Where There’s a Will: Thomas HALL

I read somewhere that in his will William Shakespeare left his wife his second-best bed. I’ve never found any of my ancestor’s wills. Hardly surprising because they were ‘common folk’, ag labs and the like. What they did bequeath the future generations was their DNA, though I have yet to discover a DNA match with another Hall family descendant.

I wrote of Mary Ann Smith in response to the week 13 prompt ‘Nearly Forgotten. Mary Ann married my great grandfather Thomas Hall and this is his story.

Thomas was born in Peterborough 5 August 1846 to William Hall and Elizabeth (Hinson), the youngest of at least six children all born in Crowland. William born 1834, Elizabeth born 1836, Samuel born 1838, Ann born 1841, and Joshua born 1843. There is a possible baptism for Thomas 16 Aug 1846 at Saints Mary Bartholomew and Guthlac.

I took this photograph of Saints Mary Bartholomew and Guthlac in 2014.

Crowland/Croyland has an interesting history. Originally the area was wild marshland crisscrossed by causeways and meandering rivers.  St Guthlac chose one of the small ‘islands’ as a retreat, which by the eighth century had become an important monastic site and the surrounding small village had grown into a significant market town.

Peterborough was part of Northamptonshire until 1888.It then became an independent administrative county known as 'Soke of Peterborough'. From 1965 it merged with Huntingdonshire to be county of H & P and from 1974, along with Hunts, is contained in Cambridgeshire, that being said, on Ancestry every census 1851 - 1901, Peterborough is in County of Northamptonshire.

The 1851 census is the first to list Thomas, aged four. His father’s occupation was ‘ag lab’ and they lived in Poor House Lane in the district of Croyland, Peterborough. I modern times the street was renamed Albion Street.

1889-1891 map showing the position of the Abbey.

https://www.old-maps.co.uk/index.html#/Map/524500/310500/10/100250

On the 1861 census Poorhouse Lane has become Poors lane. Thomas now aged 14, occupation, basket maker. I am sure that this is the correct family as the neighbours are the same as those on the previous census. At 7 Poors Lane are Richard and Mary Cooke, daughter Susannah then aged 21 aged (Thomas’s brother William’s future wife) and grandson John T Cooke, aged 3 (was she a single mum.?) also living in this house was a 71 year old lodger, Samuel Beekin, formerly a butcher. Interesting to note that on this census just a few doors away at 9 Poors lane is a family called Hinson, the maiden name of Thomas’s mother Elizabeth. Could the head of this household, Peter Hinson, be Thomas’s uncle, that is his mother’s brother?

I struggled to locate Thomas on the 1871 census. His parents William and Elizabeth were at home at 90 Poors Lane. Next door at number 91 Poors lane are the following.

Richard Cooke, Head, widow aged 69. Occupation Ag Lab.

William Hall, son in law, aged 35 Ag Lab, is this Thomas’s brother?

Susannah Hall , daughter aged 31

Mary E Cooke Granddaughter aged 8

John T Cook Grandson aged 12

These two children raise the as yet unanswerable question, were they Susannah’s illegitimate children?

This is probably him at in Crowland on the 1871of the right age and occupation, but only possible. After quickly searching Israel Lyn on Ancestry I found that the married name of his wife was Hall.  More research on that will have to wait for another time.

Below is the transcription

During the 1840’s the Great Northern Railway Company opened main trunk lines between London and York, Peterborough lying halfway between London and Doncaster went from a market town to an industrial centre with a railways major repair and maintenance depot. The impact of this industrialisation can be clearly seen in the change of occupations for Thomas from ‘basket maker on the 1861 census to engine fitter on the 1881.

The opening up of transport links obviously created easy travel to the capitol city where Thomas and Mary Ann’s children were born as was Mary Ann herself. So did Thomas travel to London in search of work and met Mary Ann there.

I also looked for where his brothers William, Samuel and Joshua had gone to.

