston in the mid 1870's, the result of disputes between the employers and the operatives? Perhaps Littleborough was faring better economically.

Or could they have been trying to remove their family from the smallpox epidemic which struck Preston and surrounding areas in 1876? When she was three years old, Mary Ann had lost two older brothers in the same week, during what was probably an epidemic. She may have been keen to move her young family to a healthier place. Sadly, if that was their reason for moving, it was in vain. Their infant daughter Mary Ann and their seven-year-old son Richard died within days of each other in April 1879, probably from some type of infectious illness. They were buried in the graveyard near the church of St James, Calderbrook, just north of Littleborough.

This was close to where John and Mary Ann and their family were living. In the 1879 MacDonald's Directory, John was listed as a clogger, living in Caldermoor.  The 1881 census records their address as Crabtree Street (no longer in existence). John was just one of at least fifteen cloggers and bootmakers listed in the MacDonalds Directory who were living in the Littleborough area at the time.

Moving on again

John and Mary Ann had three further children born to them in Littleborough, after the deaths of Richard and baby Mary Ann - Fanny (1879), Thomas Henry (my grandfather, in 1882) and Henrietta in 1886. But Littleborough wouldn't remain their home for decades, as Walton le Dale had been for previous generations of the Wards. Sometime after Henrietta's birth they moved to Rastrick in Yorkshire, where they stayed only a short time, then settled in Milnrow, on the other side of Hollingworth Lake.

Again, there's nothing to indicate why they moved. John's widowed brother, Richard, married Elizabeth Clarkson, one of John and Mary's neighbours from Crabtree Street, in 1886. John was one of the witnesses at the wedding, so it seems unlikely this caused any sort of family conflict. Perhaps there simply wasn't enough work in Littleborough for so many cloggers. John and Mary's eldest son, John Willy, had most likely become a clogger and bootmaker by this time, since that was his profession in 1891.

Old mill by the Rochdale Canal, Littleborough
Photo by Tim Green from Bradford

By a series of co-incidences, my husband and I lived just outside Littleborough for a while in the 1980s, By then, the mills were no longer operating and many stood derelict, but it was still a thriving small town. We had no idea then that my father's family had ever lived there, although I was aware of their association with Milnrow.

As I've described before, one of our daughters was baptised in the same church as her great grandfather, Thomas Henry, even though we didn't realise it at the time. Hollingworth Lake was one of our favourite spots for Sunday afternoon walks, and the tow-path along the canal was the easiest and most pleasant way to push a pram to the shops.

Walton le Dale

The sun was shining, but the air had a bitterly cold bite to it, when we left the station in Preston, Lancashire, and made our way south in December last year. We were planning to walk to Walton le Dale via the London Road (the A6), over the stone arched bridge which is famous as the site where Oliver Cromwell fought a battle with the Royalists in 1648.

Instead we came to a footbridge, which took us across the broad Ribble river and along a footpath to Walton Green. This pretty lane is the site of one of the oldest houses in Walton le Dale, The Cottage, built in 1675.

We had come to see the village where at least four generations of my father's family, the Wards, lived between 1785 and 1875. The name Walton is said to come from wahl tun, meaning a settlement or farmstead of the Britons. There's another Walton (Walton-on-the Hill) near Liverpool.

Map from Google Maps

The first thing that surprised me was how flat the farmland was along the river. I grew up in Lancashire, but in the hilly country closer to the Pennines. The whole plain looked as though it could easily flood. And in fact there have been many times when the area has flooded, most notably in 1866.

Walton le Dale village itself is built on a rise between the Ribble (which makes almost a right angle bend near the bridge) and the Darwen river which flows into it. Its position, on what is effectively a peninsula, makes it an easy spot to defend. The Romans once built a fort here.

The Ward family arrive

Although at least two Ward families were already resident in Walton le Dale in the early 1700s, the first of my own line seems to have been Cuthbert Ward and his wife Ellen (nee Catterall) who arrived in the mid 1780s, with their children Thomas, Ellen and Sarah. They came from Kirkham, a small town in the Fylde district to the east of Preston. After settling in Walton le Dale, Cuthbert and Ellen had another five children (Betty, Nancy, Robert, Margaret and Cuthbert).

