Ever since genealogist and historian Janet Few’s book Tracing Your Marginalised Ancestors: a guide for family historians, was published earlier this year, I’ve been looking forward to having the time to read it. I finally got around to it this week.
Our ancestors may have been marginalised for several reasons. Janet deals with the possibilities across eleven chapters: Poverty; Criminality; Immigration and Ethnicity; Prostitution; Illegitimacy; The Inebriate; Sickness and Disability; Mental Ill-Health; The Romany and Traveller Community, Witchcraft; and Other Marginalised Groups. Almost all of us are sure to have ancestors that fall into at least some of those groups.
The Introduction sets the tone of the book. This is not about sensationalising the antics of our ancestors; it’s about understanding what might have been going on in their lives or in the wider society to bring about the situation they found themselves in. For many of the issues, attitudes have changed considerably over the decades/centuries. Indeed, even the language used in relation to groups of people has changed, so that for some of these marginalised groups our own discomfort may be more about the words used and the treatment of individuals than about their lifestyle, condition or behaviours that were so unacceptable in past times. We have all seen, for example, the columns in the earlier censuses for the enumerator to tick if an individual was an ‘Imbecile, Idiot or Lunatic’ – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Janet deals with this very thoughtfully, to the extent that her text was read and edited for ‘sensitivity’ by an expert prior to publication.
This need for sensitivity extends to us too, and to what we do with the information when we’ve discovered it. Older generations may be uncomfortable, embarassed or ashamed when learning of certain ancestral behaviours, and all the more so if they knew the people involved. In the case of my own parents, I realised long ago that, if they were still living, some of the discoveries I’ve made about their ancestors would be off limits for them.
Each chapter/ topic commences with an overview of the issues including the attitudes of the day. Poor people, for example, were blamed for their own poverty and considered lazy. Prostitution was considered a necessary evil, but the women were punished while their male clients were not. Even ill health – which of course led to poverty – was not excusable, since it was considered to be a result of an imbalance of the four humors, and since keeping these in balance was the responsibility of the individual: a belief that was sanctioned by the Church. All of this is important, since we need to understand that the world our ancestors inhabited was often very different to the one we know. We cannot judge them or their society from our standpoint, and the more we learn about their times, the more we will understand their lives.
Following from the above, there is then an overview of the kinds of records that you might find. In general, books published by Pen & Sword for family historians are pitched at a certain level. As beginners we tend to be led by what records are available on our subscription website of choice (Ancestry, FindMyPast, MyHeritage, TheGenealogist…). However, as we progress, we realise that even though the number of records on these websites increases constantly, it is still only a limited amount of what is actually available – and is there only by licence from the relevant archives. We have to turn our thinking on its head. It is no longer a case of ‘I found this on Ancestry’, but ‘These records are lodged at XXX archive and are available on FindMyPast’. It is the location of the originals that is the most important part of our citation, even though we should add that what we viewed was the digital image on a named website. So of course, this is how Janet refers to the types of records available. Sometimes the records are part of a national set and lodged at The National Archives, in which case Janet provides references for the sets. Others, such as Quarter Sessions records, are of uniform application but will be lodged at local county archives. Certain incidents or events will also have been reported in newspapers, which may be available online or locally. Other types of records of a more local nature may or may not have survived, but Janet gives specific examples of the types of records that may hold the information we seek. Knowing what might be possible is then our starting point for browsing the archives’ online catalogues or speaking to the archivist.
Each chapter ends with a case study of an individual whose story has been traced through the relevant records. Some of these case studies demonstrate that sometimes the full story cannot be found – for example in the case of a woman whose range of pseudonyms prevented the location of a definite baptism.
Covering such a range of societal issues, the book is inevitably a starting point for each one. If you want to go further, there is a list of further reading for each chapter, and of course more in-depth books will be found via those.
To conclude, this is a very useful book suitable for anyone who has moved or is ready to move away from the comfort of the subscription website and prepared to look wider and actively seek out records that will help you to progress. The individual chapters are interesting, sensitively dealt with, and the lists of record sets within each chapter will be a useful resource for the future should a particular type of marginalisation come to light within your own ancestry.
Click the image below to find this book on Amazon.co.uk.
In my last post I said I would review this excellent book by Roger Hutchinson. It was published in 2017 and has sat on my own bookshelves for two years after being recommended to me by a colleague, but now that I’ve finally got round to reading it I’m very glad I did.
First of all I want to say something about the title: The Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker: The story of Britain through its census since 1801. Chances are, since you’re reading my blog, that you’re a genealogist… Am I right? I may also be right, then, in thinking you probably have a different book in mind from the one I’m going to describe to you. In fact, when I asked my husband (eyes glaze over if any utterance about genealogy lasts longer than thirty seconds) what he thought this book would be about, he also had the same ideas as me. So we need to clear this up. This is not a book about the kinds of occupations you find in the censuses. It doesn’t, as you and I do, start with the people and then expand from there about the kind of life they might have had, or the kind of town they might have lived in. Is that something along the lines you were thinking…? No. It actually starts from the top, with the policy decisions, the types of questions asked, why they were asked, the ongoing concern in the nineteenth century to grow the population and overcome public health problems. It includes numbers – quite a lot of them – about how many people fell into different types of occupation, how many people left the country or came to the country. It is, in short, a book that focuses on the real reasons why the census was taken in the first place – the reasons upon which we, as genealogists, piggy-back to get the raw data about our ancestors. So my first point is that while the title of the book may be snappy, it’s a bit misleading. That is my only criticism. Apart from that, it’s a great book.