Joshua, according to 1901 census continued in the same trade that young Thomas had, that of basket maker, working at home on his own account He married Sarah from Northants and that is where he was living on this census, with daughter Kate 18 and son Arthur 7. East Northants, Wellingborough. William married Susannah Cooke 24 Oct 1870, and it is in the 1871 census that we find him living with his wife and father in law next door to his parents. William’s death occurred before the next census of 1881. On census records I found Samuel and his wife Ellen in North Frodingham, Yorkshire, England.

There he is on the 1881 census at 158 Botolph Road, Bromley, Tower Hamlets, occupation, engine fitter labourer. Also at home were wife Mary Ann with children Eliza, Ada, and Alice all listed as scholars, and my grandfather young Herbert Henry aged one. The sisters, Herbert, and younger brother Joseph appear to have been born in Bromley, but I have yet to locate any baptismal records for them or the younger brothers Arthur and Frederick who were born in East Ham

1881 England Census for Thomas Hall, London, Bromley Leonard

As an engine fitter labourer Thomas  may have worked  on the railway as  among his neighbours was a railway stoker, an engine driver railway, a railway guard and a railway engine fireman.  As was usual for the time there is no mention of an occupation for his wife Mary Ann who, with a husband and four young children to keep house for, may well have found the time and energy to do things like take in washing or other domestic work to supplement the household income. She could even have worked in one of the many local industries. 
Whatever Thomas’s place of work was there can be no doubt that it would have been affected by the Great Dock Strike that began on august 12^th 1889, young Herbert Henry, my grandfather, would have been about ten years old. The strike, over conditions of work and rates of pay, lasted for about five weeks. Industry owners were at first confident that they could starve an end to it, but when funds of more that £3,000 arrived from Australia they must have known they were beaten. The strike succeeded and almost every one of their demands were met.

 On the 1881 census but at 92 Poors Lane in Crowland is Elizabeth Hall aged 76 with daughter Elizabeth Baker aged 44, both widows, daughter’s occupation is listed as ‘Nurse SMS’. I think that Elizabeth Hall was Thomas’s mother and the younger Elizabeth his sister. Remember the Baker family from the 1871 census.

1891 census 29 Cypress Place, Manor Way, Bromley, Thomas’s occupation now listed as a labourer general

You can read more about Thomas and Mary Ann in the piece I wrote about her called 'Nearly Forgotten'. 

The family remained at the same address for the next ten years, and it was during this time that Thomas passed away, I have yet to locate his death date. As with other census records there is no occupation listed for Mary Ann, but she would almost certainly have had some sort of occupation. It was common for the time to consider that women’s work of household duties prevented them from being in other employment. Women took in laundry, did piece work at home or did domestic work in other houses.  

Land: Edward PORTER

When I began searching for my roots many many years ago, I remember my father saying that his mother’s family had “come from farming stock”. So, I thought ‘farming stock’ then they must have been ‘of the land.’

The concentration of manufacturing moved from the country to larger towns in the late 18th century. Cottage industries producing hand made goods just could not compete, undermining the rural economy. Agricultural labourers like many of my ancestors found themselves replaced by machinery. Some might have looked on the move to the city as an opportunity to improve the lot of themselves and their families only to discover the reality of city living. Squalor and poverty, dirty air and dirty streets.

This then is a story about Edward Porter, my paternal great grandfather.

As with previous #52 stories I’ve started with the facts I thought I knew, which I now know may not be so correct. As with other people I’d researched for #52, I’m going to go back to the beginning and do the re-assessing starting with the facts that I do know to be true.

Working backwards from his death in December 1920

The 1911 England Census for Edward Porter, age 57, West Ham, Plaistow, Essex shows him at home at 77 Inniskilling Road, Plaistow. Also, there were his second wife, Harriet Little, and his youngest daughter, twelve-year-old Ethel. He had been married to his second wife Harriet for five years and his occupation was dock labourer. Edward’s first wife Mary Ann Rison died in 1900. You’ll hear more about her when I write her story. 

 It’s difficult to imagine what life might have been like for him and his family, but I’ll try. Being a dock labourer was physically hard manual work. Would he come home at the end of a long work day exhausted, his days running into each other repeating over and over, work, eat, sleep, with just one day of respite on Sunday. And Harriet, though there is no occupation for her on this census, she too may have added to the coffers by doing domestic or factory work. When daughter Ethel was 5 years old she was enrolled at Woolmore Street School, and at twelve would probably have still been at the same school.  