It's not clear what prompted Cuthbert, a carpenter, to uproot his family, although it probably had something to do with finding work. As far as I can discover, there were no major building projects going on in Walton le Dale itself at this time. The industrial revolution was already underway by the 1780s, and a calico printing factory operated in Walton le Dale, run by Livesy and Hargreaves. It went bankrupt in 1788. But the first cotton mill in Walton le Dale, Moons' Mill, didn't  begin operations until 1793. Perhaps Cuthbert found work building houses for the people migrating to Preston from the surrounding villages.

By the 1790s, there would have been plenty of work for a carpenter.  New cotton milling machinery was being installed at Moons Mill and the old water-powered corn mill at Higher Walton. By the early 1800s a cotton mill was being built on Calvert's Flats near the Ribble river. In the early years, cotton was spun in the mills, but often was still passed on to handloom weavers who produced woven cloth in their homes.

Work also began in 1795 to replace the nave, or main body, of the Parish Church of St Leonard. The church, in a prominent position on the tree-covered hillside, was established in the 12th century. Parts of the building date back to the 16th century, including, I understand, the tower. The circular font is also said to be many centuries old. I haven't found out whether the church was still used for Sunday services, weddings and baptisms while it was being rebuilt.

The font, mentioned in
British History Online's
account of Walton le Dale

Until the 19th century both Protestants and Catholics were interred in the graveyard which tumbles down the hillside around the church. Records show that many of the Ward family were buried there, though unfortunately, when we visited, we had no way of knowing where. In any case, the family may not have been able to afford to mark the graves with gravestones.

Cuthbert Ward died in 1799. His son Thomas, who was also a carpenter, married Frances Dickinson from nearby Chorley in 1802. By 1813, when Thomas died at the early age of thirty four, there were four mills and an iron foundry, and the population of Walton le Dale was beginning to boom. It had increased to 5,740 by 1821, with nearly 2000 new inhabitants added between 1809 and 1829.* By the 1840's a large proportion of the population in Walton le Dale was employed in the cotton industry.

The 1840s and 1850s

Thomas Ward's widow Frances, and three of their four children eventually left Walton Le Dale. The eldest son John, another carpenter, moved to Liverpool, while the rest moved to Manchester. Only the youngest son, Richard, remained in Walton le Dale.

The 1841 census shows that he was one of at least ten shoemakers, bootmakers, cloggers and 'cordwainers'  living in the village itself, and there were others in the surrounding area. People working in factories needed hard-wearing shoes, and they needed someone to repair them when the soles wore out. Their leather work-clogs, boots and shoes were all locally made.

Walton le Dale was not often in the news, but in 1847 two tragic murders occurred within weeks of each other, both of which were reported in the national and colonial newspapers.

In February, the married daughter of a local businessman and retired cotton mill owner, James Livesey, poisoned her five children, before drowning herself in the river Ribble. Fortunately, with medical treatment, four of the children survived but the fifth, Fanny, died.

Late in May, the body of a young baby was found in a stream near Walton le Dale by two boys. People remembered seeing an Irish woman with a baby pass through the village a few days earlier, and then the same woman travelling the other way, without the child. This was during the time of the Great Famine in Ireland, which resulted in a rapid influx of destitute Irish people into Lancashire.

But even the local people had their struggles. While conditions for the working class were usually not as dire in places like Walton le Dale as they were in larger centres such as Manchester, they were by no means easy during the 1840s. An economic depression in the early 1840s, which resulted in workers' wages being cut, bolstered demands by the working class for better conditions and the right to vote.

In August 1842, workers in Preston, just across the river from Walton le Dale, went on strike, in what is known as the Plug Plot riots. Three men were killed and several others injured when troops opened fire on a crowd who were moving from factory to factory, urging workers to strike. No doubt both the workers and the mill owners in Walton le Dale were keenly interested in these events.

It would be a long time before the workers finally did get to vote. In 1859 Walton le Dale was listed as one of many places in Lancashire with a population of over 5,000 that had no representation in Parliament.

In the 1850's, it seems, Richard Ward was no longer able to support his family as a shoemaker. At the time of the 1851 census he was working instead as a gardener. His wife Mary died in 1852, leaving him with six children. The two older boys were both employed as apprentices, while Ann, the eldest daughter, was working in one of the cotton mills.