The history of the census, it turns out, might almost have gone back to 1590, when Queen Elizabeth I’s Lord High Treasurer, William Cecil, proposed an annual, centralised collection of certain data, to be provided to the government and to the Archbishop of Canterbury to assist in national planning. The Archbishop wasn’t interested, and the idea came to nothing. The matter was raised again in 1753 by Thomas Potter, MP. The aim at this time was largely military-related: it would be useful for Britain to keep tabs on the size of her male population should there be a need to raise a large army. On the other hand, should the size of the male population be smaller than anticipated, and should this information fall into enemy hands, this could backfire. Other objections related to the cost of such an activity and the affront on British liberty, whose population had every right not to be ‘molested and perplexed’ and ‘divested of the last remains of our birthright’ by having someone come knocking to demand information about their households. The matter did not go away, though, and it was a young polymath named John Rickman whose arguments finally tipped the balance. His ‘Thoughts on the Utility and Facility of Ascertaining the Population of England’, published in the June 1800 issue of The Commercial and Agricultural Magazine, came to the attention of George Rose, MP for Christchurch, and on the last day of that year, An Act for taking an Account of the Population of Great Britain, and of the Increase or Diminution thereof received Royal Assent. John Rickman was charged with organising it, and continued to do so until his death.
The chapter covering the first four Censuses, 1801, 1811, 1821 and 1831, bears the title A Hazy Snapshot from the Air – a reference to the fact that it collected no in-depth information about each household. Instead, every parish was required to return numbers of inhabited/ uninhabited houses, numbers of families occupying them, numbers of people (male/female) with a very basic breakdown of their occupations, and information about numbers of baptisms, marriages and burials. The precise questions varied over the four censuses, but the general thrust remained the same. Initially there were gaps in the data collected, as some parishes declined to participate, but over this period support grew, and understanding developed of the benefits to the nation of the data included and the conclusions drawn by John Rickman in his decennial reports. So much so that by 1841 the census, which took place a few months after John Rickman’s death, moved up a gear. Henceforth, names, ages and occupations of individual household members would be collected, along with information about birthplace (‘this county’ or not; Scotland; Ireland; or ‘foreign parts’), and with every passing census additional information would be required. From 1842 the organisation of the census in England and Wales would fall to a highly successful double-act: George Graham as Registrar General, and William Farr. As an epidemiologist, Farr’s interest was in the living conditions of the people in the various locations, and particularly in the expanding towns and cities. Regarded as one of the founders of medical statistics, his demographic reports focused on public health. There is no doubt that his work was instrumental in developing the understanding and application of these fields in the United Kingdom. As an example, his introduction of questions about infirmities in the 1851 census led directly to the implementation of the compulsory smallpox vaccination in 1853.
Having established the history of the census, the reasons for it and the undoubted benefits, from this point Hutchinson uses each census as a starting point for discussing events and societal issues. While the general trend of the discussion is chronological, moving from decade to decade, his highlighting of salient issues from each census is used as a springboard for broader discussion of those and related topics. Hence, a breakdown of occupations in the 1851 census leads on to discussion of unusual job titles, some localised and specific, many long-since fallen into disuse, and some of them almost certainly false. This leads to a discussion of prostitution, and from there to women’s place in society, their hardships when a (higher-earning) male is not present, and from there to the women’s suffrage movement, even though that movement fully came to the fore in the twentieth century. The Irish famine of 1845-1850, which was the topic of my last post, is dealt with in two chapters: the first about languages of the United Kingdom (of which Ireland was part in the nineteenth century) and the second about migration. This weaving together of topics is masterful, and brings what might otherwise be a dry discussion of census information to life.
Mention has already been made of the fact that this is not a book about people and occupations to be found in the censuses. That said, named people do appear. They are brought in to illustrate the points being made. Some of the individuals included are famous, like Charlotte Brontë and Harold Macmillan; others are randomly selected and their histories to the point at which they have been located in the census researched by the author. Yet more are the author’s own ancestors.
How can this book be useful to us as genealogists and family historians? Well, if you’re still at the nuts and bolts beginner stage of names, dates, locations and events, it won’t be. However, as we progress as genealogists we need to have broader knowledge. Where is my GGG grandfather? He’s supposed to be a blacksmith in Darlington? Now he seems to be in Leeds. What’s happening that might have caused him to move? This is the sort of book that will help you to understand the underlying changes in our country, the massive shifts that resulted by 1911 in 78% of the population living in urban areas and only 22% remaining in rural locations. Compare this to only 1861, when the census showed that for the first time in history, more citizens in the UK lived in towns and cities than in the countryside.
As previously stated, this book was published in 2017 – before the release of the 1921 census. However, this is not an issue. While the enumeration sheets are subject to the hundred-year rule, the statistics and reports are not. Hence, although the book was written prior to the taking of the 2021 census, the discussion continues right up to the reports published after 2011. Similarly, although the 1931 census papers were lost in a fire in 1942, the reports were not, meaning we do have the figures showing unemployment and migration during the Depression, just as we have evidence of an economic boom in the Shetlands and Aberdeen since the 1970s, and statistics following the arrival of almost five hundred passengers on board the Windrush in 1948.
All in all, for the intermediate and advanced genealogist, this is a very useful book. It has already helped me to understand the enormous changes in the City of London (“square mile”), which at the beginning of the census era actually included farmland, and might conceivably have been the birthplace of a humble weaver. Definitely a case of ‘the past being a very different place’!
Every so often, you read a book that resonates deep within you, and for me one such book was The Real Oliver Twist by John Waller. I posted a review of it back in March 2019, and although it was one of my earliest posts for this blog, I’ve since referred to it in several more recent posts. This ‘real Oliver Twist’ – the real-life boy on whom Dickens is thought to have based his novel, is in fact called Robert Blincoe. Ever since reading his story I’ve considered him a hero.
Waller’s book was published in 2005. It runs to 450 pages, but his starting point for the work was a 68-page pamphlet written by John Brown and published in 1822 with the title A Memoir of Robert Blincoe. Born around 1792 in St Pancras and living as an orphan in the parish workhouse, in 1799 Blincoe, together with about fifty other children from the workhouse, was apprenticed by the Parish Overseers first to a cotton stocking manufacturer in Nottinghamshire and then to Ellis Needham, owner of Litton Mill in the parish of Tideswell in Derbyshire, where he remained until about 1813. Blincoe didn’t set out to publish a memoir. By the time he was approached by John Brown he was living in Manchester, married with children, and the owner of his own waste cotton business, but he had made no secret of his humble origins and the cruellest treatment imaginable he suffered as a pauper apprentice at Litton Mill.
