Part 3 - His relationship to Edith Sokell

In 1891 Lister Beckett was listed in the census as a visitor in the household of George Siddall, a 30 year old coal miner, in Wombwell near Barnsley. He was apparently single and 26 years old. These 'facts' are untrue. Lister Beckett had been married since 1880 and his wife Elizabeth was still alive and well in Dewsbury. He had been born in 1860 which means that in 1891 he was actually 31 years old. 

Evidence from local newspapers has shown that Lister left Elizabeth in approximately 1885 and had been 'neglecting to maintain his wife and two children' (Yorkshire Evening Post 1 September 1891). At the point Lister Beckett is a visitor in Wombwell he had been living away from his legal wife for about six years. He had two daughters with Elizabeth, Edith Beckett born in early 1881 and Freda Beckett born towards the end of 1882.

Also in George Siddall's household in 1891 was his wife Ann who was 38 years old and born in Worsborough and his step-daughter Edith Sokell aged 18 and a dressmaker's apprentice born in Wombwell. According to FreeBMD George and Ann had married in Q1 1881 in the Barnsley Registration District (RD).  I have been unable to find a parish marriage record for George and Ann's marriage on either Find My Past (which covers Wombwell, Worsborough and other places to the south and west of Barnsley town) or Ancestry (which covers Barnsley itself and places to the north and west). This suggests they married in a Register Office or in a non-conformist place of worship of some kind. Although Edith Sokell is recorded as George's daughter in the 1891 census later, in 1911, she is recorded as his step-daughter. 

Ten years earlier, in April 1881, not long after George and Ann married, I had found them living as boarders in the household of James and Augusta Whittaker at 4 Park Street, Wombwell. Spotting that Augusta was born in Worsborough I dug a little deeper. In Q1 1875 James Whitaker (one 't') had married Augusta Sokell in the Wharfedale RD.  George and Ann Siddall were living with Ann's sister and her husband! I found the Whitaker/Sokell marriage register entry in Otley on Ancestry and Augusta had declared that her father William Sokell (correct) was a colliery manager (not correct). This was probably because James Whitaker's father Ambrose, was a coal agent (true in 1881 - though he had been a carter in 1871) which was a managerial job and besides Otley (which is in the Wharfedale RD) is at least 32 miles from Worsborough so who would ever know! I wonder how James and Augusta met? That is really going off topic though so I shall reserve that question for another day.

It is important for this story to investigate Edith Sokell's background because by 1901 Lister Beckett had set up home with her and had at least three children with her. Their relationship appears to have been socially accepted by her family and the communities in the areas in which they lived and acknowledged by Lister's family in Dewsbury. At the start of my first post in this series I mentioned that our ancestors might have had a much more relaxed view of illegitimacy and unmarried cohibitation than we tend to imagine. This could have been because divorce was very difficult and very expensive before 1938, after which additional grounds of desertion for three years were accepted in divorce cases.

George Siddall was, according to all the census returns I have seen for him, born in Holmesfield in Derbyshire in about 1861. He may be the son of George, a stone waller, and Mary Siddall who were living at Holmesfield Common in 1861. The elder George appeared to have married late in life, he was 53 in 1861 and his wife Mary was 30; a daughter Anne Fox aged 5 is listed on the census along with John I Siddall aged 2 and George Siddall aged 8 months. The General Register Office (GRO) listing for the younger George Siddall's birth registration states that the registration took place in Q3 1860 in the Chesterfield Union in the County of Derby and that his mother's maiden name was Fox. This is corroborated by the registration of his brother John Isaac Siddall in Q3 1858 also in Chesterfield and also mother's maiden name Fox. It appears from this evidence that the elder George married a lady named Mary Fox who brought a child, Anne, to the marriage. I found their marriage on FreeBMD in Q4 1857 in Sheffield RD. Anne Fox would have been two years old when the elder George Siddall married her mother. This example of taking in a single mother and her child and listing the child as his daughter is an example of how illegitimacy was accepted in the 19th century. It may be that Mary had no other option but to marry an older man because of her situation, but that cannot be proven.

Sadly Mary Siddall died between the 1861 and 1871 census returns. In 1871 George Siddall the elder is a widower with three small boys, John I. aged 12, George aged 10 and Thomas aged 4. The family is still living at Holmesfield Common. I found George junior's baptism on 5 July 1863 in Holmesfield when he would have been nearly 3 years old, the entry before his, on 1 June 1863, was for an Elizabeth Hannah Siddall daughter of George and Mary Siddall of the Common, Holmesfield. I cannot find a birth registration for this girl of this name however there is a death registration for a infant (under 1) Hannah Elizabeth Siddall in Q3 (July, August, September) in Chesterfield, which led me back to a birth registration for Hannah Elizabeth Siddall Q3 1863 in Chesterfield, mother's maiden name Fox. I assume the family had Elizabeth Hannah (or vice versa) baptised in June 1863 because she was sickly and did not register her birth straight away (six weeks after the birth was allowed) so it fell in the quarter afterwards. They may have decided to baptism George shortly afterwards as the death of their infant daughter had reminded them that he had not been baptised immediately after his birth.  The GRO indexes confirmed that Mary Siddall aged 40, so a match for Mary's age in the 1861 census return, died in the Chesterfield RD in Q1 1871 - just before the census was taken that year. 

George Siddall junior, step-father of Edith Sokell, had a difficult childhood - his father was quite elderly (by the standard of the time), his mother and a younger sibling had died before he was 10 years old, and, as I soon discovered, his father probably died in 1879 at the age of 73. It seems that both George Siddall junior and his older brother John Isaac Siddall moved to the Barnsley area between 1871 and 1881. Presumably seeking work.  John Isaac Siddall married Jane Elizabeth Schofield in Q3 1877 in the Barnsley RD. She was, like Ann Sokell, born in Worsborough. By 1891 they were living in Wath upon Dearne caring for Tom Schofield their nephew. John Siddall was a coal miner. In the 1901 census Tom S. Siddall, aged 11, is listed as the son of John Isaac and his wife Jane Elizabeth. It seems they had no children born to them, who survived, so they adopted their nephew. Younger brother Thomas Siddall (born about in 1867 in Holmesfield according to the 1871 census) is a little more elusive - he does not reappear until 1911 when he is living in Norton Woodseats, Sheffield with a much younger wife Lily May, and a 4 year old daughter Lorna May Siddall.

William and Elizabeth Sokell, parents of Ann and Augusta Sokell, were from Barnsley or Worsborough, at least they both declared that they were born there in the census returns. This family is how my OH (other half) connects into the story of Lister Beckett. I have a working theory that if a family can trace their roots back to Barnsley at the beginning of the 19th century then I will be able to find a connection to my OH's family tree - however tenuous. In this case the OH's 5x great-uncle Charles Hawcroft had married William Sokell's sister Ellen in 1829 in Darfield. 

In the Sokell family too there is evidence of the acceptance of illegitimacy. In 1881 Edith Sokell (who, if you need the reminder, later set up home with Lister Beckett) is living with her grandparents in Wombwell at 88 Wombwell Main. We know that her mother had recently married George Siddall and the newly weds were boarding with her aunt Augusta in Wombwell. Maybe her grandparents offered to take her in for a while until George and Ann got sorted out with a house of their own. The 1881 census return states that she was born in Darfield in about 1873, although in the 1891 census she is recorded as having been born in Wombwell. I have found neither a baptism nor a birth registration for Edith. Which is unusual. It could be that her surname was mis-spelt or transcribed very badly and just doesn't show up in the online indexes.

William Sokell was 62 years old and a timekeeper in 1881, a job often taken by an older trusted man. As he is living at Wombwell Main I assume he was working at this colliery.  In 1871 at the age of 52 he had been a labourer living at Wombwell Main, and in 1861 a coal miner living at Wombwell Main. In 1851 he had been a linen weaver living in Wilkinson's Houses in Worsborough, next door to his parents John and Mary Sokell who were by then in their 70s. This career progression is common in Barnsley. As mechanised looms were introduced linen weaving, which had previously been a high status job, became a job for women and children. Men moved into the collieries and younger men took on the skilled trades like coal hewer whilst older men with less strength became labourers or worked on the surface screens sorting coal, and then in old age (if they lived that long) they took more sedentary roles like lamp cleaner or time keeper.

The gravestone of William and Elizabeth Sokell in Wombwell Cemetery (photograph taken 3 August 2020 by Barnsley Historian)

Now Lister Beckett's connections are in my territory I am able to show you more than just snips of old maps and pictures from Google. This is the gravestone of Edith Sokell's grandparents in Wombwell Cemetery in plot 1220 in the Consecrated section number 11.

In Affectionate Remembrance
of
Elizabeth
The Beloved Wife of
William Sokell
Who Died July 8th 1883
Aged 62 years
Also of the Above Named
William Sokell
Who Died June 9th 1902
Aged 83 years
In Life Respected in Death Lamented

The burial register tells us that Elizabeth died at Wombwell Main and William in Alms Houses in Wombwell. 

Base of a cross marking the graves of Ann and George Siddall in Wombwell Cemetery

Nearby is a cross style grave marker, sadly broken, for George and Ann Siddall; Ann was William and Elizabeth Sokell's daughter. My OH had to scuff away the soil from the base of the stone to make George's name visible for my photograph. If his date is lower down it would need someone with a trowel to expose it. The shaft and top of the cross are lying nearby.

In Memory of [on the shaft of the cross]
Ann
The Beloved Wife of
George Siddall
Who Died May 23, 1920
Aged 67 years
"Her End was Peace"
Also the above named
George Siddall

From the burial records again I know that Ann died at 105 Concrete Buildings, and George at the Montague Hospital in Mexborough in June 1946, although his home address was still 105 Concrete Buildings.

On the other side of William and Elizabeth's stone is another Sokell family marker - for their son Herbert, his wife Sarah and their son Stanley, who was killed in the First World War. You can find this stone recorded on the Wombwell Soldiers Remembered blog created by my friend Fay Polson.

When we were in the cemetery it felt to me like that corner was a Sokell family plot and George Siddall was buried there because of his marriage to Ann, who had been a Sokell.

1901 census extract for Adwick Road, Mexborough (from Ancestry)

The Poplars, Adwick Road, Mexborough (from Google Maps)

I am aware that Lister Beckett and Edith moved to Pudsey in West Yorkshire after Eileen's birth in the second quarter (April, May, June) of 1903. Their next child, Elsie, was born in Pudsey in 1905 according to her entry on the the 1911 census return.

GRO entry for the birth of Elsie Beckett mmn Sokell

The North Bierley RD mentioned above includes Pudsey and a number of other towns between Bradford and Leeds (UK BMD).