The 1860s

As in the previous generation, most of the Ward family children moved away from Walton le Dale as adults. In early 1861, only Ann (who was married) and the youngest son, John, were still living there. Richard Ward, the father, had returned to shoemaking, and John was working as a clogger's apprentice. They were living in Mansleys Row, an address that no longer exists, but presumably was one of several "rows" of houses built to house the influx of people during the previous decades.

Lancashire suffered another great economic depression in the early 1860s, as a result of the so-called cotton famine. Overproduction of cotton fabrics, coupled with stockpiles of raw materials in the late 1850s, led to a drastic fall in prices. This was followed by a shortage of raw cotton when British shipping was blockaded during the American civil war. Many mills ceased production and there was mass unemployment. People from as far away as South Australia contributed to a relief fund, from which Walton le Dale received £100 (pounds) in December 1862.

Industry picked up again after 1865. In 1869, Walton le Dale was mentioned during a Parliamentary commission into river pollution. The river Ribble was said to be badly polluted as it flowed past the village, resulting in a dreadful stink, and dead fish. Despite this, Dr Ashton, who said he had lived and practised in Walton le Dale for twenty years, thought it was a healthy place. The death rate was 22 per 1000.  (The death rate in the UK in 2017 was 9.4 per 1000.)

He was asked about an outbreak of fever among workers at Calvert's Mill the previous year. He denied that it was due to typhoid, saying that, in his opinion, it was caused by overheating and sunstroke. He also denied that water from many of the privies (toilets) in the village drained into the wells from which people drew drinking water, or that polluted river water could reach the wells. He did disclose that many houses shared a privy. (My impression reading this account is that Dr Ashton was keen to protect the reputation of the owners of Calvert's Mill.)

But life in the village was not always dull or dangerous. Many of the mill owners organised annual outings to the seaside by train for their workers^. Events such as the Floral and Horticultural Show, and the St Leonard's Church School field day provided innocent but enjoyable entertainment.

The White Bull, Walton-le-Dale.
Photo by Alexander P Kapp 

For those whose tastes ran to something less refined, there were numerous drinking places - the Unicorn, the Queen's Arms, the Black Horse, Sir Robert Peel, the Black Bull, Grey Horse, Gardener's Arms, Yew Tree, Bridge Inn, White Bull, Ring O'Bells, the Beef tub (or Beefsteak) and the Red Lion. (Many of these no longer exist.) Perhaps it was no co-incidence that Walton le Dale also produced one of the stalwart campaigners of the Temperance movement, Joseph Livesey, and even a Temperance poet, Henry Anderton.

In 1864 Richard Ward's son John (my great grandfather) married the girl next door, Mary Ann Cragg. Their first five children were born in Walton le Dale and baptised at St Leonards. At the 1871 census, John was a clogger and Mary Ann worked in one of the cotton mills. And then, about 1875, they moved to Whitelees, between Littleborough and Calderbrook, near the Lancashire-Yorkshire border.

Why they moved is still a mystery. John's father, Richard, had remarried in 1861, and he and his second wife, Betsy, had a son, Robert, in 1866. Richard continued to live in Walton le Dale until his death in 1881. Was there not enough work for John in Walton le Dale? Did some family dispute lead to the move? Perhaps we'll never know.

I said when I began my series on "Places" that I wanted to see how the places where people lived influenced their lives, and vice versa. Visiting Walton le Dale, and reading more about it, made me realise how much the river played a part in the life of the villagers, both as a source of life and death, and as a barrier between Walton le Dale and the much larger Preston. Even now, I'm told, it is not a good idea to suggest to a local that Walton le Dale is a suburb of Preston!

Despite the industrialisation that happened in the 19th century, the place has maintained the feel of being a village. As such, it apparently didn't offer enough opportunities for everyone in the Ward family to stay, but it provided stability for the four generations of the Ward family who did remain there.

The Wards left no obvious mark on Walton le Dale or its history, as is to be expected of a working-class family. But as carpenters and cloggers, mill workers and parents, they no doubt contributed to the smooth running of village life.


*According to Pigot and Co.'s National Commercial Directory for 1828-9, p 436. This seems to have included the population in nearby Bamber Bridge.
^"LOCAL INTELLIGENCE." Preston Guardian etc [Preston, England] 4 Sept. 1861: n.p. British Library Newspapers.