Crucially and perhaps almost astonishingly, despite his experiences, Robert himself was a good man of unblemished reputation, who somehow knew right from wrong. Those who worked under him, either in his capacity as employer or as adult employee in someone else’s business, had only the highest praise for him. Following publication of the pamphlet in 1822, his story became the focus for campaigns highlighting working conditions for children and also for factory reform and the short time cause. Despite this, and even with plentiful evidence of the cruel excesses of capitalists and mill owners, it would not be until 1847 that the Ten Hours Bill passed into law.
With the benefit of almost two hundred years’ perspective, John Waller analyses the story in the pamphlet, verifies facts using original records, and sets the whole story in the context of social and political history. I cannot recommend it highly enough, and if I’ve whetted your appetite please read my earlier post to find out more.
Last month I had reason to revisit Robert Blincoe’s story – quite literally: during a week’s holiday in Derbyshire I walked part of the Monsal Trail. Here, along the deep ravine forged over millennia by the river Wye, Litton Mill still stands. Now beautifully restored and converted to luxury apartments, the setting of the former mill is breath-taking. A row of workers’ cottages adjacent to the building, probably also known to Robert, look out onto the river. This is a popular beauty spot within the Peak District, of great interest to geologists, walkers and rock climbers. A beautiful setting for a truly dreadful story. A get-away-from-it-all destination that, in Robert’s day, amounted to complete isolation. No-one was coming to rescue him and his fellow apprentices.
Litton Mill. Photo: Janice Heppenstall
When I wrote that first post about Robert Blincoe I always intended to read the pamphlet that started the whole thing off. That original pamphlet, with the full title A Memoir of Robert Blincoe, An Orphan Boy; Sent from the Workhouse of St Pancras, London, at seven years of age, to endure the Horrors of a Cotton Mill, through his infancy and youth, with a minute detail of his sufferings, being the first memoir of the kind published, is available online via Internet Archive [here]. Finally, after my visit to Litton Mill, I read it.
I remembered the cruelty meted out to the children, the overwork, the inadequate food, both in terms of quality and quantity, and the lack of sleep. Now, reading the pamphlet I found it was much worse than I had understood from the excerpts in John Waller’s book. Children would routinely be required to work sixteen hours a day, but on Saturdays they worked until midnight, Sunday being a day of rest. On at least one occasion they worked a full twenty-four hours without break. The children were required to wash morning and night, but were not given soap. Since they worked with heavily greased machinery, plain water was no match for this; and since they were so hungry, the bran they were given instead of soap was eaten instead. Food was coarse, often mouldy and foul-smelling, but eaten anyway. The children would be bribed to keep working without a meal break during the day with the promise of a halfpenny – but often the halfpennies did not materialise. When they did the children bought food, collected for them by a kindly blacksmith who worked on the floor below. Insufficient clothing was provided, and the children were covered in lice. Effectively, they were commodities. If one died, no matter – there was an inexhaustible supply of them from more workhouse orphanages.
Wandering around the site, I tried to work out where the Apprentice House had stood. It is referenced in the 1822 pamphlet as accommodating two hundred, and standing about half a mile from the mill. Waller describes its location as across the river, and therefore in the adjacent parish of Taddington, meaning that burial of any children dying in the Apprentice House was the responsibility not of Tideswell but of that neighbouring parish. The building no longer stands, but given that the opposite bank of the river was, like the mill side, bordered by the steep ravine, it is difficult to imagine any reason for housing the apprentices there other than that given by Waller. There is no village nearby, no other form of habitation, and no road or obvious footpath. It would appear to be difficult to access from other parts of the parish of Taddington. Robert did recall that the children who died were buried half and half in the two parishes – so as not to attract too much attention at the number of them.
Plaque adjacent to churchyard in Tideswell. Photo: Janice Heppenstall
What was truly shocking, though, was the violence. Those were different times, and violence used as a means of ‘correction’ was acceptable. It can even be argued that overseers needed the children to work as quickly as possible so that they themselves were not punished for insufficient output. Hence the children were beaten to leave them in no doubt that slowing down was not an option. It’s difficult for us to think that way, but back then it was the norm. What wasn’t the norm, however, was the level of beating, the cruelty, and the enjoyment derived from this by the men in charge at Litton Mill. Children were made to dangle over moving machinery, having to lift their legs at the knee with every motion of the machine. They had clamps weighing up to one pound attached to their ears and noses, and were expected to work that way. Rollers were aimed at their heads. Supple leather belts with brass buckles were used to whip them. Teeth were filed. These, and other activities, were done for fun. The children were, in consequence, constantly covered in bruises, cuts and welts. When they did finally reach their beds it was often impossible to find a position they could lie in without pain from the injuries. If the acceptable use of beating was as a means of making the children work harder, then the thugs at Litton Mill were either too stupid or too evil to recognise that they and the children would produce more if they did not take time out for this particular form of ‘fun’.
Obviously all of this took its toll on the children’s health. Malnutrition and insufficient rest meant that some of the children’s bodies were deformed – Robert Blincoe included. Children were often sick, and many died. Why didn’t the doctor raise his concerns with the authorities? For the simple reason that the doctor, the magistrate, the magistrate’s clerk and the factory owners, in this case Ellis Needham, were all on the same side. They socialised together, as Robert found to his cost on two occasions when, as a teenager, he tried to alert the authorities to the cruelty at Litton Mill. The only outcome was more brutality. Knowing this, some prayed to God to take them during the night, there were suicide attempts, and some of the boys committed crimes, purely in the hope that their punishment would be transportation to Botany Bay, which they believed would be better than the cruelty they were enduring at the mill.
Google Maps The steep ravine forming the valley of the river Wye alongside which Litton Mill is situated is shown.
As outlined above there is, ultimately, a happy ending to Robert’s story. He retained a sense of justice and was a good man; he married, established his own business and had children. His son won a scholarship and went to Cambridge, and one of his daughters made a very good marriage. Meanwhile, Ellis Needham was bankrupt in 1815 and died a pauper.
What can we, as family historians, take from Robert’s story?
Starting with the obvious and the specific, if you have ancestors in the Tideswell or Litton areas of Derbyshire – or in Lowdam, Nottinghamshire, location of the first mill to which the St Pancras children were apprenticed – you may recognise a name or two from the text. Even if your ancestors aren’t named, the story still serves as background history to the area where they lived. Today, Robert Blincoe is very much part of the history of Tideswell.