From left to right - Plots 2060, 2061 and 2062 in Con 8 Wombwell Cemetery

1911 census snip for 105 Concrete Buildings, Wombwell (from Ancestry) Click to enlarge

Sydney Beckett and Fred Beedan listed on the Brampton Parish Hall Roll of Honour

 

 

Details of Fred Beedan's wife and children from his Army Service Records (from Ancestry)

Freda Beckett Sokell, born 1900 in Mexborough.
Freda had a child, George Booth Sokell, in 1918. He was baptised at Christ Church, Brampton on 21 February 1918 and her residence at the time was 105 Concrete - the home of her grandparents George and Ann Siddall. He may be the 2 year 11 month old child George Sokill (that vowel shift again), buried in Wombwell Cemetery in 1921.
Freda B Sokell married Arthur Pilling in Q4 1919 in the Rotherham RD. He was a widower with at least four children already (as at 1911 census).
The FreeBMD index suggests they had three children together - Mary, born in 1920, Edith, born in 1923 and Leonard, born in 1925.
In the 1939 Register Arthur and Freda were living at 35 Becknoll Road, which is in Brampton, quite near to the Concrete Cottages. Arthur's date of birth was recorded as 19 Febuary 1876 and Freda's as 6 March 1900, which made her 24 years younger than Arthur. One other person was in their household but the record is redacted. An Arthur Pilling aged 77 died in the Rother Valley RD in Q1 1953 which fits this Arthur's given date of birth in 1939. Freda may have remarried in 1955 and she may be the Freda Hoyle who was cremated at Ardsley in 1983 aged 82, from an address in Wath-on-Dearne.

Eileen Beckett Sokell, born 1903 in Wombwell.
Eileen married Walter Leather on 23 September 1923 at Christ Church, Brampton.
They appear to have had one child, Walter, born in Q1 1928.
Walter and Eileen were living at 4 Cromwell Road, Mexborough when the 1939 Register was compiled. One other person was living in their household but the record is redacted. Walter Leather, born 22 December 1900, was a railway worker (toolman).
Eileen Beckett Leather died in the Rotherham RD in 1985.

In May this year I achieved one of my greatest ambitions - I was accepted to study for a PhD at the age of 59 years. I could probably have chosen a better year in which to start!

Since beginning my higher education journey in 1998, with an Open University course on family history, I have been hooked on the idea of personal development and continuous education for adults. I see the government is currently looking at opening out the A level (and equivalent) sector to more people and I hope access to university study for older people will also be made easier - I abhored the steps the Open University had to make not so long ago when it applied the same funding model as brick and mortar universities. Back in May 2013 I wrote a post explaining what that increase had meant for me.

I had started researching the First World War in Barnsley as part of the OH's family tree long ago and extended my studies to individual soldier's stories and war memorials in 2012. I wrote an impassioned post on the meaning of remembrance in October that year. As I saw my Open University studies drawing to a close, with my last two modules covering Heritage and the First World War, I looked around for something else to do with my time.  I think my first war memorial post was this one about Monk Bretton in June 2013. By September 2013 I had really begun look into the existing research on war memorials and the gaps in that research with regards to Barnsley.  In one post that month I said, "I would dearly love to pull all this together ... with one source of reference for all Barnsley War Memorials". By the end of November 2013, with a group of like-minded people, we had launched the Barnsley War Memorials Project. That project kept me busy until the autumn of 2016 when sadly my health and personal differences with some of the other people in the group caused me to take a step back. I did keep a watching eye on the project and was recently (Summer 2020) informed that it has been wound up after having successfully published its First World War Roll of Honour as a book and online in November 2018. 

The BWMP's website - constructed by myself for free on a Blogger site and supplied with a dedicated domain name by one of the members of the group at his own expense - has been moth-balled. No further updates will be added. By spring 2019, at the point I was writing my MA dissertation, 806 war memorials had been identified in the Barnsley borough and although there were some updates to the BWMP website after I left there are hundreds of memorials which didn't get their own photo and page, and hundreds which still need to be added to the Imperial War Museum's War Memorial Register, which was also one of the BWMP's aims. I would love to address this, if and when I have the time and energy, and I do have a new blog under construction as part of my PhD, Barnsley's History - Commemoration and Rememberance, but that is meant to be about the way people remembered and research into the projects behind the memorials not a catalogue of all the memorials in Barnsley.

Following my departure from the BWMP I was in rather a dark place (not joking - even my cat had died!) and I really needed something to help me buck my ideas up. Happily I discovered that Postgraduate Student Loans had become 'a thing' and that the government would pay me to do a Masters Degree! In the spring of 2017 I applied to the University of Wolverhampton and was accepted to do the MA in the History of Britain and the First World War. Getting the Student Loan application passed was another story and I related it in a blog post in August that year. It is noticable on my blog achive list that my posts really dropped off in frequency around the time of the start of that course in October 2017. 

My classmates for the MA came from all over Britain - one man even flew over from Northern Ireland - so most of our study was undertaken at home. We met up in Wolverhampton for Saturday Schools - 9am to 4pm, once a month - where we had lectures on a wide range of FWW related topics. I was disappointed when there wasn't one on Commemoration and Remembrance though as that was still my preferred subject. I did learn a lot about the technical side of the war, about generals and planning, and campaigns away from the Western Front that I'd barely ever heard of before. There were about 30 of us on the course when it started and I think 17 of us at the end. Some had dropped out due to illness and personal problems, or had deferred until another year when they had difficulty with balancing work and study. After our last Saturday School in May 2019 we all went to the Lych Gate pub in Wolverhampton (our regular meeting after lectures) and promised to keep in touch, wishing each other well with our dissertations which were due in just after the New Year. We have a Facebook group and I bumped into some of the others at Western Front Association meetings in 2019. Most of us did keep in touch and supported each other through the dissertation period. I was hugely relieved when my 15,000 word effort was submitted just before Christmas!

In March 2020 I received the news that I'd passed my MA with Merit. My final dissertation had been awarded a distinction and I had only been a few points off an overall distinction (one hard-working chap on the course did achieve this - my heartiest congratulations to him!) With this under my belt I applied for, and was accepted, to do a PhD at the University of Wolverhampton.

Lockdown ...

Sadly, due to the coronavirus lockdown, our Graduation ceremony was postponed from April to September and then to summer 2021. Last week our MA cohort got together for a Zoom meeting - there were nine of us in attendance altogether and it was great to see their faces and chat. If nothing else the lockdown has taught us oldies how to use these new technologies and not to be scared of them (which I really, really was to begin with).

Prof Laura Ugolini, my PhD supervisor, had the great idea to run a weekly quiz during lockdown. She got together some of her colleagues and other PhD students and a varying number of us met up each week on Zoom and had a laugh over some silly quiz questions. One of Laura's other students is also looking at Remembrance, although his topic concerns battlefields rather than war memorials. I have also helped a student at Sheffield Hallam University by taking part in an individual and a group interview via Zoom for his PhD which is on the meaning of memorals to war and mining disasters to the communities around them. 

I have been watching web presentations on FWW topics. The Western Front Assocation (WFA) have a very busy programme and the talks are put up on YouTube afterwards so anyone who missed them can watch them later. The presenters of the talks include academics such as my MA supervisor Prof Gary Sheffield and WFA members. I have also 'attended' a virtual conference organised by the Social History Society as recommended by Laura, and where several of her PhD students gave short talks. One thing I have really missed during lockdown is conferences - I was booked on at least three FWW related conferences in early 2020 and of course all these were cancelled. 

Sadly the CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) Members' Weekend and AGM in York in early April was also cancelled. I do look forward to these events since I can no longer work at beer festivals. They are attended by large numbers of my 'friends in CAMRA' and it is wonderful to see them face to face and give them a hug. None of this is possible at the moment and may not even be possible next year. Since March I haven't been to a pub for a social drink - we managed a few meals out with my mum and the OH's mum during 'Eat Out to Help Out' in August but we have called a halt on them for now as the infection numbers rise.

The Doctoral College at the University of Wolverhampton provide a very wide selection of online talks and web discussions on becoming a Research Student which cover various aspects of study and personal development. There were some talks that explained how the PhD research life cycle worked over the four to eight years (full-time or part-time) that were really useful. Although I thought I understood what I was letting myself in for, actually hearing about it from current students was very helpful. 

As the new term started the other week I noticed that the cycle of talks was beginning to repeat - I am being bombarded with emails for days on end inviting me to things I've already done in some cases. I am beginning to throw uni emails in the 'trash' without even opening them, which is probably bad of me, but I don't need to know about the library opening or procedures to cope with the lockdown on campus as I am not there and probably won't be for a very long time. Many of the messages seem to be for undergraduates who are just starting at uni, and some have even invited me to open days to find out more about moving on to postgraduate study in the future! As a new(ish) PhD student I seem to have been caught up in a chunk with all the other new starters. But it's not just me ... during that Zoom meeting with my MA colleagues last week several of us commented that we didn't receive anywhere near this number of emails when we first started in October 2017. Even the people who haven't progressed to a PhD are getting the messages. Of course they should have completed and graduated by now and become alumni, but that process is probably on hold along with our ceremony. Having worked with university administration computer systems in the past (oh so long ago now in 2000-2009) I know that messages and emails can be targeted, but I suppose with people working from home in the crisis some fine detail is being skipped for convenience. I hope I don't miss anything important.

The post I published in May 2020, to which I have already referred, ended with me looking forward to writing my first 10,000 word PhD literature review for Laura. Since then I have written and submitted two reviews, one on physical war memorials and one on Remembrance. I haven't visited a single library and I have not seen Laura face to face except on Zoom! I have discovered that footnotes and bibliography count as part of the word limit at this level of study - so a 10k piece with a long list of references might actually only contain 8,600 words in the actual report. It is quite tricky to balance this when writing. 

Happily my huge book collection, gathered together over years of Open University study and during my MA, has meant that I have only had to buy a few more books to do my literature reviews.  The focus of my research may be war memorials but there are lots of ways in which I could study them, so my recent book buying has been a bit eclectic. I think I know what I want to do - but the 'themes' under which I construct my thesis are very fluid at this point. My most recent purchases have been to do with the economic and social situation in Britain during the inter-war period as I know that in Barnsley the construction of war memorials was greatly affected by strikes and unemployment and the resultant shortage of money amongst miners and their families. Something else to talk to Laura about.

My second review was returned by Laura yesterday with constructive comments and my next task to do some amendments and corrections based on her advice. We are planning a Zoom meeting next week to talk about it - there are one or two things I'm not sure I am quite getting my head around - 'moving the topic forward', 'how they [authors] have contributed to new understandings' and 'key contributions to the literature'. I did use the words 'developing trends' at one point and Laura noted that this was the kind of thing that needed highlighting. At the moment I am summarising the books I have read on the topic, usually in chronological order, remarking on what the authors have concluded and noting points where they seem to relate to my proposed studies on Barnsley (although Laura has commented that the proper place for detailed comments along these lines is in my actual thesis). I think I am missing some analysis that is required at this higher level of study. 