Here’s a modern-day picture of the houses in Inniskilling Road, looking very similar to how they were in 1911

Stepping back another ten years to the 1901 England Census for Edward Porter, West Ham, Canning Town  I find him at 17 King Street. The census shows how many rooms a family where occupying at a particular address. The   now widowed Edward and his children occupied 4 rooms in the house, and Walter and Mary Perks and their fourteen-year-old son occupying two rooms. Sub-letting your rented house was very common practice back then.

 Edward’s occupation on this census is stevedore. A word derived from the Spanish ‘estivador’, meaning to stow a cargo.

I knew that the word had something to do with ships and docks but not exactly what.

I learned that stevedores were skilled men, responsible for the way a cargo was loaded into a ship’s hold. Often working in dangerous conditions and under pressure to get the ship loaded and on its way; taking into account the way the cargo was positioned in the hold to maintain the balance of the ship, as well as the order in which the cargo was to be offloaded. Stevedores were in the employ of most major ports, but not in London. In London the role was considered to be so important that the individual shipping companies employed them. Sometimes thought of as the aristocrats of the docks not just because they were better paid than a dock labourer, but unlike a dock labourer they were not employed just on a casual basis.

 http://www.portcities.org.uk/london/server/show/conMediaFile.4773/Dock-labourers-at-the-East-India-Docks.html

Just a few months before the census was taken eighty-one-year-old Queen Victoria died in January 1901. She had remained in virtual mourning since the death of her beloved husband Prince Albert in December 1861.She was succeeded by her eldest son Edward VII, who reigned until his death in 1910. 

Queen Victoria’s son, King Edward VII, rides in Queen Victoria’s funeral procession, February 1901. (Photo by Reinhold Thiele/Thiele/Getty Images)

It’s more than possible that Edward and his family stood among the silent multitude to watch as the funeral cortege, carrying the Queen’s coffin high atop a gun carriage, progressed through London’s streets on its way from Victoria Station through Hyde Park to Paddington to go on by train to Windsor. I cannot imagine how he might have felt witnessing this demonstration of public grief at the death of the Queen when his own grief from the death of Mary Ann only a few months before in October 1900. 
In trying to catch a glimpse of life in 1901 I’ve come across some interesting pictures, like the one below. I wonder just how much meat was actually for the cat! Did you notice the flower boxes at the upper window, a little bit of beauty in what was often a very hard life

.

Step back another ten years to the 1891 England Census for Edward Porter, Essex, West Ham. This time at 3 Elphick Street., another address I am familiar with.

It has really only just occurred to me to question why they lived in so many different places over the years. While we cannot know why with any certainty, proximity to Edward’s work may have been the leading factor. Dockers were not a well-paid lot and spending hard earned coins on public transport might not have been an option. Just as sharing a house with another family would have made good economic sense, as we see on the census. They are sharing the house with Frank and Elizabeth Steding who occupy just one room, squeezing Edward and Mary Ann and their six children into the other three rooms of the house. Both Frank and Edward’s occupations were ‘dock labourer. I wonder how they would have divided up those three rooms between themselves and the six children. Again, there is no occupation for the women. It was thought that at the time a women’s role at home wasn’t considered to be at work even if she was occupied in some form of paid employment.

When writing about my ancestors I like to try to see how they might have lived. Many cities of the time, London included, were dirty, unsanitary and overcrowded. With no rubbish collection as we know it today the waste would have decayed in the streets, turning into nasty smelling muck.

Between August and November 1888, the infamous serial killer who became known as Jack the Ripper murdered and mutilated five prostitutes, bringing fear to the streets of the East End. Newspapers speculated wildly about the killer’s identity adding to the fear public. The killer was never caught.