However, even if this part of the country has no relevance to your research – as is the case for myself – there is still much to be learned from reading texts like John Brown’s or John Waller’s. This can then be applied to the reality for your own ancestors.
If you have ancestors in Yorkshire, Lancashire or other areas where large-scale textile production was a major part of the local economy during the 19th century, understanding about life in a textile mill might be useful to you. Mills, for example, needed to be situated alongside water for powering the wheel, hence others were built in locations like Litton that we might now consider beauty spots but back then, with no local amenities other than what the mill owner chose to provide, increased the likelihood that children of workers would also be sucked in to the same work. Some might even be paid with tokens so that families had to buy their food and provisions at the mill owners’ shop.
More broadly, there is the social history, the operation of the Poor Laws, the Factory Acts and the apprenticing of parish and pauper apprentices. The nature of these apprenticeships is quite different from that of privately negotiated apprenticeships for sons of families who could pay. Robert Blincoe’s apprenticeship happened before the Poor Law Reform Act of 1834, when the earlier system of relief of the poor was coming under strain. Many parishes in the south sought to save money by offloading their orphans and children of paupers to the northern mills. My impression is that these mills could operate only because of the slave labour of the pauper children.
If you have an ancestor in the northern mills with no baptism record or identifiable parentage, it’s worth considering whether they might have been taken from the south to work in the mills. Conversely, if the sibling of an ancestor in the south disappears but no burial record is found, consider looking for them in the booming industrial towns in the Midlands or the North. They would have to remain living until 1851 for their place of birth to be confirmed on the census – Robert Blincoe gives his place of birth as London in the 1851 census.
I remember the day I realised the records I had been finding, downloading and attaching to my online tree did not ‘belong’ to Ancestry. Rather they had been photographed and indexed by/for Ancestry who, with permission from the relevant archives, made them available via their website.
The progression from Beginner to Intermediate skills for the genealogist is peppered with such realisations. Broadly, as we become more proactive in searching for specific records to close specific gaps we must develop our knowledge of the types of records that exist and which ones might hold the information we require. Alongside this we must develop the skills to find them (since these additional types of record are less likely to have been made available online), analyse them and support each one with effective citation, keeping records of our progress and findings. Helen Osborn’s work Genealogy: Essential Research Methods leaves aside the records themselves, focusing here on these essential skills of finding and using them. It’s definitely not a book for Beginners; rather it’s a serious, diligent and methodical approach to genealogy. You’ll get the most from it if you’re already working at a sound Intermediate level or higher, and looking to improve further. For pretty much anyone who falls into these categories, I think there will be something to learn from this excellent work.
The book focuses on researching within England and Wales. All references to archives and the records framework, and all examples from the author’s own work are from these two parts of the UK. The principles of good research practice, however, are applicable everywhere, and from that perspective the book will be of use to anyone serious about developing as a genealogist and family historian.
The book was first published in 2012, although my copy was printed in 2020. It goes without saying that there have been changes in genealogy since then, in terms of wider online availability or records, website links, and even in the organisation of some of the archives themselves. This issue is mostly limited to chapter 4 but for me is the only drawback, and is generally easily remedied with a Google search rather than simply typing in the sometimes defunct link.
It starts with a chapter setting out common genealogical and research challenges. In the remaining chapters, techniques and ideas for working with and around these challenges are presented. Yet it is not prescriptive; rather it reads as an ongoing personal exploration by a highly experienced professional genealogist, historian and qualified archivist inviting us to join in this exploration. It is very readable.
Within those chapters you’ll find the following:
How to seach online, using effective search terms
The importance of reading the particular website’s instructions
An understanding of the records framework for England and Wales, including the various jurisdictional levels and the legal, historical and geographic framework that underpins it
Different types of archives, the types of records they keep and how they are organised
Guidance on drawing upon work already done by others, including online trees and transcriptions
Analysis of each document in terms of value, bias and to get every last shred of evidence from it
Developing a thorough action plan and other ideas for when you get stuck
The importance of documenting sources, and different levels of citation
Why we should record our research process
Different ways of storing the info, including paper and digital; organising it in a way it can be passed on, perhaps to family or perhaps published in family history magazines or as a family history
Evidence and proof
Two meaty issues that have been a constant topic of interest for me – simply because there are no British genealogy ‘standards’ for them – are citation of sources (which has requirements for genealogy that differ from general academic fields in some respects) and advanced-level proof. The former is dealt with in Chapter 8, with guidance on what needs to be in a citation and also what to record in a research log. The emphasis is on understanding ‘why’ rather than simply ‘what’. If we understand why such information should be noted we will develop the ability to create our own citations rather than simply adopt a formulaic approach. Proof is dealt with in Chapter 10. The two are of course linked, since it is through rigorous citation that we will record the evidence we are presenting as proof, thereby enabling not only ourselves but also others to follow our trail and decide for themselves if they are in agreement with our conclusions.
There is one more chapter that I know I will return to from time to time: Chapter 7 on Planning and Problem-solving. This entire chapter is about approaching brick walls in a systematic way, rather like having ‘a second pair of eyes’ to look for something you might have missed. There is advice about how to approach the problem solving in a systematic way, and also a checklist for record sources, some of which you might just have missed.
When I read this book I already considered my research and analysis skills to be well-developed but was looking for ideas to be more rigorous, particularly in documenting work done and developing action plans. I found I could mentally tick off much of the advice – yes, I’m already doing that – but there were also gems here and there where I knew I could do better, and which I’ve used to develop a personal action plan for improvement. If you’re serious about developing as a genealogist I recommend this book.
Click the image to find this book on Amazon.co.uk. (Affiliate link)
They were created in 2013 by two teams of six students from De Montfort University. The task was to create a gritty representation of 17th century London.
Both videos ‘recreate’ 17th century London as it existed before The Great Fire of 1666. The amount of research is clear, not to mention artistic and animation skills. They researched street layouts using historical maps, contemporary building construction, and diaries from the period. The hanging signs record genuine inns and businesses from contemporary records.