But that is the whole point of having a supervisor I suppose ... to lead me in the right direction ... and after all, I have only just begun my six (maximum eight) year journey to a PhD. 

I understand that studying for a PhD can be a lonely thing - several of the potential supervisors I spoke to mentioned that - but as someone who has studied with the Open University, has been away from the world of work since 2009 and almost housebound since 2016, I am used to being alone, so I expected I would be ok with that. To be honest only my usual health issues are preventing me from completely enjoying the research and writing, and there's not a lot I can do about them except pace myself and take things one step at a time. Even if it means only writing for two or three hours a day a few days a week - reading and note taking on the days in-between - or looking for relevant articles and newspaper cuttings online when I'm awake in bed at 4am.

It is this other loneliness that I am finding difficult - no weekend trips away, no visits to Archives with the OH, no sitting in on the OH's CAMRA meetings (the beer festival ones in one of our local Wetherspoons were best as lots of people turned up and they were quite informal), no taxi rides with my mum-in-law to the pub for a meal every other week (the OH used to walk and meet us there!), no visits to my daughter in Leicester or my son in Bedford. 

I remember the last weekend before the lockdown very clearly - on the Saturday the OH took me to Christ Church at Brampton near Barnsley to look at their war memorials (I was starting my research into the Brampton Parish Hall Roll of Honour), there was a coffee morning so it was easy to gain access. The man taking the money for the drinks and cake was wearing gloves, a sign of things to come, and we didn't shake hands, although I made a move to do so as I introduced myself only to realise I shouldn't! Afterwards we went a CAMRA Regional meeting in a pub in Elsecar, near Barnsley (these meetings move around Yorkshire each quarter and seem to visit Barnsley about once every three years, and they are the only ones I attend now) where someone was coughing in a corner saying it wasn't the virus ... by the following Friday we had moved my elderly mum to our house and my OH had gone to live at her bungalow as he was still working doing repairs in public buildings, schools and police stations. I didn't hug him for 16 weeks. 

I started showing Covid-19 symptoms shortly afterwards and had to isolate from my own mum in my bedroom, coughing and coughing ... I lost my voice and had to write notes to communicate with her during late April and into May even after the rest of the symptoms had gone. Happily I didn't give the virus to mum as far as we can tell, although neither of us were tested as that was only for people who were really ill or in hospital at that time. It is also difficult to tell, given my pre-existing conditions, whether I have Long Covid symptoms, but I am quite unfit as a result of the lock-down, no Tai Chi classes, no walking around shops or cemeteries or museums for months and months. A few minutes housework or gardening makes me very tired now, much more so that in the past. We have even employed my mum's cleaning lady to come and 'do' for us once a week - at least I have my PIP to pay for that so I don't feel quite so guilty.

Of course things started getting back to normal in the summer, but it seems that was a false hope. I wonder how long it will be before both of our mums and myself are locked down as vulnerable once again? The OH and I managed a trip to the Black Country Living Museum in Dudley for our 16th wedding anniversary in early September, but I was so tired just looking around Dudley town centre the day after the museum trip that he bought me a rolator walking frame with a seat there and then. That has been tried out walking to my mum's bungalow, but it takes me 35-45 minutes to do a walk that Google Maps says should take 10 and the next day I don't get out of bed.

Next month I have been invited to the socially distanced dedication of a war memorial bench at Carlton near Barnsley ... a few years ago the Barnsley Branch of the Yorkshire Regiment Association set themselves the challenge to install benches near to all Barnsley war memorials. Obviously only the main outdoor ones as 806 [the total discovered by the BWMP before they wound up] might might be a few too many! Several of the members have joined my Barnsley's History - The Great War Facebook page and that is how they got in touch with me. They have even suggested I might give them a talk on Barnsley war memorials when the current situation is resolved. I am probably looking forward to the dedication in a way that is completely out of proportion to the scale of the event - but I haven't been to anything like this since March and it would be lovely to see other faces in real life, not just on Zoom.

This topic has already been partially covered by my previous review which covered writing on the way in which remembrance was affected by the war - some authors, such as Cannadine, Eksteins and Hynes suggest that the war was a 'watershed moment' in remembrance as the First World War had a significant impact on attitudes to death. Other authors, such as Gregory, Winter, Vance and King believed there was continuation of traditonal rituals in marking the losses of the war, although their form and meaning did change during the inter-war period.

Image from Amazon.co.uk

I have been particularly taken by Pat Jalland's examination of the ways in which the upper classes were able to marshall significant resources to seek information about the deaths of their sons, compared to the working classes, who were more often left with only a notification that their loved one was missing. The wealthy were also able to commemorate their sons with individual memorials alongside the collective community memorials. In some cases men who had been deemed missing were not included in the lists of names inscribed on community memorials - apocryphal stories note mothers asking for their sons not to be included as they held hopes that their boys might yet return. Jalland relates the experience of several upper class families who were able to discover more about their officer sons, and in one case this led to the discovery of the bodies of men of other ranks whose possessions or a photograph of the mass grave were later supplied to their grieving families. This, she says, provided a degree of comfort for them, which was generally not the case.

This made me think about examples in Barnsley. I am aware that familes often had to wait for months, if not years, to hear whether their missing son was officially dead, or that proof had been found of his death. The retreat of the Germans to their fortified lines in early 1917 led to the discovery of the fate of a number of Barnsley men who had fallen during the Battle of the Somme in 1916, other had to wait until the battlefield clearances after the war. There are a significant number of individual memorials to the sons of the professional classes in our churches, and yet I can also think of hundreds of examples of working class men who fell in the war who are remembered on family gravestones in our churchyards and cemeteries. 

Wooden Battlefield Cross (with thanks to Barnsley Archives)

A few families were able to visit the battlefields and cemeteries after the war and organised visits were available, sometimes through charitable organisations. Most, however, had only a name on a war memorial to visit, which had to stand in place of a grave. It was a matter of great surprise for the volunteers of the Barnsley War Memorials Project to discover that 698 of the 3790 Barnsley Borough war-time fatalities were NOT remembered on a memorial in the borough. Subsequently we discovered that some of these men were remembered on memorials in other towns, maybe the homes of the men's parents or widows, but for others we can only assume that there is some truth in the stories about mothers not wanting to see their son's names on their local memorials or that, sadly, these men had no-one left in the area to put their names forward for inclusion. The Somme Centenary Artwork (erected in front of the Town Hall in 2016 and now in Churchfields Gardens in Barnsley town centre) which named 300 men lost on the first day of the Battle of the Somme (1 July 1916) was the first physical, public commemoration of 48 Barnsley men killed on that day.

From the Barnsley Chronicle 15 February 1919 (with thanks to Barnsley Archives)

Once I begin the formal research stage of my thesis I think it will be interesting to investigate the differences in commemoration between classes as much as I can. Jalland was fortunate to find collections of personal letters on which to base her work - I am aware that there are very few of these in our local archives. There are one or two published memoirs which give examples of family commemorative practices - but mainly I think I will be relying on the evidence of the physical memorials in our borough.

References:

Barnsley Archives,  http://www.experience-barnsley.com/archives-and-discovery-centre

Returned from the Front, http://thereturned.co.uk

Cannadine, D.    ‘War and Death, Grief and Mourning in Modern Britain' in Whaley, J. (ed.) Mirrors of Mortality: Studies in the Social History of Death (London: Europa, 1981), pp. 187-242.

Eksteins, M.    Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (New York: Mariner Books, 2000 [1989])

Gregory, A.    The Silence of Memory: Armistice Day 1919-1946 (Oxford: Berg, 1994)

Hynes, S.    A War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture (London: Pimlico, 1992 [1990])

Jalland, P.    Death in War and Peace: A History of Loss & Grief in England, 1914-1970 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)                    

King, A.    Memorials of the Great War in Britain: The Symbolism and Politics of Remembrance (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1998) 

Vance, J. F.    Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning and the First World War (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1997)

Winter, J.    Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: the Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014 [1995])

Today I have been reading a book, Pat Jalland's Death in War and Peace, for my next PhD literature review. At 10 pages a day, reading and note taking, it will take another week to complete the section on the First World War and its aftermath. However today I highlighted a point about 'In Memoriam' notices as a form of remembrance. 

Of course I was aware of these little notices, you can still find them in local papers (and I assume newspapers of note such as The Times) on a weekly basis. However they also appeared annually to commemorate soldiers who had been killed, died of wounds or were missing, from the early years of the Great War and give information on the family who posted them as well as the usual names, dates and a sentimental verse or quotation. So if a soldier in your family was killed in, say, May 1915 (as 68 men on the Barnsley Roll of Honour were) then I would suggest you look in the newpapers in around about the date he was killed in May in 1916, 1917 and so on. 

The Barnsley Chronicle for August 1914 to March 1919 was indexed during the recent Centenary period, for the names of men and women who lost their lives in connection with the war, by the volunteers of the Barnsley War Memorials Project (BWMP). Thanks to the generosity of Barnsley Archives and the Chronicle management themselves, the volunteers were able to work from home using digital copies of the paper, one month at a time. We undertook not to use the images of the newspapers in any publications without permission of the Archives, but we could use transcriptions of the articles and notices freely. This was to encourage readers to visit the Archives for themselves. If you see an image of an article in one of my blog posts it pre-dates this work and that undertaking and is an article that I paid for myself, it being of interest for the OH's family tree. The articles about the war memorials on the BWMP site were an exception as they were of special relevance to the project and permission was given to use these. The project was also given permission to use low resolution images of the photographs of the men on the BWMP's sister sites, Lives of the First World War, and the Roll of Honour website. 

For more information on obtaining copies of photographs and images of articles about servicemen from the First World War please contact Barnsley Archives.

Moving on ...

Having been reminded of these notices I had a look for an example to use for this post. 

One of the name panels on the Mapplewell and Staincross war memorial

On 12 June 1915 Albert is mentioned twice on page 8 of the newspaper. The pieces give slightly different details.

Roll of Honour
[names]
WOOD - Killed in action, Sapper Albert Wood, 1st Barnsley Batt., late of Mapplewell. (p.8)
[names]

Patriotic Pars (a regular section that gave snippets of news rather than longer pieces)
The following men are the casualties amongst the Staincross men who are serving their King and country: - [names] May 14. Albert Wood (R.E.), wounded at Ypres. [names] (p.8)

It looks as if the two articles were not cross checked - one reports Albert wounded and the other notes his death - killed in action.

On 7 August 1915 Albert again has two mentions in the newspaper. The first is a detailed report based on a letter received by his wife, the second is another mention in the newspaper Roll of Honour.