Homes for my working-class ancestors in the late 19th century would have been dark places, it cost hard earned wages to pay for gaslighting if indeed it had been available in their streets. Without conveniences like modern refrigerators, perishable food would need to be bought almost daily, especially in the summer. Food was very plain by today’s standards, bread, potatoes, bacon and butter, though margarine was a much cheaper substitute. By the end of the 19th century tinned food had become widely available, no doubt opened with a rotary can opener invented in 1870. Condensed milk was patented in 1856, evaporated milk in 1884, the first chocolate bar appeared in 1847, and the first recipe for potato crisps appeared in a cookbook by Dr W. Kitchiner in 1817

 Now let’s take a look back another ten years to the 1881 England Census, Essex, West Ham.

The entries for Edward and his family run over two pages, making it difficult to paste a copy here. They are living in Mary Street; I think they are also sharing the house with another family. George and Elizabeth Everitt and their eleven-year-old son. This census doesn’t indicate how many rooms a dwelling had, only the number of dwellings in the street. The houses may not have been that old as the page ends with a number of houses in the process of being built.

Notable events in 1881 included the birth of the Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming   who was to discover penicillin in 1928, and instant coffee, first introduced at the Pan American World Fair by Dr Satori Kato of Japan. In 1892 The first shipment of New Zealand frozen meat was shipped to Britain, and the creator of the much-loved children’s book character Winnie The Pooh, Alan Alexander Milne, was born. Also, in 1882 Pioneering English naturalist Charles Darwin died aged 73, and production began of the first bouillon cubes by Swiss flour manufacturer Julius Maggi, who developed them so the poor had a cheap method for making nutritious soup.

Edward’s occupation on this census is again ‘dock labourer’, as are many of his neighbours, though on his marriage certificate it is just labourer. Either way his work would have been hard physical labour for long and often erratic hours. 

Edward and Mary Ann married 25 December 1873 at Holy Trinity Church in Barking Road, Canningtown. As was quite usual and as not to pay for the banns to be read in two parishes they gave the same residential address that of 17 Hemsworth Street. Their witnesses were Walter Fitch and Eliza Rison and the first of their ten children, Alice Ann, was born just over a year later on February 6th 1875.  You’ll read about Mary Ann when I write her story. It was usual to choose either a Sunday or other religious day to marry so that no time need to be taken off work.

Sometime between the two census, 1881 and 1871 Edward and Mary Ann and their families moved from Chelmsford to West Ham, London. What I don’t know, and am unlikely to ever find out is, did they know each other before coming to London’s West Ham or after. The only potential Edward Porter in the right area on the 1871 census is the grandson of the head of the household, along with his brother, Oswald. Grandfather William’s occupation was gardener and Edward’s a bricklayer’s labourer

On the 1871 England Census for Edward Porter, the address is George Street Chelmsford, Essex.

Edward was living with his grandparents William and Elizabeth Porter and younger brother. William’s occupation was gardener and Edwards ‘bricklayer labourer Oswald was a ‘skin splitter’, which I have been told had something to do with the manufacturing of vellum from animal skins, and would have been a very smelly occupation. I have yet to locate the whereabouts of Edward’s parents at this time. Chelmsford which was then a fair-sized market town.

There was little leisure time for families like Edward’s, and I think we can take for granted the number of public holidays we get today. It was in 1871 that the British Government passed an act that created four annual bank holidays, and the first was held on the last Monday in May.

Back another ten years to the 1861 England Census for the Porter family in Chelmsford  at George Street the same address as the 1871 census.  No other census entry that I have so far found matched what I know about the family. 

Edward, age 7 is there with parents, Edward and Rachel (Copsey), and younger siblings Oswald, both scholars, and baby Emma. Edward’s father’s occupation was ‘journeyman blacksmith’, and his mother’s a blacksmith’s wife.

In 1843 the railway reached Chelmsford bringing with it an economic boom and the town became known for its engineering industry. Years later in 1899 ‘The Marconi Wireless Telegraph Signal Company’, the first of its kind in the world, opened in Chelmsford.

Edward was born in Moulsham on  Wednesday January 12th 1853, at Moulsham, Chelmsford, Essex to Edward Porter and Rachel Copsey. and  there is a possible baptism for him a year later at St John the Evangelist, Moulsham.  

Air: Hannah JAMES

This week for the prompt ‘Air’ I chose to write about Hanna James, one of my paternal great great grandmothers. Naively I thought that the air would have been much more peaceful and cleaner in Burslem, Staffordshire, where she was born, than in London’s East End where she married and raised her family. 