Watching these videos really helps me to imagine myself back in the period. One of the things I notice is the number of church spires. London had 126 parishes, and although most of them have not survived, the scenes remind me very much of central Norwich today, with a church and little churchyard at almost every corner. I realise that London must have looked very similar. I literally lose myself every time I watch these.
The videos were created for ‘Off the Map’, a competition run by The British Library and video game developers GameCity and Crytek. ‘Pudding Lane Productions’ (above) won first prize.
The first video lasts 3 minutes 29 seconds; Triumphant Goat’s, below, is 7 minutes 59 seconds.
The programme is described as ‘an antidote to throwaway culture’ and ‘a workshop of dreams where broken or damaged cherished family heirlooms are brought back to life’, and I’m on board with both of these philosophies. But for me it’s more than that.
There is of course the beautiful craftmanship of the wonderfully talented group of artisans who work individually and in combination to bring life back to treasured possessions. As a lover of crafts and the beauty of the handmade myself, I appreciate this fine work.
Then there are the stories behind many of the pieces – stories of loved ones and the memories and emotions that can be wrapped up in a single treasured item. We all have something like that, don’t we – often something that may be of little or no value to anyone else but to us means so much more. The emotions with which the restored items are received by the owners tell their own story.
On top of all that there’s the heritage of the skills themselves. In England there was a tradition of apprenticeship which gradually died out as a result of the Industrial Revolution. Boys (usually, although girls could be apprenticed too for certain trades) were apprenticed at around 12 or 14 to a master craftsman. The apprenticeship would last seven years, and at the end of it the young man was qualified and experienced in all aspects of ‘the art and mystery’ of his craft. Something I’ve noticed about my own male ancestors is that in the first half of the nineteenth century they were generally valued tradesmen – weavers, tailors, drapers, blacksmiths and so on, often with their own small family-run businesses – and along with every other artisan in the town they had a specific, important role to play. After all, everyone needed clothes, shoes, ironware, and so on. By the end of that century every single one of my ancestors had a role that, even if it could be given a specific title, like ‘engineer in a woollen mill’ or ‘flax dresser’ it could equally fall into the lowly, catch-all term of ‘labourer’. They were cogs in someone else’s wheel: their jobs were boring, repetitive and often dangerous, and there was little call for creativity.
Of all the craftspeople on The Repair Shop the one who most attracts my attention is Suzie Fletcher, the saddler. My 4xG grandfather, Robert, was a saddler and harness-maker. His apprenticeship began in 1781 and at a cost to his father of £31 10 shillings was clearly a highly prized trade. When I watch Suzie Fletcher I reflect that many of the techniques and tools she uses have changed little from the time when Robert was plying his trade. But I also note that along with knowhow, skills, experience and tricks of the trade there is a need for creative thinking: she sometimes has to take a step back to work out how she might be able to achieve what she needs to do. I imagine Robert would have done that sometimes too.
Perhaps one of the craftspeople on The Repair Shop – carpenter, horologist, ceramicist, smith, etc – shares an occupation with one of your ancestors. You might just learn a little more about them by watching an episode or two.
Sometime in the early 1970s my mum decided she wanted a sewing machine. I went with her to one of the big department stores, where a very knowledgeable woman showed us a few models and demonstrated the features. Having decided on a particular machine, my mum went over to the cash desk. She wanted to pay on HP (‘Hire Purchase’) over several months. That was when the fun started. My mum, aged fortysomething and in full-time employment, was not allowed to sign the HP contract. Since she was married, only her husband could sign. I was too young to understand the implications of all this, or of course to know the long history of women’s place in society, but I could tell from the combination of frustration, anger and embarrassment writ large across my mother’s features that it wasn’t a good thing. There was nothing to be done though. We had to go home, and my dad had to go into town later that afternoon to sign the documents and bring home the machine.
Yet only a hundred years earlier the lot of a married woman had been much worse. It was only during the lifetime of my mother’s grandmother that women started to make gains. Before the Married Women’s Property Act of 1870 married women were not allowed to keep their own earnings, while prior to the 1882 Married Women’s Property Act all of a woman’s property and possessions passed to her husband when she married. Before the 1882 Act, the only way a woman could retain property and finances was to remain single or, after the death of her husband, to avoid remarriage. Even then she didn’t necessarily have the final say in decisions relating to her children, and of course she didn’t have the right to vote.
I’ve traced approaching 240 direct ancestors in my family tree. Almost half of these are women. And yet I know far less about these grandmothers of mine than I do about their husbands. Even if the mother is named on the baptism record, it’s the father’s occupation that is recorded, while census records list the occupation of most women as ‘Unpaid domestic duties’.
I’d been thinking about this for a while. It seemed the only way I might ever know more about my female lines was to read about social history, and to apply what I learned to my ancestors, based on what I knew of the occupation and social status of their husbands. So I was interested to find two books dedicated to female ancestors: Margaret Ward’s The Female Line (2003) focuses on women’s lives 1800 to 1950. Adèle Emm’s Tracing Your Female Ancestors (2019) deals with the period 1815 to 1914.
Both, then, cover the perfect period for the genealogist who has used census and civil registration records to trace their ancestors back to the beginning of the 19th century, and would now like to get to know these ancestors a bit better, before perhaps taking the plunge and learning about the earlier records needed for the Georgian period and beyond.
The Female Line has information arranged over eight chapters, each ending with a ‘finding out more’ section with ideas for further research, including the whereabouts of records, further reading and other ideas. Chapters include photographs and fashion; marriage; widowhood and remaining single; politics and the vote; charitable work; crime; work and war.
Tracing Your Female Ancestors has information arranged over six chapters, including birth, marriage and death; education (for all classes of society); crime; daily life (including housing, recreation, illness); work and emancipation (including the general opening up of options for women). Links to various sources are found throughout the text, and each chapter ends with a bibliography.
Both books end with a very useful timeline of key events impacting on women’s lives.
Clearly there’s a lot of overlap in topics covered, and inevitably much of what is written is about the generalities. For example regarding fashion and dress, even without photos of your ancestor you can still get an idea of what a woman of her time, class and occupation might have worn by looking at books and photos. Similarly, unless your ancestor’s marital relations were recorded in newspapers, court records and the like, then the best you can hope for is an understanding of what being married meant for her in terms of autonomy, finances, etc.