Private A. Wood.
Mrs. A. Wood, of Wentworth Road, Mapplewell, has received the sad tidings from the Front that her husband, Private A. Wood, R.E., has died of wounds received in action. From a comrade of the deceased, J. C. Rowe, R.E., Mrs Wood has received the following letter: - "Dear Mrs. Wood, - I am very sorry to have to tell you that your husband was badly wounded on May 13th and a few days later he died in hospital in spite of all that could be done for him. I hope you will be strong in this hour of trouble as you know that we are all trying to do our duty and trust in God to protect those whom we leave behind. It is nearly as hard for us to lose such a good comrade whose only thought was for others, and I sure that his many sacrifices will leave behind an impresson on our minds which will never fade. These few words cannot express what we feel in our hearts. Your husband died doing his duty nobly and it should be a grand example to his children to know their father died as he had lived, a brave man." (p.1)

Roll of Honour
[names]
WOOD. - Died of wounds received in action, Private A. Wood, Royal Engineers, late of Wentworth Road, Mapplewell.
[names] (p.8)

On 11 September 1915 Albert is mentioned twice on page 8 of the Barnsley Chronicle.

Patriotic Pars
In next week's issue we shall produce a photo of Sapper A. Wood, of the Royal Engineers. He was one of the batch of soldiers taken from the Barnsley First Battalion when at Newhall Camp, and was killed in action in France. He leaves a widow and six children who reside at Upper Carr Green, Mapplewell. (p.8)

Roll of Honour
[names]
WOOD. - Killed in action in France, Sapper Albert Wood, 13th Service Barnsley Battalion (Y. and L.), late of Upper Carr Green, Mapplewell.

The following week, on 18 September 1915, Albert's photo appears on the front page of the paper along with those of two other men. A short paragraph reprises his story. The photo shows an older man with a bushy moustache. His cap badge is that of the Royal Engineers, rather than the York & Lancaster Regiment which he first joined.

The Toll of the War - Three More Local Men Who Have Fallen
[two paragraphs about brothers Matthew and Arthur Weldrick]
Sapper A. Wood, whose photo we reproduce, was one of the 1st Barnsley Battalion drafted to the Front to join the Royal Engineers, and he was killed in action. His home was at Upper Carr Green, Mapplewell.

That is the end of Albert's mentions in 1915, but then in the following years his family remember him in May each year.

On 13 May 1916 in the Barnsley Chronicle the 'In Memoriam' column contains two adjoined notices on p.8 concerning Albert, one from his family and the other, I assume, from work colleagues.

WOOD. - In loving memory of Sapper 86682 Albert Wood (better known as Bakewell), of Bradford, late of Mapplewell, who fell in action on May 15th, 1915.

In the book I have been reading for the past week historian David Cannadine quotes A. J. P. Taylor in 1966 who said that in 1914 'no man in the prime of life knew what war was like. All imagined that it would be a great affair of great marches and great battles, quickly decided'.(1) I don't own the Taylor book so I looked it up online - a slightly later version is available on Google Books, with limited page accessibility, but fortunately that did include the page with the quote Cannadine used.(2)

The context of the quote amends its meaning slightly. What Taylor actually said was 'There had been no war between the Great Powers since 1871.' Then the quote above, and then 'It would be over by Christmas'. So he was excluding the South African wars of 1879 to 1915 and, specifically for my case, the Second Boer War of 1899 to 1902.  If a Barnsley man was old enough to have served in that war, say 18 years old in 1900, he would only have been 32 years old in 1914.

However, we have to consider what Taylor may have meant about the 'prime of life' - it could be that what we think as still young today was not the case when he wrote in 1966 and probably even less so in 1914 when life expectancy was shorter. If he meant 18 to 30 years old then, yes, I suppose his proposition was accurate.

Analysis of the First World War Roll of Honour created by the Barnsley War Memorials Project in 2014-2018 shows that nearly 400 men who died were over 35 years of age and of those 125 were over 40 years of age.(3)  The approximate percentage of men who died from those who served was one in eight or about 12.5% according to J. M. Winter. But note that Winter states that 'men under 20 were more likely to be killed (more than one in six)', and that the chance of men in his oldest cohort, ages 45-49, being killed was only one in seventy. (4) This is because they were more likely to have served behind the lines, or on the home front. 

Winter, 'Britain's Lost Generation', p. 451.

Using Winter's table of age distribution of British men who served and who died in the First World War (above) I see that 9.8% of men between 35 and 39 were killed and 5.1% of those age 40-44. So the 275 deaths of Barnsley men 35 to 39 years of age, might be translated into as many as 2800 men who served, and the 125 who died over the age of 40 into another 2500 who served. That is an awful lot of men who enlisted who might have served in the Second Boer War and even if they didn't actually serve in the Boer War there was a very good chance they knew some one who had. 

In 2012 I wrote a blog post about Tom Charlesworth, born in 1864 in Hoyle Mill, who served in the South African wars prior to the Boer War and also in the First World War. By 1914 he would have been 50 years old! The family story was that he was a guard at a prisoner of war camp in the FWW. 

Another Barnsley man with prior experience of war was Lieutenant (later Captain and Major) Tom Guest, who joined the Barnsley Pals. Jon Cooksey writes that Guest had served in the Boer War as a Sergeant and also notes a number of other old soldiers.(5) I wrote a blog post about Tom Guest's origins in 2015. Cooksey interviewed many First World War veterans and they remembered Major Guest as a genial old soldier, a good leader and who got on well with his men. He was born in 1875 so he would have been 39 years old when the First World War broke out. He was killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916. 

John Edwin Cornish, who lived in Worsborough Common had served in the army in the Royal Field Artillery between 1901 and 1911, and was called up out of the reserve in 1914. He had not served abroad during his service, but we might presume that he had served along many men who had. He was killed at Ypres on 18 November 1914.  He was 31 years of age. The 69 Barnsley men killed in 1914 would have been in the regular army (or the navy) or the reserve. Although the Territorials were called up immediately they did not see action overseas until April 1915. 

The prior service of men is often mentioned in reports in the Barnsley Chronicle. 

Thomas Patrick Knight, born in Ireland, but living in Barnsley by 1911, had served in the Second Boer War with the King's Shropshire Light Infantry. He was awarded the DCM in 1915 for 'conspicuous gallantry and initiative' on 9 August. He was killed less than two months later 17 September 1915, aged 39 years. The Barnsley Chronicle reported that 'Corporal Knight went through the Boer War and did good service there'.(6)

George Jaques had originally joined the army in 1890 aged 17 and had served seven years, although during that time he had not seen active service, according to an article in the Barnsley Chronicle on 3 February 1900. He was called up from the reserve for the Boer War. He later wrote a very detailed letter about how he was wounded fighting the Boers which was published in thenewspaper.(7) He described 'very hot work, bullets dropping all around us' and as they advanced 'it was just like being in a heavy hail-storm'. He added 'We could see our fellows dropping, but we kept going'.  George made it  home from South Africa and re-enlisted in September 1914, by which time he was 41 years old. Probably as a consquence of his age he was assigned to guard duty in this country, but unfortunately he was killed during an incident at Frenchman's Point detention centre in Durham on 9 September 1915. (Follow the link on George's name above for more information on this.) 

The Second Boer War was well covered in the Barnsley Chronicle - you can read the newspaper articles for that period via the British Newspaper Archive (for a fee).

I am sure that given a few more hours to work through my files I could find many more examples of men who served in the First World War who had experience of battle - this seems to refute A. J. P. Taylor's assertion quoted at the start of this post. As I write in my story of Tom Charlesworth I imagined these older men regaling their younger family members and work colleagues with exciting stories of their service which might have inspired many to volunteer for the FWW. Yes, the Boer War was comparatively short and only resulted in the deaths of 16 Barnsley men as far as we know, 14 of those are remembered on the memorial in St Mary's, Barnsley, but the Wombwell Boer War Memorial, which records two men who died, names 43 other local men who served in that conflict. There is no reason not to assume that these figures might have been repeated in other Barnsley townships and villages.

I contend that many Barnsley men had first hand experience of war before 1914, and many more will have read about war in the local newspapers and heard stories from those who had served.

References:

(1) Cannadine, D.  ‘War and Death, Grief and Mourning in Modern Britain' in Whaley, J. (ed.) Mirrors of Mortality: Studies in the Social History of Death(London: Europa, 1981), pp. 187-242.

(2) Taylor, A. J. P. The First World War: An Illustrated History (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974) via Google Books, https://tinyurl.com/y4pynlqk (accessed 16 Nov 2020) - no page numbers available.

(3) Barnsley WW1 Roll of Honour, https://barnsleyremembersww1.home.blog/ (accessed 16 Nov 2020)

(4) Winter, J. M. 'Britain's 'Lost Generation' of the First World War', Population Studies, 31 (3) (1977), p. 450-452.

(5) Cooksey, J.    Barnsley Pals: The 13th & 14th Battalions York and Lancaster Regiment: A History of the Two Battalions Raised by Barnsley in World War One (London: Leo Cooper, 1996 [1986]), p.37, 43, 46, and 76.

(6) Barnsley Chronicle, 6 November 1915, p. 1.

(7) Barnsley Chronicle, 24 March 1900, p. 6.

About five years ago I wrote the story of one Barnsley born man, William Malkin, who emigrated to Australia in 1909. He left behind his wife and child behind (I don't know why) and made a new life for himself over there which caused some problems for his wife in Barnsley after he was killed on 28 September 1916 whilst serving in the Australian armed forces.

Pte. William Malkin, whose parents live at Ward Green, Worsbro' Dale, and who emigrated to Australia seven years ago, has fallen on active service with the "Anzacs". (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 28 October 1916, p.10.)

His wife's story was quite inspiring for me - she was Barnsley's First Health Visitor and remarried after the war to an ex-serviceman with his own problems. 

From the Barnsley Chronicle 26 Dec 1914 with thanks to Barnsley Archives

Click the links above to read those two stories - or carry on reading here - I will try to make this post stand alone but there will be more detail about William and Frances' stories in the posts above.

Firstly I'll mention the Swaithe Main Colliery Disaster which is how I linked these stories to family trees that I am researching. The above is a link to a dedicated website with full details of the events of 6 December 1875 and a list of names of the 143 men killed that day.  I discovered that my OH (other half) and one of his friends have family links to several of the men who lost their lives and, in an unhappy co-incidence, to the soldier, William Malkin, mentioned above.

One of the men killed down Swaithe Main that day was William Greenbank, aged 27, from Lancashire. He had married a Barnsley girl, Hannah Crank, in Lancaster on 13 November 1871 and moved to Worsborough (the second 'o' in Worsbrough comes and goes over the years before finally vanishing in the mid twentieth century). Hannah's father William Crank (sorry about all the Williams in this story - it was obviously a popular family name) was from Ulverston in Lancashire but had somehow moved to Barnsley before 1850 where he married Rachel Sedgwick that year at St Mary's in the town centre. Here's a snip of a section of their family tree to help you sort it out. 

William Crank b.1823 in Ulverston, and some of his descendants

William and Rachel had six children in all, the first three were born in Barnsley and the last three in Ulverston. As the two places are 109 miles apart by the most direct route I can see on Google Maps, it fascinates me that the family moved back and forth so much. 