Hannah wasn’t born amid the hustle and bustle of the London docks as her husband was; but in Burslem, Staffordshire, on April 9th 1862. Her parents were William and Emma James.

How wrong could I have been about her birthplace having cleaner air than in London. Just look at the images below, Burslem was a pottery town with chimneys belching out great clouds of smoke from all the kilns.

http://www.thepotteries.org/bennett/life.htm 

The town of Burslem, 149 miles north of London, was set on a hillside on the Trent and Mersey canal. It’s streets were said to be well paved and te town had an abundant supply of water and importantly it had good drainage. Manufacturers of earthenware set up their factories there, taking advantage of the generous supply of excellent clays. It became the home of Wedgewood due to its position within the great Staffordshire pottery tract, and was at one time regarded as the ‘Mother of the Potteries’. 

With her both her parent’s occupation as potter (1871 census) it is very likely that as a child young Hannah was working in the pottery industry too. Unless a family was very poor, children under eight years old generally didn’t work in the factories. Often the older children would have had the care of their younger siblings. One of the jobs that a child from the age of eight might be employed to do was carry moulds from one part of a factory to another, working long hours for as little as two to three shillings a week. Some children might be able to read and write, having learned at a day school or even attending lessons after work. Both Hannah and her sister are described as scholar on this census so perhaps their family was among the lucky ones who earned enough to apy or their children to go to school.

1871 England Census for Hannah James, Staffordshire, Wolstanton, Tunstall

Curiously, though the census was taken in Staffordshire the birthplace of Hannah’s younger sister is recorded as Poplar in Middlesex. Had they tried their luck in Poplar only to return to the place that they knew well?

Ten years later, according to the 1881 census, Hannah and her family were no longer in Staffordshire, they were now in London permanently.
Though I do not know when Hannah and her family moved south, where there is a first potential sighting of her on the 1881 census. Working as a servant aged 18, at 75 East India Dock Road, for a bootmaker called William Wilkins and his wife Rosetta.

East India Dock Road is just a stone’s throw from 59 Stebondale Street, Poplar which is where her parents and sister were recorded as living. William, Emma, and Elizabeth occupied only part of the house at number 59, it was also home to the six members of the Darby family. Subletting today isn’t something that landlords of today approve of, but back in 1881 it was quite common to let out part of your rented house. William is recorded as being an out of work potter and Emma a potter transferrer (EW manual).

As far as I am aware there were no nearby potteries for them to be work in which makes me wonder if they had not long arrived in Poplar and were yet to find employment. Another thing we can never know.

1881 England Census London, Poplar.

It’s easy to imagine Hannah meeting her future husband, when she was visiting her parents on her days in 1881. George William Harvey lived at 5 Stebondale Street, with his widowed mother and siblings. 

Hannah married GW in the Parish Church (All Saints) in Poplar 10 July 1887, the bride and groom were both aged about 24. Their witnesses were Elizabeth and John Lawrence Price, Hannah’s sister and brother in law who had married in the same church in July 1883. Elizabeth was much younger than her sister when she married at aged just 17. I found a connection to Elizabeth’s family on Ancestry, which gave me the maiden name of their mother Emma Watson.

Hannah and George had at least six children. Four years after George’s death in May 1901 Hannah married Erick Fielden, a widowed corn porter who worked on the London docks. 

You can find out about George William and is life with Hannah and her subsequent re-marriage in a later story

Water: Andrew DWYER

He came from over the sea, well almost, he came from Ireland. 

I’ve been in search of Andrew Dwyer for a very long time. So long in fact that you’d think I’d have given up the search by now wouldn’t you? Well the answer is a definite no. I come back to him regularly, but he remains one of my brick walls. I’m just rambling here because I don’t think there will be much to write about this maternal great grandfather.

According to details from public documents he was born in Kilkenny, Ireland. What the documents don’t say is if he was born in Kilkenny Town or Kilkenny County, that lack of information contributes to a huge brick wall.

Here’s what I know for sure about him.