There is also the issue that ‘woman’ is not, and never was, a homogenous group. There was a world of difference between the life and expectations of a wealthy woman, a middle class woman, the wife/daughter of a skilled tradesman and a pauper. Equally, some of the facts of a woman’s life applied equally to her husband, father and male children – living accommodation, the penal process, Education Acts and Factory Acts, for example. So what both writers try to do is to highlight the issues and then to draw out of these the particular impact upon women and their daughters. Some crimes, for example, are more likely to be committed by a woman, whilst others that are more likely to be committed by a man will nevertheless impact greatly on his wife and family if he is imprisoned or transported.
Regarding work, the point is made by both authors that our female ancestors were unlikely to be described in the censuses with reference to any paid employment, even if they were enormously successful, or if the household depended on their contribution. A gentleman ought to be able to provide for his wife and family. Hence Elizabeth Gaskell, by then a successful and accomplished author for two decades, was described in the 1861 census as ‘Wife’. Lower down the social scale, our foremothers may have been written off on successive censuses with the term ‘Unpaid domestic duties’, but unless she was middle class or had a private income, chances are that she would have done some work alongside that, either full or part time, and either within or outside the home. Prior to the industrial revolution, women and children would all have a part to play in supporting the husband-father in his cottage trade. A husband might be a fully trained weaver but his children might card the fleece, and his wife might spin the yarn. Later, women might be employed in the local mill or factory – so location will be an important factor – cotton mills in Lancashire, lace in Nottingham, mining in Wakefield, agricultural work in rural areas, and so on. And of course there is always cleaning to be done in a wealthier person’s house. Sometimes wives whose husbands had a family business, like a draper’s shop or a grocers would be listed on the census as Assistants or ‘Helps out in family business’. Women might take years out to raise children, or work fewer hours when the children went on to school, but the idea that our great grandmothers only ever took care of home and family in the form of ‘Unpaid domestic duties’ is inaccurate. Whatever they did, though, they would never earn as much as men doing the same work. These are the kinds of issues raised in the chapters of these two books.
These are not intended to be books that will answer all our questions. As family researchers, we might find some of the topics irrelevant to our own research. However, both books are a good introduction to a lot of topics, and packed with ideas for general reading and sourcing original documents. Both provide an overview of the various topics, including the kind of records you might want to explore, where to find them, and further reading. It may still be that you won’t find any specific records naming your female ancestors, but you will have a lot more idea about how she lived. In my own case, I have both found and better understood some records as a direct result of reading these two books.
So which of these books might be best for you? In what ways do they differ?
The most obvious differences are in dates of publication, size and price. With a publication date of 2003, Margaret Ward’s book could be considered out of date. Of course, the records and events haven’t changed since then, but certainly the online availability of records has. Published in 2019, Adèle Emm’s work is bang up to date. (In fact it was published as I was reading Margaret Ward’s.) It’s also much longer, with 220 pages including index, as opposed to 112. On the other hand, it costs almost twice as much, with a RRP of £14.99 as compared with £7.95. As a result it contains much more information, both in terms of scope and also in the inclusion of far more examples taken from actual records in various parts of the country.
My recommendation is that, despite the comparative age of The Female Line, if you’re still very much a beginner at family history, you might prefer her shorter, gentler book. If you are confident and enjoy social history then like me, you’ll get a lot more out of Tracing Your Female Ancestors.
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My Ancestor was… is a series of books published by the Society of Genealogists. They cover a whole range of topics, including My Ancestor was a Coal Miner / Leather Worker / Lawyer, and others that are not about occupations, such as religions (Jewish, English Presbyterian, etc) and even Lunatic and Bastard. I’ve read a couple of them and know them to be extremely focused overviews, full of facts and useful information.
I first heard about My Ancestor was a Railway Worker while doing an online course a couple of years ago, and I remember thinking, well, what’s so different about working on a railway that it needs its own book? Recently, though, I’ve been researching a family involving successive generations working on the railways; and I immediately started to see that this was no ordinary occupation. The impression I had was of a huge community, not unlike the armed forces, with marriage between the families and seemingly a welcome wherever they went. I had some specific questions, and from my previous knowledge of this series, I was sure this would be a good place to find the answers.
My Ancestor was a Railway Worker was written by Frank Hardy. A Fellow of the Society of Genealogists, prior to retirement he worked for almost fifty years as a railway civil engineer, so he knows his stuff from both angles. The book covers a wide range of occupations on the railways, from construction and maintenance of the tracks and infrastructure, building and maintaining the trains, administration of the service, including related commercial activities and of course operating the trains. There is also information about smaller, non-mainline railways, and overseas railways with a historic connection to our own. I was astonished at the full range of activities, and although I was reading this for insights into someone else’s tree, I realised in the process that apart from one of my own ancestral families who were early investors in the railway at York, I do also have two railway workers in my own ancestry and never realised the true nature of their work – a platelayer (that’s the term for the people who lay and maintain the track) and a mechanic with the London and North Western Railway at Crewe, where they manufactured all the equipment needed for the operation of their service.
The people in the tree I’ve been researching worked on the trains themselves. I learned that there was a specific progression to becoming an engine driver, starting with cleaning the engines in the locomotive shed, a seemingly menial task but one that develops a thorough knowledge of the engine. Next came fireman (stoking the engine) and shunting, and finally the ‘aristocrat of the railway’: the locomotive engine driver. Along the way were assessments and knowledge requirements. If you wanted to progress through the ranks you had to attend classes and study, and you had to be prepared to move to another company in a different part of the country for a promotion to the next level. Health & Safety was taken very seriously: throughout the engine driver’s working life he would be regularly tested for fitness and colour vision. All of this is borne out by the Service Record of one of the men whose life I’ve been investigating.
But there was a huge range of other activities: railway hotels; laundries; goods transfer facilities at harbours and docks; shipping to offshore and overseas destinations including the Isle of Wight, Channel Islands, Dutch and French ports; and buses – all owned and operated by the railway companies. And here’s a bit of trivia for you: the first time a dining car was operated on a train was during the 1870s, on the London Kings Cross service to Leeds.