Their moves must have been driven by the availability of work. In Ulverston the main occupation appears to have been Iron Ore mining, and in Barnsley before 1850 it was weaving. In 1851 when William and Rachel were living at Croft Ends in Barnsley town centre (roughly where New Street and Wellington Street meet at the top of the hill nowadays) William was listed on the census return as a Weaver as were both his and Rachel's fathers on their marriage register entry in 1850. The linen trade had brought hundreds of men and their families to Barnsley from across Britain - from Ireland and Lancashire where they had experience in weaving linen and from North and West Yorkshire where men had experience in weaving wool.

But hand loom linen weaving as a well paid job for men in Barnsley was coming to an end by the mid 1850s with the introduction of power looms, which could be more cheaply worked by women, and William Crank may have decided to take his new Barnsley family home to Ulverston where there was better paid work in the Iron Ore mines.

Sadly, as indicated on my snip by a little explosion symbol, William Crank was killed in a mining accident. On 25th November 1868 William and another man were drilling in the No.41 Pit at Lindal Moor, near Ulverston, to make a hole ready for blasting. The second man walked away to attend to some other work and a few minutes later 'he heard a tremendous explosion' and when he ran back he found William had been killed on the spot. An inquest late returned a verdict of 'Accidental death caused by a blast of gunpowder'. (Details from Soulby's Ulverston Advertiser and General Intelligencer 3 December 1868 p.5 available via Find My Past or the British Newspaper Archive.)

William's widow Rachel and some of her surviving children returned to Barnsley between 1871 and 1875. This was within a few years of William's death and Rachel may have been seeking support from her own family in Barnsley. One son, John Crank, who was already married and employed as a Iron Ore miner, remained in Ulverston at that time, though he too eventually came to Barnsley. Another son, George Crank, had met a girl in Lancashire, but they had both arrived in Barnsley by 1879 when they married at St Mary's church in Worsborough village. Rachel's eldest daughter Hannah is the Barnsley born girl who had married William Greenbank in Lancaster in 1871 and they appear to have travelled to Barnsley with or soon after Rachel's return.  Hannah had been born some months before her parents' marriage but William appears to have always considered her his daughter when completing the census returns and she names him as her father when she marries. 

William Greenbank and Hannah Crank's 1871 marriage entry (from Ancestry)

William and Hannah Greenbank were living at Kingwell, Worsborough Dale, in the widowed Rachel Crank's household in 1875. They had one daughter, Mary Alice Greenbank, born in 1872, possibly in Ulverston (although later census returns mention various places in Cheshire). I know about William's living arrangements because Rachel, his mother-in-law, was a witness at the inquest after the Swaithe Main Disaster.  Images of the Coroner's Notebooks are available on Ancestry.

RACHEL CRANK of King Well in Worsbrough aforesaid, Widow, on her oath says, The deceased Wm Greenbank was 28 years old & a Colliery underground labourer. He was my son in law & lived with me. He set off to his work about a quarter past 5 o'clock on the 6th inst: & I saw his dead body the same day at Swaith Main Colliery. His right foot was off & and he was much bruised all over his body. He was in a club.

We also know that William Greenbank was buried at St Thomas's, Worsborough Dale, as the funerals of the men killed in the disaster were reported in the Barnsley Chronicle. From the details in the report I calculate that William's funeral took place on 11 December. Other funerals took place across Barnsley in the following week and all were reported in a very long article on 18 December 1875.

SWAITHE MAIN COLLIERY - WORSBRO' - THE FUNERALS
No fewer than twenty interments took place at St. Thomas's burial ground, Worsbro' Dale, on Saturday afternoon. The names of the deceased were: Charles Henry Vine (20), Whitecross Farm, Swaithe; William Hudson (38), Worsbro' Dale; Joseph Robinson Mowbray (19), Worsbro' Common; Benjamin Bennett (26), the Row, Worsbro' Dale; Leonard Galloway (16), Worsbro' Common; Tom Kilburn (49), Swaithe; Charles Goodman (19), Swaithe; William Laughton (17), Whitecross Farm, Swaithe; Joseph Harrison (20), Worsbro' Common; Alfred Hoyland (29), Ward Green, Worsbro'; John Semley (17), Swaithe; Charles Harrison (13), John Henry Gilbert (20), and George Beresford (53), all from one house in Swaithe; William Greenbank (27), King Well, Worsbro'; William Balmforth (22), Worsbro' Dale; John Dawber (24), Worsbro' Dale: John Thomas Smith (18), King Well; and the boy who was not identified. 

The full article takes up several columns in the broadsheet newspaper. 

The Crank/Greenbank family had suffered the loss of a second male breadwinner in just over seven years. 

Hannah had to seek work to support herself and her little daughter and in the 1881 census I found her working as a Housemaid in the household of Samuel Joshua Cooper of Mount Vernon - famous in Barnsley as the founder of the Cooper Art Galley. I wondered how the daughter and widow of miners had the experience to be a Housemaid in a wealthy household, but on investigation in earlier census returns I discovered that she had worked in 'service' before her marriage. She may also have been charitably viewed by the Cooper family as the widow of a man killed in the course of his work. While Hannah was working her little daughter Mary Alice Greenbank was boarded out to an elderly couple in the Ward Green area (again according to the 1881 census returns).

Hannah remarried on 1 October 1881 in Darfield All Saints to William Malkin who was four years her junior. She gave her occupation as Servant at her marrige, and note that she signed the register with a X, William Malkin was a miner but he could write his own name.

William Malkin and Hannah Greenbank's 1881 marriage register entry (from Find My Past)

As a point of interest it is worth noting that parish records for Barnsley can be found online in two separate places - due to the different Diocesan archives where the completed registers from the churches were deposited. The records for churches in Barnsley town centre and places to the north and west can be found in Barnsley Archives and the West Yorkshire Archives in Wakefield and have been published online by Ancestry. The registers for churches to the south, including Worsbrough, Wombwell and Darfield, are in Sheffield Archives and have been published online by Find My Past. Depending on where you live one or the other of these two websites will probably be free to access in your local library. It is worth making enquiries (after the current Covid crisis has passed of course) before you visit to find out what your library has and whether you need to book a computer in advance.

After their marriage Hannah and William Malkin lived at Ward Green and had three children. William Malkin (jnr) who was the young man who married and then emigrated to Australia, and two daughters, Ethel and Florence. Mary Alice Greenbank was also living with William and Hannah in 1901, but not for long as she married Thomas White on 7 April that year. 

Hannah Malkin became a widow again in 1913 with the death of her second husband. She lived until 1920 so she also knew about the death of her solder son William Malkin jnr 1916. William and his wife Frances had one son, Clifton Trevor Malkin who had been living with Hannah in 1911 whilst his mother was working as a Health Visitor. I thought that spoke well of Hannah, caring for her grandson so her daughter-in-law could work, especially after her son had gone to Australia without them. It suggests to me that there was no (or little) ill feeling between the women of the family.

Mary Alice's husband, Thomas White joined the Barnsley Pals (13th Battalion York and Lancaster Regiment) on 26 September 1914 and remained in service without incident until the end of the war. His Service Records are available online. They do not appear to have had any children of their own, although the 1911 census shows that they adopted a little girl.

Hannah's daughter Ethel Malkin married Herbert Simmons on 21 December 1912 and had one daughter, Florence, before the war, and a second, Ruby, on 31 August 1916. Their sons Cyril, Herbert jnr and Joseph were born after the war.  Herbert was a soldier in the Reserve from early 1915 but I am not yet sure whether he served overseas or whether his occupation as a miner kept him at home. He also noted, in his discharge papers, that he had suffered from rheumatism for twelve years and fits (epilepsy?) since he was a child, so he may never have been fit enough to serve overseas.

Hannah's daughter Florence Malkin married Allen Edgar Scales in 1929. She would have been 37 years old by this time so I'd be interested to know what caused her to marry relatively late in life. Allen Scales had also enlisted in the First World War but was discharged shortly afterwards as unfit to serve due to poor vision. Florence and Allen had one daughter, Margaret, born in 1931.

The more I learn about the history of Barnsley the more events and people connect with each other. If I had not already researched Barnsley's First World War soldiers I wouldn't have spotted the significance of  Hannah's second marriage so quickly.  Was her experience unusual for the time? She lost a father and husband in mining accidents and a son in the Great War ... only further research will tell. 

Thank you for reading.

Dedication on the Swaithe Main Memorial in Worsbrough, from the WayMarking website where you can find other pictures of the memorial.

My interest in history began back in 1991 when a family friend asked me about names in my family - she started me on the path of a 30 year journey investigating my own and the OH's family trees (and I was happy to research for anyone else who asked or who looked interesting!) By 2012 I had begun to investigate war memorials as a way of finding out more about the OH's servicemen ancestors and now I am in the first year of a PhD studying Barnsley War Memorials. I've come a long way in those 30 years.

Sometimes a photo or a historical image grabs my attention because it says something about my research of all the different varieties. Today's blog post is about a page of the 1891 census return and in particular some families who I could see at a glance were people whom I knew more about.

1891 census for Barnsley, Piece 3770, Folio 120B - showing Waltham Street

I had begun the day by looking for more information about Esther Fisher who married into the Kellett family who are ancestors of the OH. I don't just go backwards in direct lines in our trees, I like to look at brothers and sisters and the families of wives and husbands who married into our families. It is always useful to examine a page of census information to see what you can find out about the area where your family lived.

Waltham Street is off Sheffield Road and useful sites for photographs of the area before the clearances of the 1930s and 1960s are The Tasker Trust and YOCOCO. You might also try the Barnsley Streetsbooks from Pen & Sword publishers, Waltham Street appears in Volume 1.

The top of Waltham Street (with thanks to the Tasker Trust) Image ref: EGT1442

1906 map of Sheffield Road showing Waltham Street (from Old Maps)

Here is a map of the area in 1906 from the Old Maps website, which is also the date and scale of the Alan Godfrey historical maps you can buy from Experience Barnsley (for our area) and online. The houses on Waltham Street are larger than some nearby, and of later date than those on Taylor Row nearby or in Wilson's Piece on the other side of Sheffield Road. The large building at the top of the street on the left was the Rising Sun pub (details on the CAMRA ?What Pub website).

The census page above shows part of the Elliott family, who are living in a Court off Waltham Street, at the top, then:

56 Waltham Street - the Fisher family - William and Sarah with three children and two boarders Harry and Clara Sherburn. William was a Wood Turner and both he and his wife were incomers to Barnsley from Kendal in Westmoreland (now part of Cumbria). Esther, the daughter I was researching, was born in Barnsley in about 1871 and popping back 10 years to 1881 I could see that she had an older sister, Isabella, born in Barnsley in early 1868. So the family had been in Barnsley for at least 23 years by the time of the census shown above. The houses on Waltham Street were quite small, only four rooms (look in the column just before the names) not counting the kitchen. I do wonder how they fitted in the boarders, but I suppose they brought in some extra money for the family. Technically a boarder shares meals with the family, while a lodger has to provide their own. Sarah Fisher died a few months later and is buried in Barnsley Cemetery, William remarried within a year and appeared to have done well for himself moving to Park Road by 1901 (maybe his new wife had a little money - she was also a widow) and running a lodging house on Doncaster Road in 1911. Esther Fisher, aged 19 in this census return, married Alfred Kellett, who was the OH's 1st cousin 3x removed, in 1892.

