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