By the end of the nineteenth century an astonishing 650,000 people were employed by the railway companies. Bearing in mind that working on the railway was a ‘job for life’, that’s a lot of people, many working for 30, 40 or 50 years. A lot of the records survive for employees, particularly for the 19th century, and their likely whereabouts is given in the book. I found a full Service Record for one of the people I was researching on Ancestry.
What I really wanted to know about, though, was the ‘community’; and my original hunch had been correct. Families that moved around the country for promotions, with sons following their fathers into the industry and maybe marrying the daughters of other railway men were known as ‘railway families’. The companies built and provided housing for their employees, close to their ‘home’ stations – and of course they employed bricklayers to do the work. (I found one of them in the family I was looking at too.) So it would be quite natural for sons and daughters of employees to meet and to marry. A sense of community was also encouraged by activities such as ‘Best Kept Stations’ and ‘Best Kept Gardens’ competitions. Plus there were early forms of employee insurance and free rail passes for employees and their families.
In conclusion, I now understand exactly why there’s a need for a book specifically about railway worker ancestors! I recommend it to anyone who wants to understand more about the work and way of life. The record location information, together with bibliography for further reading will be useful for anyone requiring more, but this little book covered all that I personally needed to know.
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Last month I reviewed Rebecca Probert’s book Divorced, Bigamist, Bereaved. Today’s book, Marriage Law for Genealogists, is by the same author. The contents are pretty much summed up in the subtitle: ‘What everyone tracing their family history needs to know about where, when, who and how their English and Welsh ancestors married.’ Dealing with marriage law from 1600 to the present day, it applies to our English and Welsh ancestors only because English law doesn’t extend to other parts of the United Kingdom.
The first edition of this book pre-dated Divorced, Bigamist and Bereaved, and you might think it would have made sense for me to read and review them in that order too. However, I had urgent divorce and bigamy knowledge requirements (which I will outline in next week’s post, a sort of marital relations masterclass provided courtesy of my natural GG grandparents…)
Rebecca Probert is a rare thing: a Professor of Law, the leading authority on the history of the marriage laws of England and Wales, and also a keen genealogist. She is therefore able to debunk a number of common misunderstandings relating to marriage that have been published in other genealogy texts, and she does that in the first chapter.
One of the most important things I’ll take away from this book is the central point that the authorities actively wanted couples who wished to marry to be so. There were indeed severe punishments for ‘fornication’, including excommunication (not to mention the eternal punishment in the hereafter), fines, the stocks and whipping. Marriage was also central to the operation of the Poor Law, in the sense that a wife and all legitimate children took their father’s settlement rights at birth. Illegitimate children, on the other hand, took the settlement not of their mother, but of the parish in which they were born. A destitute, unmarried family, therefore – even if the father were present – could be resettled in (i.e. sent back to) several different parishes – the father to his, the mother to the parish of her birth, and the children each to the parish in which they were born. Legitimacy of children was also an important factor if there was property to be shared out after the death of the parents: illegitimate children (even if the parents remained together) would not inherit. Younger, legitimate offspring would easily succeed in an action preventing the passing of a share of an inheritance to an older child born before the parents’ wedding. It wasn’t until 1926 that children could be legitimised retrospectively by the eventual marriage of their parents.
So they are the downsides of not marrying; but what I hadn’t realised was that the Law would bend over as far backwards as possible to ensure that those who did go through a marriage ceremony would indeed be considered married, even if the ceremony fell short of certain statutory requirements. These are dealt with over four chapters: Who your ancestors married – including mental capacity, bigamy, divorce, same-sex marriage and the ‘prohibited degrees’; How they married – including banns, licences, civil marriages and non-Anglican religious marriages; When they married – including age restrictions, parental consent, and restrictions/ preferences for time of day, year and days of the week; Where they married – including ‘clandestine’ marriages, with reasons for marrying in another parish, marriages at The Fleet, and marriage of English/Welsh nationals in other parts of the world.
I must admit that as I was reading this, at times I wondered what to do with the information I now had. My concern is with the life and times of my ancestors, not with the impropriety or voidability of a happy union. Take as an example the section on ‘prohibited degrees of kinship’ (chapter 3). Contrary to popular belief, English Law has never forbidden marriage between cousins. However, other close relatives have fallen within the ‘prohibited degrees’, and of course some still do. These include siblings, parent/child, grandparent/grandchild and marriages between uncle/aunt and nephew/niece. But prior to the first half of the 20th century the rule didn’t stop there: historically in the eyes of the church, upon marriage a husband and wife became ‘one flesh’. Consequently, the in-laws were as much a part of one’s family as one’s own parents, siblings, etc. Therefore in the event of the death of a spouse, remarriage to one of the in-laws from the above categories was also considered incestuous. Whether such a marriage would be void, voidable or even valid, depended on the year in which the marriage took place – the rules changed several times over the centuries. As it happens I do have at least two marriages in my tree that fall within the prohibited degrees on account of remarriage after the death of the first spouse to an in-law. In one of these, I took the fact of being prepared to marry for a second time within the same family as evidence of a good relationship between my great grandmother and her mother-in-law, particularly as my grandmother was named after that mother-in-law (my GG grandmother). So a happy thing. I now understand that legally these marriages were void – as though they never happened, and any children of the union were illegitimate. However, it seems no-one realised, and they died still ‘married’ and probably blissfully unaware that they had been living in sin these past decades. Really, then – what difference does it make, other than as a saucy bit of gossip – which doesn’t interest me anyway?
I then realised I was looking at this the wrong way. The usefulness of knowing about such rules is to help us to troubleshoot. Yes, these two couples in my tree ‘got away with it’ and no harm was done. But what if your 4xG grandfather Robert marries Sarah and then six months later marries Mary? No possibility of divorce, no burial record showing for Sarah. Is Robert a bigamist? He may be, and it’s also possible that Sarah’s burial record has been lost or mis-transcribed. But this book gives us the information to be able to think of other possibilities – an annulment, perhaps? If we know of the rules around void and voidable marriages, when we see something that doesn’t sit easily, we can use our knowledge to start to explore what might have happened. In this example we could look to see if the marriage might have been within the prohibited degrees, or perhaps there was another reason for an annulment.