54 Waltham Street - John and Mary Ledgar - an elderly couple, both from Ireland. Mr Ledgar was a Coal Carter. I hope that at the age of 70 he only had to drive the cart rather than carry the coal - but our ancestors had to do what they could to make a living. They appeared to have a lodger too - although the census entry is amended showing that John Clarke, age 24, was a separate household within their house although how they separated the four rooms is a puzzle. There was a second lodger at number 54 listed out of order lower down the page, John Corley, aged 20. Goodness knows how they fitted him in as well.

52 Waltham Street - the Law family - this is a family I know quite well as they had several sons who served in the First World War. Head of the household was Fergus Law, aged 50, a Coal Miner, his wife and five children were all fitted into another of the four roomed houses. Sons Fergus and Walter were killed and son Arthur survived service in the Royal Engineers. I wrote a post about Fergus in 2017 after visiting his grave in Rawmarsh Cemetery. Fergus Law, head of the household was born in Barnsley in 1841 and his parents had married at St George's church here, but I have not yet found details of his father during my research. He appears to have gone missing before the 1841 census return so I don't know his age or where he was born. One for the 'to do' list.

50 Waltham Street - the Jaques family - this family is distantly related to the OH as a cousin, Ernest Jaques, also married into the Kellett family.  I have researched the Jaques family back to the beginning of the 19th century in Barnsley. At least five members of the extended family served in the First World War, and there may have been more as the Jaques ran to large families and there were a number of sons the right age to have served that I haven't researched yet. Bearing in mind that consciption was introduced in early 1916 by the end of the war most men aged 18 to 50 had been called up. Tom Jaques, son of the Tom Jaques aged 21 in the census return above, was killed in 1917 at Bullecourt. Another fatality in the family was George Frederick Jaques, a cousin of the above family, who was accidently killed whilst guarding a military camp in South Shields, Durham. He was buried in Barnsley Cemetery and has a Commonwealth War Graves Commission gravestone. An older man, he had served in the Boer War. Mary Ann Jaques, head of the household at 50 Waltham Street had been widowed in 1887 when her husband Peter, a Quarryman, died age 50 at 7 Copper Street. I can find nothing about his death in the Barnsley Chronicle so I can only assume it was due to natural causes. He was also buried in Barnsley Cemetery.

A few days ago I discovered a Jaques was killed in the Swaithe Main Colliery disaster in 1875, Henry Jaques aged 27, a cousin of the deceased Peter Jaques.

48 Waltham Street - the Carroll family - is the last household on this page. One member is on the next page. I have not researched this family. 

But having looked up this page, 1891 Barnsley, Piece 3770, Folio 121F, I scanned quickly down and found a very familar name!

40 Waltham Street -the Priestley family - these were the OH's direct ancestors. Robert and Fanny Priestley, from Nottinghamshire, are his 2x great grandparents with Fanny also a Kellett before her marriage. In 1891 there were five children at home, although they had thirteen in all eventually. Robert was a coal miner at this point in time and in this census one of his teenage sons was already a hurrier down the pit. The OH's great grandmother was just six years old - my mother-in-law remembers her as her 'little grandma' who didn't pass away until 1970. I find it amazing that someone I might have known (if I'd lived in Barnsley in those days) might have been able to give me a first hand account of life on Waltham Street in the 19th century. I never knew my own great grand parents as my father and mother were by far the youngest children in their respective families.

The youngest Priestley son, Walter Clarke Priestley, who was born in 1896, a few years after the census return above, was lost in First World War in April 1918 as the Germans made their last advances. His older brothers Robert and William, who were listed with their parents in the 1891 census, both served and survived the war. The husbands of two of the Priestley daughters also served and survived. Walter, William and their brothers-in-law were all in the Barnsley Pals, either the 13th or 14th Battalions of the York and Lancaster Regiment. 

I wrote a series of posts about the Priestley family back in 2014. These two concern the First World War. The Priestley Home Front pt1 and The Priestley Home Front pt.2.

The Kellett family, who linked several of these households in Waltham Street together, came to Barnsley from Retford in Nottinghamshire between 1868 and 1874. I can see from the births of the children in the various branches that Robert and Fanny came here first and must have sent word back to their siblings and cousins as other branches arrive over the next few years. Fanny's father George Kellett and her youngest sister also moved to Barnsley before 1874. The family had been mainly agricultural labourers, although George Kellett had a stint as a toll-bar keeper and as a publican. 

Examine just part of one street and you can see inward migration, changes in occupation over time, family experience of mining disasters, the First World War and even (at a stretch) make a connection to the present day. I recommend you expand your family history into the streets around the area where your ancestors lived, you will find out so much more about the way people lived over a hundred years ago.

This is the top of Waltham Street on Google Maps today from a similar angle to the photo above. A lot of the terraced houses have been replaced by bungalows, the pub is a Chinese restaurant and you can't even access it from Sheffield Road because of some traffic calming bollards. Very different.

Waltham Street (Google Maps)

Thanks for reading and good hunting.

Over the Christmas and New Year period I have myself two weeks off from my PhD studies - however as my main hobby is family history it was inevitable that I would come across some First World War (FWW) connections eventually. 

I am currently researching several friends' family trees alongside my own and my husband's (the OH). I have a theory, often mentioned on these pages, that if a person can trace their family history back to the 19th century in Barnsley then the chances are very good that they are related to the OH. This sometimes makes me wander off down branches that I might not otherwise have researched in the search for FWW associated men and women. When I do discover FWW servicemen in our friends' trees they are often unaware of the connection - for example in a tree I did last year I found five men killed, including two brothers from Barnsley who were the subject's great-uncles on her mother's side.

The OH's tree currently includes 139 men who served in the FWW and of those 42 lost their lives. Ten of the men who died are close enough relatives for my family tree software (Family Historian) to have defined their relationship automatically. Forty-three of the men who survived also have a close relationship which has been automatically calculated and displayed, for the others I can find their relationship (usually some complex mixture of cousin and marriage connections) by using Family Historian's built in 'How Releted' tool.

Using the 'How Related' tool in Family Historian

Yesterday I added another man to the roll of honour of the OH's relatives who were killed or died in the war. Riley Willerton is the OH's first cousin three times removed. This is quite a close connection but I had not found it previously as most of the Willertons had not moved to Barnsley. His aunt, Charlotte Willerton was the OH's great, great grandmother (see above) who was from Lincolnshire and who had moved here to Barnsley between 1884 and 1887 (based on the birth places of her children). 

Riley Willerton was born in Holton Beckering in Lincolnshire (which lies between Market Rasen and Wragby) on the 13 April 1893. His parents were Thomas Willerton and Eliza Sheppard who had married in Langriville Chapel in Lincolnshire on 11 January 1876. The OH's great, great grandfather Joseph Croft was one of the witnesses to their marriage, although he could not write his name and signed the register with a X, as did Thomas Willerton. The bride and the female witness Elizabeth Willerton (presumably Thomas and Charlotte's sister) signed the register and both had quite nice handwriting. Does that say something about education opportunities for girls in nineteenth century Lincolnshire, or the lack of them for boys? At a guess the latter, for boys were probably expected to start work on the farm at a young age and may have missed a lot of school as a consquence.

Riley was the eighth of Thomas and Eliza's eleven children. 

Thomas and Eliza Willerton's travels plotted on Google Maps

Thomas and Eliza moved around Lincolnshire a great deal after their marriage, presumably following the availabilty of work. In 1911 the family are living Greetwell Hollow, which is on the outskirts of Lincoln itself and Thomas is a horseman on a farm, Riley, aged 18, is a ploughboy which sounds as if he might be an assistant to his father. Two of his brothers are listed as labourers on the farm - whether or not they all work on the same farm is impossible to tell from the census return.

By the time Riley enlists in the Lincolnshire Regiment, on 9 November 1914, not long after the outbreak of the war, he is 21 years of age and gives his occupation as waggoner. Fortunately his Army Service records have survived, if in a damage state, and we can see lots of detail of his enlistment and service. He was 5' 5.5" tall and his physical development was good, he had a 39 inch chest and perfect vision. He gives his next of kin as his parents, Thomas and Eliza, who by this time are living in Willingham by Stow which is near Gainsborough. He gives his own address as Kir(k)by Green which is over 25 miles away from his parents' home and close to Sleaford, and states that he has been living away from his father's house for over three years.

Active Service page from Riley Willerton's Army Service Records (from Ancestry)

Riley left England at the end of February 1916 and was assigned to the 2nd Battalion on 13 March 1916, but in July 1917 he was transferred in the field to the 25th Trench Mortar Battery. It looks as if he had leave to the UK between 4 and 14 September 1917. He was killed in action on 24 November 1917. His records say 'Place not Stated', but as he is remembered on the Tyne Cot Memorial he must have been in the Ypres area when he was killed, and he either had no known grave or it was lost before the end of the war. The Long, Long Trail website notes that the 2nd Battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment were involved in some of the battles making up the Third Ypres, but not in any particular action at the time of Riley's death. I have not yet found the War Diaries for the period.

Willingham by Stow from War Memorials Online

Riley Willerton is remembered on the war memorial in St Helen's church in Willingham by Stow, which is a small brass plaque commemorating eleven men. As he was living with his parents in Greetwell Hollow near Lincoln in April 1911 and stated he had lived at Kirkby Green, near Sleaford for at least three years in late 1914 it might be suggested that he was not a resident of Willingham by Stow, but his parents were obviously able to get the local war memorial committee to include his name on their plaque. He is not named on the plaque in the church in Kirkby Green. 

I have just noticed that the name above Riley's on this memorial is Arthur Willerton - could he be Riley's brother - if so how dreadful for Thomas and Eliza. I will investigate tomorrow.

In recent months I have been noticing the surname Senior in the Barnsley area. It crops up in my husband's (the OH) tree, in the tree of his friend that I researched over the Christmas break, and the other day it appeared in the tree of some First World War soldiers named Law whose family lived on Waltham Street in 1891.

There appear to be a lot of Senior families in Barnsley, and many of them can be traced back to the 18th and early 19th centuries, before the census started in 1841 and before reliable, clear, parish records. Standard formats were introduced in 1754 for marriages, 1813 for baptisms, and revised in 1837 for marriages which were henceforth centrally registered. Happily in some parishes the clergy kept detailed records before the arrival of these standard formats, in particular the Dade style registers and Barrington style registers. In Barnsley the Methodist New Connexion church (established 1797) on New Street kept detailed baptism registers in the early 19th century and these have been transcribed with images attached on Find My Past. In particular they give the maiden name of the mother of the child, and sometimes her father's full name, occupation and abode. 