All images are taken by me, (and are copyright), unless otherwise labelled.

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.

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.

Richard Ward - born twice?

Church door, St Leonard's
Walton le Dale

One of the most long-standing mysteries in my family history research is the date of birth of Richard Ward, my paternal great great grandfather. I know from several sources that he was the son of Thomas and Frances Ward, and that he was born in Walton le Dale, in Lancashire.

The problem with determining his date of birth is that two baptism records exist for Richard Ward in the Walton le Dale registers. Both say Richard's parents were Thomas and Frances (or Fanny) Ward. But one says he was born in 1809, and the other gives a date of 1813.

The most obvious solution would be that Thomas and Fanny had a son named Richard in 1809, who died in infancy. They then used the same name when they baptised another son in 1813. That was a common practice at the time. But I can't find any record of a burial for a child name Richard Ward between 1809 and 1813.

Besides that, most of the census records for Richard suggest that he was born in 1809 or 1810. Only in the 1851 census does his recorded age suggest a later date. At his death in December 1881 he was said to be 72 years old, which again gives a date of birth around 1809.

Images of the originals of the two baptism records are available online on the Ancestry website, so it's not a case of a transcription error causing confusion. The first record comes from the Parish Registers of Walton le Dale from 1698 to 1812. Among the christenings for 1809 is this one:
"Richard, son of Thomas and Frances Ward. Born Aug 17, baptised Oct 1." 
The names and dates are quite clear.

The same details appear in the Bishop's Transcripts, the local bishop's copy of the records for all the parishes in his diocese.

The second baptism record is from the Parish register of the Parochial Chapel of Walton le Dale, 1813-1887. Again the record is quite clear and unambiguous.
"Richard, son of Thomas and Fanny Ward" . His date of birth is recorded as 27 April, and his baptism 20 June 1813.

Another Thomas and Fanny

One possible explanation of the two baptism records is that the Richard born in 1813 belonged to another couple named Thomas and Fanny, and the minister at the time, E.S. Radcliffe, has recorded the wrong surname for some reason.

Only one other child-bearing couple named Thomas and Fanny lived in Walton le Dale at this time. Thomas Marsden married Fanny Bushby (or possibly Buskey) in 1805. They had three children baptised in Walton le Dale - Elizabeth in July 1808, John in April 1810 and Sarah in September 1811. Sadly all three, plus an older child named Mary, died in infancy and were buried in Walton le Dale.

The graveyard at St Leonard's Parish Church
Walton le Dale.

Their mother, Fanny Marsden, died in 1813 at the age of 30, and was buried on 25 April*. Is it too far fetched to suggest that she might have died giving birth to the Richard who was said to have been born on 27 April 1813? Obviously there is an awkward discrepancy of a couple of days between her burial and his reported date of birth. But given that the child wasn't baptised until two months later, perhaps the date of birth could be in error by a few days. It's easy to imagine a grieving husband mixing up the dates.

To give this theory a bit more weight, a Richard Marsden, born about 1812 in Walton le Dale, appears in the 1851 and 1861 census in Leyland, Lancashire. In the 1841 census his place of birth isn't recorded, but he was living in Leyland with a Thomas Marsden, with no other relatives listed. That would be consistent with Thomas being widowed and Richard being the only surviving child.

Since he was born in Walton le Dale, we might expect that Richard would have been baptised there, but I can't find any record of a baptism for a Richard Marsden in the Walton le Dale registers within 10 years of 1812. Could that be because his baptism in 1813 was recorded as Richard Ward?

Against this theory is the fact that the 1813 baptism record describes Thomas Ward's occupation as "joiner" (ie a carpenter). This was, in fact, his occupation according to other records. Thomas Marsden's occupation was a "cotton operative" when his wife was buried, and an agricultural labourer in 1841. For my theory to hold water, I'd have to explain why the minister not only wrote "Ward" instead of "Marsden", but also inscribed the occupation of Thomas Ward rather than Thomas Marsden. Any suggestions?

In the meantime, I'm leaning towards the earlier date of birth being the correct one for Richard Ward, though I'll keep the other one recorded as an alternative.


