An interesting snippet of news about John and Catherine Mason

DESTITUTE BOARD. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 17.

Adelaide Observer, 22 November, 1856, p. 3

This snippet of news from the Adelaide Observer may be only 16 words long, but it's actually quite informative. It's taken from the Observer's report of the meeting of the South Australian Destitute Board on Monday November 17, 1856, so we're looking at a date about two months before John Mason's death on January 22, 1857, at the age of 42. 

First of all, its mention of "12 years in the colony" confirms that the Mason family arrived in South Australia about 1844. That ties in with their assumed arrival in Adelaide from Sydney on the Dorset in January 1845. It also confirms that they had 8 children.

What is new is the information that John Mason was bedridden for nearly a year before his death. What would cause a man in his early forties to be incapacitated for such a long time before his eventual death? Did he have an accident, or a work-related injury? He worked as a labourer, which in those days meant a lot of heavy work with little safety equipment, so it's quite possible, though I haven't found any reported accidents in the newspapers. His death certificate says he died of heart disease, so some sort of heart condition or a stroke is another possibility. 

Whatever the case, poor Catherine must have been in a desperate state. It seems unlikely that the family could afford any sort of medical care. With eight children to look after, and a husband not only unable to work but also in need of care, it's not surprising that she was applying to the Destitute Board. 

Previously I'd only come across reports of her appearance before the Board some months after John's death. Whether or not the 'enquiries' of the Relieving Officer resulted in some relief before his death isn't clear. At it's peak in 1855, the SA Destitute Board was providing relief to over 3,000 men, women and children. This was a time when lots of women found themselves abandoned by their husbands who had gone off to the goldfields. Perhaps out of necessity, the Board was not known for its liberality, and many cases were refused. 

By the time the Board discussed her case again in June 1857, the three oldest girls (aged 14, 13 and 11) were working and receiving board, but the widowed Catherine still had five daughters at home to feed. On that occasion Catherine was granted two rations.

The invading hordes R' Us

The sudden, overwhelming influx of refugees into Europe recently is causing much heated discussion, not just in Europe but around the world. Images of desperate crowds surging around the port at Calais, or arriving by the boatload in Italy are on our screens daily. Talk of Europe being invaded or over-run by these 'illegals' is common.

Such waves of migration by desperate people is nothing new though. Most people in the world today have ancestors somewhere along the way who were once migrants fleeing from war, famine, poverty or disease. Not all were welcomed by their new countries.

Although I am Australian, I was born in England. My parents were born in England and so were my four grandparents. I’ve always thought of myself as thoroughly English. But go back another generation or two and families of Irish migrants start to appear in the mix.

These were not well-educated Irish people who migrated to England in an orderly way, like the family of C S Lewis in a later era. Nor were they the transient labourers who had always gone back and forth between Ireland and England. My Irish ancestors were most likely part of the mass migration of hungry, unemployed Irish into England in the early 19th century.

They were not illegal immigrants, and didn't require passports, but neither were they well received. (The fact that they didn't require passports and no record was kept of their arrival makes them difficult to trace, which is frustrating from a genealogical point of view.)

Many, though not all, lived in tenements, dozens of them together, in what had once been elegant family homes on the inner edge of cities such as Liverpool and Manchester. Angel Meadow in particular had a high concentration of Irish migrants.

Without any kind of welfare payments or social services, they managed to make a life for themselves. Most eventually found work in the building and construction industry, textile mills and other industries, or made a living as hawkers, publicans or lodging house owners.

These Irish migrants were not popular, except among those seeking cheap labour. They were perceived as dirty, ignorant and a cause of disease, violence and crime. This negative image was encouraged by commentators in the popular press and academic reports.

Another Irish strand in my family found its way to England via Australia. An Irish ex-convict named John Mason married a girl who had come to Australia to escape dire poverty in Ireland. They settled in South Australia. Eventually one of their daughters returned to England with her English soldier husband. It seems from newspaper reports at the time that poor Irish immigrants to Australia aroused just as much disapproval and public discussion as those who went to England.

Meanwhile no-one bothered to ask the original local inhabitants, the Aboriginal people, what they thought of any of these unwanted hordes of people who had invaded their land. What went through the minds of those standing on the shores of what is now Botany Bay when eleven ships disgorged over two hundred ragged, malodorous convicts, their soldier guards and the goods they’d brought with them? How did they react when wave after wave of ships appeared, carrying thousands of miserable men and women to their country?