1822 Baptism at Barnsley Methodist New Connexion, RG4/3645 (from Find My Past)

The above example reads:
1822
Hannah Crabtree Born 9th of Augt - Baptized - 15th Sepr 1822 daughter of James Crabtree Weaver Barnsley, Silkstone, by Mary daughter of William Senior, Tailor, Barnsley etc J Manners

I think the last was the name of the clergyman who recorded or performed the baptism as higher up the page the names J Manners or Joseph Swift are preceded by the word 'by'. 

This detailed record set me off on a path to try to integrate the Crabtree and Law families into one or another of the Senior family lines I had already researched.

The only marriage of a James Crabtree and a Mary Senior that I can find in Barnsley is in 1804, at All Saints Silkstone. This appears on Ancestry in the West Yorkshire Church of England records. Non-conformist couples married in Anglican churches before 1837. The only exceptions were Quakers and Jewish couples.

1804 marriage in the Parish of Silkstone (from Ancestry)

The current church building in Barnsley town centre, St Mary's, dates from 1822, but there was a church on the site long before that. It was a chapel in the Silkstone parish until it became a parish in its own right. The Barnsley Family History Society index for marriages at St Mary's Church begins in 1800 and does not list the marriage of James and Mary seen above so that suggests that they married in the mother church of All Saints at Silkstone.

The above reads:
Banns of Marriage - of - Parish
No.186. James Crabtree and Mary Senior, both of this Parish of Silkstone were Married in this church by banns this twenty seventh Day of May in the Year One Thousand Eight Hundred and Four by me Jos Wilkinson Curate.
This marriage was solemnized between Us - James Crabtree / Mary Senior X mark
In the presence of Joshua Jackson / Francis Gothard

The form originally stated 'the Year One Thousand Seven Hundred' etc, but the Seven was struck through and Eight written in the margin.
The witness Francis Gothard acted as a witness in many of the marriages on the nearby pages, suggesting he was attached to the church in someway rather than being a family member or friend.

James and Mary Crabtree had at least thirteen children, the first four I have found were baptised at St Mary's in Barnsley between 1805 and 1810 and the following nine at Methodist New Connexion church between 1811 and 1829.

We know that Mary's father was William Senior, a tailor from Barnsley, based on the evidence in Hannah Crabtree's baptism entry above, and the earliest census returns supply an indication of her age, which can be used to make an approximate calculation of the year in which she was born.

In 1841 census return for Park Row, Barnsley, James Crabtree was 60 years old and Mary 55 years old. But we have to remember that the instructions for the 1841 census were to round down the ages of anyone over 15. So James could have been aged between 60 and 64 and Mary between 55 and 59 years old. The 1851 census return for Barnsley town centre, including Park Row, is damaged and Mary's age is on the edge of a missing portion - but I think it says 66. She was born in Barnsley. James has passed away and Mary is a widow. From these ages we can calculate that Mary was born between 1782 and 1786 with a weighting towards 1785. Or so she claims ... This would have made her 19 years old at her marriage in 1804, which sounds perfectly reasonable.

From the various baptisms I have made a list of James and Mary's children:
Elizabeth    bap. 23 Jan1805
Ann            bap. 1 Mar 1807
Joseph        bap. 2 Apr 1809
William      bap. 23 Sep1810
John          bap.1811
Sarah          bap.1815
William      bap.1816 (so what happened to the William from 1810?)
Mary          bap. 7 Mar 1819
Jane or James bap.1820 (the record looks like Jane but refers to the 'son' of James & Mary)
Hannah       bap. 15 Sep 1822 (see image above)
Elizabeth Ann  bap.1824
Thomas      bap.1825
Elizth         bap.1828 (the name Elizabeth has been used three times?!)

James and Mary's daughter Mary married John Law at St George's church in Barnsley on 25 December 1838 and she was living with her parents in 1841 with two children, Elizabeth and Fergus, although there was no sign of her husband. I had already found the Law family, headed by Fergus Law (b.1841), grandson of Mary Senior, on Waltham Street in 1891 as I mentioned at the start of this post.

In the 1841 census return were:

James Crabtree aged 60
Mary Crabtree aged 55
John Crabtree  aged 25 years
Thomas Crabtree aged 15 years
Elizabeth Crabtree aged 13 years
Mary Lawe aged 20 years (Lawe or Law - the married name of Mary Crabtree b.1819)
Elizabeth Lawe aged 2
Fergus Lawe aged 2 months 

Everyone bar the two small children were listed as Linen Weavers. Nearly every adult in the other seven households visible on the double page spread of the 1841 census containing the Crabtree family are also listed as Linen Weavers. The exceptions are a Cordwainer (shoemaker), a Waggoner and a Sadler, and one elderly lady living on 'Independent Means' (income from rents or her savings).

John Crabtree has probably also had his age rounded down, as if he is the John baptised in 1811 he should have been 29 or 30 in 1841.
Mary Lawe (nee Crabtree) appears a good fit for the Mary baptised in 1819.
Elizabeth Crabtree was probably the final, of three, Elizabeth's born to James and Mary, baptised in 1828.

It seems that a number of James and Mary's children died young - at least the first William, and the earlier two Elizabeths.

The Barnsley Family History Society have indexed the burials at St Mary's Church, Barnsley from 1800 to 1840. 

The burial of William Crabtree - noted as the son of James & Mary Crabtree - took place on 2 October 1810, he was only one day old.
The burial of a second William Crabtree took place on 28 April 1819, he was aged 2 years, so probably the boy baptised in 1816.
The burial of Elizabeth Crabtree age 16 took place on 24 August 1821 - this is probably the eldest daughter of James and Mary Crabtree.
The burial of Ann Crabtree aged 14 took place on 6 January 1822 - this is probably the Ann baptised in 1807.
The burial of Jane Crabtree aged 1 year took place on 12 May 1822 - this could be the girl baptised in 1820.
The burial of Elizabeth Ann Crabtree age 1 took place on 25 September 1824 - their second Elizabeth.
The burial of Sarah Crabtree age 20 took place on 17 November 1835 - that makes her a possibility for the girl baptised in 1815.
The burial of Hannah Crabtree aged 17 took place on 19 June 1840 - just a year before the census was taken - this was probably the girl whose baptism I have used as an example above.

I found eight burials before the 1841 census which may have been James and Mary Crabtree's children. Four children appeared in the 1841 census return, that leaves us with only Joseph, baptised in 1809, unaccounted for from the thirteen baptisms I have identified. I believe he is probably the Joseph Crabtree, from Barnsley, aged 42, so born about 1809, who appears in the 1851 census in Kimberworth, near Rotherham, married to Hannah, with no children listed.

In the 1851 census return in Barnsley, living on Park Row still, which I have already mentioned,  there were:

Mary Crabtree Head Widow [age] 66 Weaver [born] Barnsley, Yorkshire
Elizabeth Crabtree Daughter Unmarried [age] 22 Power Look Weaver [born] Barnsley, Yorkshire
Thomas Crabtree Son Married [age] 25 Weaver [born] Barnsley, Yorkshire
Jane Crabtree Dau-in-Law Married [age] 20 Weaver [born] Barnsley, Yorkshire
Feargus Lowe Grandson -- [age] 9 -- [born] Barnsley, Yorkshire
Hannah Sykes Lodger Widow [age] 23 Power Loom Weaver [born] Barnsley, Yorkshire
Mary Ann Sykes Lodger -- [age] 4 -- [born] Barnsley, Yorkshire
George Crabtree Grandson -- [age] 2 -- [born] Barnsley, Yorkshire

Until I found the burials of the various Crabtree children I did wonder if Hannah Sykes was Mary's daughter, married and widowed, but having checked the GRO indexes I saw that Mary Ann Sykes, born in the Ecclesfield Registration District (RD) in Q3 1847 (the only entry that fits the child listed in the 1851 census return above) has a mother's maiden name of Fox, not Crabtree. So Hannah Sykes is not a family member, just a lodger as it states on the census return, and the death of Hannah Crabtree in 1840 is still likely to have been one of James and Mary's children.

Mary Crabtree reports in the 1851 census return that she is a widow. The death of a James Crabtree aged 68 in the GRO indexes in the Ecclesfield RD appears to fit the age I estimated from the information in the 1841 census. Combining this information suggests a birth date of 1779 for James Crabtree.

Mary Crabtree, the widow, does not appear in the 1861 census return. The only death for a Mary Crabtree that I can find in the Barnsley area in either the GRO indexes or on FreeBMD after 1851 and before 1861, is in the second quarter of 1855. The GRO index gives her age at death as 70 years. That suggests that she was born in 1785 - agreeing with her declared age in 1851. A Mary Ann Crabtree dies in 1856, but the GRO index, which includes age unlike the FreeBMD index, notes that she was under 1 year old.  

I can find no burial record for a Mary or James Crabtree on either Ancestry or Find My Past (which has no Barnsley burials in its Yorkshire burial index but does include the various Latter Day Saints indexes for England and Wales). The Barnsley Family History Society Burial Indexes (for sale via Genfair, see above) only go up to 1840 for St Mary's and 1850 for St George's. Barnsley Cemetery's records don't begin until 1861, so they have to have been buried in a church yard.  Ancestry's records for St Mary's church burials don't start until 1859 - but I visually checked St George's and All Saints Silkstone for 1855 just in case there had been a transcription error. No luck. Maybe their burials were at St Mary's - but unfortunately 1847 and 1855 fall in the gap between my sources.

Going to the beginning of her life I searched the baptism records on Ancestry and Find My Past for girls called Mary Senior who were baptised in the Barnsley area from 1780 to 1790. I found four, but only one had a father named William.

Baptisms from the beginning of 1790 at St John the Baptist, Royston, near Barnsley (from Ancestry)

Note the last baptism on the snip above is for:
1790
March
Mary Dau of William & Mary Senior of M: Bretton 21

In other words, a baptism on 21st March 1790 for Mary Senior daughter of William and Mary of Monk Bretton (which was a village, now suburb, near Barnsley).

If this indeed the correct baptism for the Mary Senior who married James Crabtree in 1804, and it took place within the usual few days of her birth this suggests that she was only 14 years old when she married. James' birth in 1779 or thereabouts suggests he was 25 years of age when he married in 1804. A possible reason for this might be that James and Mary anticipated the marriage somewhat (I am being polite) because their first child, Elizabeth, was baptised on 23 January 1805, only eight months after their marriage.

It is odd, but until I can find any evidence that suggests this is not the right baptism I'll put in in the Senior/Crabtree family tree with a note attached saying *probable*. It feels strange to our modern sensibilities for a girl of 14 to have married a man of 25 in 1804, even if there were extenuating circumstances, and to have had at least thirteen children with him in the next fourteen years. I do feel rather sorry for her. 