Andrew Dwyer said he was born in c 1837 in Kilkenny, his father was called John. On 29 January 1854 he married Susan Crocker, and he died in Canning Town Essex on September 7th 1895. Andrew and Susan had 13 children in 20 years.

In the records there is considerable discrepancy in his year of birth, from 1834 on his marriage certificate at age 20, to 1845 on his death certificate. On the four census records that he appears on his birth year ranges between 1836 and 1837. Susan was the person who notified his death and can be forgiven for probably getting his age wrong, because if he was indeed only 50 this would give him a birth year of 1845, making him just ten years old at his marriage.

Susan was born in Bristol of Irish Parents.

Not unusually they both have the same address on the marriage certificate, that of Roscoe Street, Plaistow Marsh, Westham. This meant that they only had to pay for the reading of the banns in one parish. Their witnesses were Thomas Crocker and Catherine McCarthy.

I cannot find Andrew on the 1851 census, but he is on the 1861 at Chemical Cottage, North Woolwich Road, Westham. Occupation Chemical Works labourer. The different birthplaces of the two children indicates that they had previously lived in Poplar.

While I cannot find exactly where the Chemical Cottages were that the family lived in along North Woolwich Road, nearby were many chemical companies including the Gibbs Manure and Vitriol factory. The advantage of living so close to where Andrew worked would have far and away been outweighed by the stink that emanated from them. In one of the articles I read it was described as a 'very powerful pungent odour’ and an ‘empyreumatic odour’. 

Sulphuric acid was made by burning sulphur and other minerals. The smell from adjacent slaughterhouses that imported cattle to provide the raw materials to manufacture manure, liquid blood and dried animal bones, merging with guano and other noxious substances would have seeped into the very fabric of everyday life. It is no wonder then that they had by the 1871 census moved house by the 1871 census. While his occupation remained labourer, now it was in an iron works
1871 Census

Andrew may have worked for one of the East End’s biggest employers, The Thames Ironworks. It would have been a huge industrial area noisy with workshops and foundries requiring a very large workforce.

http://www.portcities.org.uk/london/server/show/conMediaFile.319/Moving-a-beam-at-the-Thames-Ironworks.html

The 1881 census shows that the family had again moved, this time to 27 Brunel Street, Westham. With his occupation as iron labourer he could have still be employed at The Thames Ironworks. Andrew and Susan’s family had grown and this census finds their married daughter Annie Pirret living at home, as well as Andrew’s cousin Isaac Hayes

Labouring work was physically hard and not well paid, and I initially thought that Andrew’s change of occupation at age 56, on the 1891 census, to gas stoker might have meant a less physical job. How wrong could I have been. This except from Flora Tristram’s London Journal, and the following image of the Retort House, Great Central Gas Works, Bow Common, London.

In the big boiler-house: the row of furnaces on either side were burning brightly… There were about twenty men present, going about their work in a slow, deliberate fashion. Those with nothing to do stood motionless, lacking the energy even to wipe away the sweat streaming down their bodies…The foreman told me that only the strongest men were selected as stokers; even so, they all developed chest diseases after seven or eight years of the work, and invariably died of consumption. That accounted for the misery and apathy depicted on every countenance and apparent in every movement the poor wretches made. 1891 Census

On this census, the 1891, married daughter Kate, (Gibson) and her two children were living at home along with Andrew, Susan and three of the other children at 34 Brunel Street Westham.

Sadly, the next time I find information about Andrew is his death, just four years later in 1895. Cause of death, jaundice of five days. His wife Susan appears to have given his age as 50, but he would have been closer to 60, and at this age was still labouring in a gas works. 

The Beckton Gasworks opened in 1870 and employed thousands of men to stoke the furnaces in almost intolerable heat. A working day could be anything up to eighteen hours a day seven days a week to supply gas to the rapidly growing city of London. Demand for gas was much higher in the winter meaning that come summertime many workers were laid off, leaving them to seek employment as casual labourers on the nearby docks.

In 1889, thousands of men were working long, hard days in unsafe conditions for pitiful wages at the Beckton Gas Works in East London. Stokers could shovel coal for up to 13 hours a day and take home just 5 pence (2.5pence in modern money) per hour.