The point is, of course, that while the arrival of boatloads of people seeking refuge and a better life always causes consternation and concern among the people already living in a place, history shows that generally they eventually blend into the population and become part of the heritage. That is, unless the local population go to extreme measures to keep them segregated, or the newcomers far outnumber the locals.

The mass Irish migration to England happened in the relatively recent past. But in more distant times England has seen Danes, Saxons, Normans, French Hugenots and other uninvited migrants absorbed into what was once a purely Celtic population. Some arrivals caused terror, others merely irritation at their ‘foreign’ ways. Their descendants all call themselves English now.

How Mary met William - Mary Lander (1831-1879)

Map showing location of Dorset

It's strange, and sometimes slightly spooky, to discover that you've visited many of the places where your ancestors once lived, without realising it at the time. I've mentioned elsewhere that one of our daughters was baptised in the same church as her paternal great grandfather, though we didn't know that until recently. Now I've discovered that many generations of my mother's family lived in a little village called Langton Matravers, near Corfe Castle in Dorset, which we visted with our children in 1991. Back then I had no idea that this was part of our heritage.

It's hardly surprising that I didn't associate this area with our family history. Langton Matravers, on the Dorset coast near Swanage, is about as far removed from Manchester and Salford as you could imagine, both geographically and socially. But it was here that Mary Lander, the future wife of William Hough (and my maternal great great grandmother) was born.

Coastal walk not far from Langton Matravers

At the time of her birth in about 1831-32 the village was home to only a few hundred people, most of whom, it seems, were related to each other in some way. The local area was famous for its stone quarries and infamous for its smuggling activities. Legend has it that in 1876 the ceiling space of the parish church of St George in Langton Matravers was so laden with contraband goods that the walls began to sag and it had to be demolished and rebuilt.

Mary's father John Lander (1795-1871) was a stonemason, like many of the men in Langton Matravers. Her mother, Elizabeth Cross (1797-1866) was the only daughter of another stonemason, Thomas Cross and his wife Ann (known as Nancy, nee Savage).

Mary was the sixth child born to John and Elizabeth, so far as I can tell, and was baptised at St George's church. One of her older brothers, George (born 1826) seems to have died in infancy but her other brothers John Cross Lander, (1820) Robert (1828) and Joseph (1829) along with her sister Ann (1824) all survived.

Sometime between Mary's birth and the birth of her younger brother James the whole family, including Elizabeth's parents Thomas and Nancy moved to Salford. James was baptised in Christ Church, Salford in 1836. Unfortunately he doesn't seem to have survived infancy, and neither he nor George appear on the 1841 census.

Blackfriars wooden bridge,  Manchester
c 1831-1834 by Agostino Aglio
The bridge connected Manchester to Salford 

Mary's grandmother Nancy died in Salford in 1840 at the age of 72. When she was buried at the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Irwell St, her address was recorded as Muslin Street.

The family were still living in Muslin Street, off Hope Lane, at the time of the 1841 census. Mary's grandfather, Thomas Cross, lived with them or next door to them (it's not clear on the census).

What made them decide to make such a life-changing move? Economics is the most likely answer. While Dorset today might seem an ideal place for a quiet holiday, in the 1830's life was hard for most people. In the early 1830's riots broke out across southern England in protest against the use of mechanised farm machinery, which was putting labourers out of a job. While the Lander family were probably not directly affected, they would no doubt have suffered from the general stress and economic hardship.

Manchester Free Trade Hall (now a hotel)
built in 1853-56
Photo by David Dixon, used under a CC license

Meanwhile Manchester and Salford were growing rapidly. Alongside the many brick-built buildings that kept the Hough family occupied, large public buildings with impressive stone facades were being erected all over the city. Stonemasons would have been in great demand. John Lander and Thomas Cross were certainly not the only stonemasons from Dorset who moved to Lancashire.

It's not difficult to imagine how Mary might have met William Hough. Brickmakers and stonemasons must surely have worked alongside each other and got to know each other's families. They were married in Manchester cathedral on Christmas Eve, 1849. According to the marriage record, she was 19 and he was 18 years old. This must have been a rough estimate, since she claimed to be 18 years old at the time of the 1851 census. They remained in Salford for the rest of their lives.