(*Burials, Parish register for 1813-1819, p 8, entry 58. Reference Number: Pr 2948/1/17)

The story of two John Alfreds, part 1

Nine Elms British Cemetery, Belgium

As I've mentioned before, my great great grandfather Alfred Pearson Bentley (b 1849) had two sons named John Alfred, one born to his wife Annie Reed in Salford in 1873 and the other born, through a bigamous marriage to Annie Jane Smith, in Boston in 1884. Despite sharing the same name and the same father, the two John Alfreds led rather different lives. In this post I'll tell the story of the older of the two half-brothers.

The first John was only four or five years old when his father left for America. He and his four siblings grew up in Salford, surviving on what their mother could earn from taking in laundry and renting out a room. When he was old enough to leave school he found work as a bricklayer's labourer and added his earnings to the family income.

In March 1897 John married Elizabeth Ann Brown, a girl from Stalybridge, a few miles east of Manchester. They were married in the Registry office in Salford. Their first child, Thomas, was born in August that same year while they were living at 20 Arthur St in Seedley, Manchester. 

St Ambrose Church, Salford,
where most of John and Elizabeth's children
were baptised.

Two years later, in August 1899, a daughter, Annie, arrived. By this time the family had moved to 49 Mayor St in Pendleton, and they remained at this address for several years, adding John Alfred (1902) Ernest (1905) and Elizabeth (1908) to their family. Two of the children, John Alfred and Elizabeth, died in infancy.

When the census was taken in  1911 John and Elizabeth had moved with their family to 11 Hodgson St. It was a four roomed house, but besides their family they had two single men from Stalybridge, both labourers, and apparently brothers, boarding with them. John was working as a contractors labourer.

John and Elizabeth's eldest son Thomas was 17 years old when the war began in August 1914. Like many young men, he enlisted as soon as he could, joining the 2/7th battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers. He was given regimental number  281894, and after a long period of training was sent to Le Havre in France early in 1917.

This must have caused his parents some concern, but worse was to come. On 12 March 1917 John Bentley received a letter from the Borough Engineers Office in Salford. It didn't even address him by name, but read:

Dear Sir,  

Road Service in France 

I enclose a form from the War Department which you are requested to present to the recruiting officer at the Town Hall, Broad St, Pendleton on an early day between the hours of 9.00 am and 5.30 pm on Saturday between 9.30 am and 2.00 pm. 

Yours truly 

Ernest B Martin.

At the age of 43 John Alfred was being conscripted to build roads across other men's fields in France. Conscription had been introduced in 1916 and anyone under the age of 51 who was not a widow with children or a Minister of Religion could be called up. In reality, many of those called were rejected as unfit, or claimed exemption on the grounds that they were doing work of national importance or their absence would cause domestic hardship. However, like Thomas Henry Ward, John Bentley received no exemption.

He was enlisted on March 16 in the Royal Engineers, 338 RC (Road Construction) company as a "pioneer", regimental number 25500. He was later transferred to the 303 RC company. The army doctor who examined him noted two tattoos, one on his right arm saying "E A Brown", and the other a pair of butterflies on his left. After spending time at Salamanca Barracks in Aldershot, John was sent to France. 

With both her husband and a son on the front line, and a ten year old child, Ernest, to care for alone at home, Elizabeth must have been beside herself with worry. Her fears were not unfounded.

Street corner, Poelcappelle, Belgium 1918

Twenty year old Thomas was injured, probably at the Battle of Poelcappelle in Flanders on 9 October, and died of his wounds on 12 October 1917. He was buried at the Nine Elms British Cemetery in West Vlaanderen, Belgium. The cross on his grave bears only his name and regimental details. 

In his brief will, written on 8 April 1917 on a standard issue form provided by the army, he left all his possessions to his mother "Mrs E. Bentley of 5 Swan St, Pendleton." He apparently was aware of his father's enlistment.

John Alfred was admitted to hospital on 12 April 1918, for reasons unknown. He was discharged on  the 19 April. He arrived "TTBD" on 26 April and was released from "TTBD" on 6 May 1918. (The most likely explanation I can find of this abbreviation is "Temporary Transfer Base Depot" but if you can improve on that, let me know.) He was officially demobbed in 1919 while on home leave.

He returned home to Elizabeth on 26 December 1918. They were still living at 5 Swan St when their daughter Annie married the following year. When he died at the age of 59, in March 1933, he left an estate of £278 4s to his widow Elizabeth.

My next post will cover what I know of the younger John Alfred.