One thing I’ll now be exploring is the possibility that some of my missing marriages may have taken place in a different part of the country. Evidence presented in chapter 6 shows that a surprising number of couples married out of their county of residence, or at the very least in a different parish, perhaps because of a family connection with that parish.
So, to conclude, this is a very useful book, but one you have to work at, and not aimed at beginners. Not only is it a harder read than Divorce, Bigamist, Bereaved, but also following through on the information presented will require a fair bit of research and thinking outside the box. That said, it has already resolved a few questions for me; and with an idea of what to look out for, it will be a useful addition to my bookshelf when I need to consult for the detail.
Click the book cover image to find the book on Amazon.co.uk
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I bought this book primarily because I was confused by the historic application of the law on bigamy. I knew of a ‘seven-year rule’ for spouses living apart and a ‘presumption of death’ if there had been no contact during this seven-year period, but I also knew there was more to it than that. What, exactly, were the rules for remarriage without divorce in our ancestors’ times? As confusing as this might be for us, I quickly learned that it was frequently misunderstood by our ancestors too.
The full title of Rebecca Probert’s book is Divorced, Bigamist, Bereaved: the family historian’s guide to marital breakdown, separation, widowhood and remarriage: from 1600 to the 1970s. In it, she sets out the law, including changes over this period, in five chapters: Divorced, Separated, Bigamist, Bereaved and Remarriage to the Same Person. The rules are illustrated with actual cases and contemporary newspaper stories, as well as question and answer sections.
It’s as well to start with the law on divorce, since it was the inaccessibility of that for most people that forced many to resort to the alternative, non-legal options. In England and Wales, the Reformation hadn’t changed the central tenet that marriage, once validly entered into, was indissoluble except by death. However, from the 1660s, wealthy men were able to secure private Acts of Parliament allowing them, on the grounds of adultery of the wife, to consider the marriage at an end, and to remarry as if their erstwhile spouse were ‘naturally dead’. Even at the time it didn’t go unnoticed that the rich could effectively buy their right to the freedom to remarry, while the poor faced serious criminal charges and severe punishment if they did the same.
It wasn’t until 1858 that the possibility of divorce was opened up to all. Even so, the court and legal costs, travel expenses to London to the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes, and the travel and accommodation expenses of all witnesses if the petition was contested, would clearly put this remedy out of reach for the vast majority of people. And even then, prior to 1937 the only ground on which a man could divorce his wife was adultery; while until 1923 a woman could bring an action for divorce only on the grounds of adultery combined with an aggravating factor, being: incest, bigamy, cruelty, desertion, rape, sodomy or bestiality.
Little surprise, then, that so many of us come across ancestors who seem to have remarried without having divorced the original spouse. Of course they are easier for us to spot in the censuses than before 1841. We find them ‘married’ with a new spouse, although we can clearly see their original spouse, still very much alive, a few streets away, ‘widowed’, ‘unmarried’ or perhaps also ‘married’ to someone new. Whatever the circumstances, any such marriage is bigamous, and in earlier times the punishment would have been death, transportation, imprisonment or branding. In the absence of a divorce / private Act of Parliament dissolving the former marriage, the only airtight ground for remarriage was the confirmed death of the original spouse. However, by the early 19th century the courts developed a presumption that a spouse who had not been heard of for seven years could be presumed dead. This, then, is the origin of the much-misunderstood ‘seven-year rule’. However, even then, there was an expectation that the remaining spouse genuinely believed their husband/wife to be dead, and had made efforts to find them. Simply living apart for seven years did not qualify. And even after an absence of many, many years, if the absent spouse turned up alive, the marriage would once more be valid, any interim marriage void, and any offspring of that second marriage retrospectively illegitimised.
Alongside situations like this there are of course cases of bigamy where the perpetrator’s behaviour is blatantly criminal – bigamy with intent to defraud the new spouse out of her inheritance; ‘spontaneous’ bigamy (speeded up by obtaining a licence) designed purely so that the perpetrator could have his wicked way, with the full intention of leaving her the next day… In time, the courts would come to distinguish between those acting with such criminal intent and those who simply didn’t understand, or who at the very least were just trying to move on with their lives after a failed union. The latter would still be found guilty, the second marriage still void, but the actual punishment much reduced.
Rebecca Probert cites letters in newspaper advice columns requesting guidance on whether remarriage in certain situations would be legal. There’s no doubt that people didn’t understand the law; or if they did, they saw little to respect in a system so absurd that different rules regarding the sanctity of marriage applied to the haves and the have-nots. Gradually, this came to be understood even by the courts, and after World War I the law started to move towards the divorce provisions we have today. (Incidentally, if you watched the final episode of A House Through Time series 2 (Newcastle), the expert who talked to David Olusoga about the post-WW1 bigamy and divorce situation was Rebecca Probert. Perfect timing! 😊)
It definitely helps to understand the context when we come across questionable behaviour by our ancestors. It’s easy to have this mental picture of a bigamist as the person in the driving seat – the one who decides to marry twice (or more), stringing all other parties along and leaving havoc in their wake. But this book introduces us to those who married bigamously because they were the ones who had been deserted, when finding a new partner was their own best chance at survival. Take as an example a woman whose husband has deserted her and her young children. With little chance of being able to support her family long-term, she has the choice of relying on the charity of the parish Guardians – which may lead to admission to the workhouse or at the very least having the children taken away and sent as ‘parish apprentices’ to the northern textile mills (see previous post about Robert Blincoe); or marrying again. And yet in marrying again – probably the preferred option from the persepctive of the local parish Guardians – she would be committing bigamy.
Although I started this book wanting to understand more about the law surrounding bigamy, it has helped several other puzzles fall into place. In particular, I’ve made my peace with my natural 2xG grandmother whose divorce petition was… not absolutely truthful.
This is an easy and enjoyable book, to read through once to get the overview, and then to keep on your bookshelf to consult when you need the detail, as new ancestral marital situations come to light.
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English Ancestors 