Rebecca Probert, in her book Marriage Law for Genealogists, the definitive guide, notes that with parental consent for minors under the age of 21 years, the minimum marriage age for girls was legally 12 years of age and 14 years of age for boys. This was the case until as late as 1929, when both were increased to 16 years.

I will now return to constructing the family tree of the Crabtree Law family to bring it up to date with the research I have already carried out on the 1891 census when the Law family lived on Waltham Street.

Thanks for reading. 

******

This post was updated on 14 and 16 Jan 2021 after initially posting on 13 Jan 2021, after I discovered, on Ancestry, the first four children of James and Mary who were baptised at St Mary's Barnsley - these births are not listed on Find My Past which misled me for a while.

Eons ago I wrote a post about war memorials in Monk Bretton. I had only been researching war memorials for a year or so and my only resources were the newspapers in Barnsley Archives. It was about a week after the first meeting of what would become the Barnsley War Memorials Project (BWMP, but now Barnsley & District War Memorials B&DWM). I had read an article in the Barnsley Chronicle from 1919 that suggested photographs of the men who had gone to war and not returned should be hung as a form of memorial in three places in the Old Mill/Smithies part of Monk Bretton. I couldn't find anything more out about these photos at the time so I mostly forgot about them.

From a Tweet by Cavalier Postcards on 2 Nov 2016 (Twitter)

Then a postcard was reproduced on the Readers' page of Spring 2017 issue of Memories of Barnsley magazine showing the Roll of Honour from the Old Mill Wesleyan Reform Chapel. I was able to backtrack to a tweet advertising the postcard for sale online and took a copy of the image.

The names checked out as being Barnsley men but I just filed the images and a scan of the magazine as I was busy with my MA essays at the time. Another BWMP volunteer worked out that there were 24 names including 3 men who had been killed. 

It has only been in the last few days that I realised that this might be how the photographs proposed in the article about Smithies were eventually displayed. It looks like an elaborate wooden frame with the photos attached in some way. I assume the three in the centre were the men who died. 

Yes, their names were Frank Horbury (died of illness 16 November 1918 in Britain)and Thomas Hilton Horbury (died of illness 12 May 1917 in France), a pair of brothers and Herbert Kaye (missing presumed dead 7 October 1917). (Thanks PS!)

Last August I found a cutting online from the Barnsley Independent that referred to an unveiling ceremony at Smithies Working Men's Club. The Independent had only just reached the post war years then on the British Newspaper Archive and its coverage of the war years and beyond is still patchy. Anyway, I filed the cutting and sent a copy to PS for adding to the List. (He and I found out long ago that it's much better if just one person looks after an online spreadsheet. When two of us tried to edit it we ended up with corrupt copies and each having different versions. Now I just send him cuttings and suggestions (memorials and men) and he adds them to the lists.)  

And once more I was too busy to think more about it until someone asked a question about Smithies Club on our Barnsley's History - The Great War Facebook page a few days ago.  The Smithies Roll of Honour apparently listed 190 names including ten men who had fallen during the war. Only the names of these ten and of four men who were awarded distinctions are listed in the newspaper cutting. PS had written a bit about one of the men and someone had asked where Smithies Club had been. It may sound like I'm constantly off with the fairies these days but I have been trying to buckle down and write a 15k word draft chapter for my PhD so I have been trying to avoid getting too deeply drawn into 'rabbit holes'. PS replied that another member of the group had suggested the club might have been the on Smithies Lane opposite the Council Depot - well I've been down there (there's a Dumpit Site which was handy for where we used to live) and there's not a lot across the road from that depot. 

Then we get to today - I've now written nearly three quarters of my draft chapter and most of that in the last week - today I wrote 800+ words half of them on .... Smithies Club! Only that cutting about the unveiling is relevant to my academic writing so I thought I'd come onto my blog and pour out my workings about how I discovered where the club used to be and who was involved in it. 

1931 map of Smithies from Old Maps

In the 1931 map of the area above (click to enlarge) you should be able to see the club just off centre on a triangular road called Short Row. There wasn't a short row of houses there by 1931, some of them had been turned into the club and the rest had been demolished long before. I found some invitations to tender for decorating and repairs at the club in the Barnsley Chronicle in 1909 and 1912.  You do get some idea of how the club is arranged as one item mentions a billiard room and a bar.

1906 map of Smithies (Old Maps)

The 1906 map shows a row of eight houses in that triangle shape, it looks like three of them were turned into the club. This is confirmed by a report in the Barnsley Chronicle 21 March 1903 concerning five clubs in the Barnsley area which were suspended for breaking various licencing rules.

Barnsley Chronicle 21 March 1903 p.6 (Find My Past newspapers)

I love the detail - all the little facts about the costs and the times, the numbers of times drunken members had been seen leaving the building. The clubs suspended  were Smithies Club, Carlton Club, Jump Club (12 month suspension), Hemingfield Club (6 months suspension) and Wombwell Club (3 month suspension). You can clearly see that Smithies Club 'rented three cottages at 5s a week'. 

The earliest item I've found for Smithies Club is from November 1901. It's about a lecture on the importance of mining, miners and labour. I expect it was meant to be both educational and political  ... The speaker was a Mr. E. A. Rymer, 'how wonderful it was to find the miner emerge from the depths of the earth, emancipated from slavery, to think and act as a rational being and responsible citizen', he then complimented the club and gave some statistics about the success of the Working Men's Clubs movement. Importantly the article does refer to the Smithies Club as new.

It took me a while but I did eventually manage to find some census entries for the area - searching for addresses on Ancestry and Find My Past is much more difficult than searching for a name as the sites revolve around family history and most people want to look for their ancestors of course.

Thomas Taylor wasn't at the club in the 1901 census, but he wasn't far away. Smithies Lane runs between Wakefield Road and Cockerham Lane just before Huddersfield Road. It's about a mile long. The road crosses the River Dearne and that means that some of Smithies Lane lies in Barnsley and some in Monk Bretton, the river being the boundary between the two areas. As you are going up from the river towards Huddersfield Road, Rockingham Street is the left turn just before the railway bridge. Thomas Taylor, aged 26, his wife Alice, aged 24 and their children Jane, 6, Charley, 3 and Esther, 1, were living at number 54 in 1901.

Thomas Taylor was a Hewer in a coal mine and was born in East Hartlepool, Durham (I have some ancestors who lived there!) and his wife Alice was from West Hartlepool. I wonder how they both got to Barnsley? I found what I am sure is their marriage register entry, at St Mary's church in Barnsley on 26 March 1894, so they didn't marry and then move ... maybe their families moved together and then the youngsters (Alice claimed to be 19 years old when they married, but if she was 24 in 1901 she was only 17 when she got married) married in their new locale. All three of the children named above were born in Barnsley. When Esther and her younger sister Alice (born only a month before her baptism but who appears to have died young) were baptised at Monk Bretton church Thomas' occupation was given as Club Caretaker. 

Thomas may have answered the advert I found in the Barnsley Chronicle on 13 September 1902 for a Steward at the Smithies Working Men's Club and Institute. I sort of hope he came along a bit later because if he was there in 1903, well, then it was on his watch that the club got suspended. I haven't seen any other adverts yet, but I'll keep looking.

1911 census for Smithies Working Men's Club

The 1911 census tells us that Thomas and Alice had a total of eight children but that four of them had died before 1911. Oh, dear. The only surviving addition to the 1901 census is Elliott Taylor, aged 1 year and born in Short Row, Smithies, so actually born in the club I assume.

In December 1912 the club made a presentation to a local couple on the occasion of their Golden Wedding anniversary. The article in the Barnsley Independent gives a few little details about the club. The members had subscribed to a collection for gifts for the couple, apparently 'most energetically' organised by Thomas Taylor. The presents were  a silver snuff box for Mr Linsey, aged 74 and a brooch for his wife, aged 72. Mr Linsey had been born in 1838 in a house adjoining the club which had since been demolished and his parents had been handloom weavers. The article says Mr and Mrs Linsey lived at the Barnsley Corporation Water Works at Smithies and Councillor Lingard when making his speech it referred to them as close neighbours of twenty years standing. The census summary book for 1911 shows Mr T Lindsey (a spelling mistake maybe) living at Waterworks House, Mr Lingard living at Mill House and on the other side of him the Club with Thomas Taylor. It would be nice to try to work out which shape on the old maps are which houses.

I will skip the war years as I have written about them today already.

Sadly Alice Taylor died in 1919 aged 44 and is buried in Monk Bretton Cemetery. Thomas joined her there in 1941 aged 67. He had remarried in the interim and in 1939 he was living at 23 Carlton Lane which is the address where he dies. I don't know when Thomas left the club - or what happened to his children (yet) but given their connection to the North East and that interesting fib about Alice's age when they got married I might take a look one day.

Roll on the 1921 census - only about nine months to wait - that will plug a few gaps!

The 1939 register suggests the club may have been split back into smaller houses again. The occupants of 'Club House', Smithy Green are Mr Percy and Mrs Ada Pedley, both aged 41. The next three rows are redacted so may be their children.

1962 map of Smithy Bridge and Short Row (Old Maps)

Percy Pedley was still living in 'Clubhouse', Smithies Lane at the time of his death in December 1970 according to the index entry for Probate on his will. Does anyone remember him? He would have been 72 or thereabouts.

13 April 1970 River Dearne flooding - Short Row in the middle of the picture

I found the image above on Barnsley Council's YOCOCO site. Percy must have witnessed this flood. 

I have cropped the picture and reduced the size a little. I imagine it is looking over Smithy Bridge so you can place it on the 1962 map above. Could this be the only picture of Smithies Club?

When did the Club close? What happened to the Roll of Honour? Did the Club amalgamate with another one and were the trophies, pictures and records saved? When were the buildings demolished? 

I have more questions than usual after one of these posts. More recent history is much harder to research online and Barnsley Archives won't be open for a while yet.

 Completed Tuesday 20 April 2021 at 2.43pm.

This post is not completely random - I already had an inking that George Kay was related to my OH in some way. But it was after reading an article in the most recent issue of Memories of Barnsley (Spring 2021) that I decided to look into him in more detail.  On pp. 16-19 there is a piece on 'The Co-op Celebrates its Centenary 1862 -1962' which features some nice old photos and a reproduction of an article from the 1962 Barnsley Chronicle.

Memories of Barnsley, Spring 2021 pp. 16-17

The above section mentions Edwin Kay, a Barnsley businessman, who rented a shop to the very first iteration of the Barnsley Co-op. George Kay, his nephew, was employed 'as salesman and manager for a wage of 15s (15 shillings = 75p but would be equivalent to about £120 today) a week with a house, gas and coal thrown in. The shop, on Market Street, Barnsley, opened its door for the first time on 13 March 1862. 

My OH's 4x great-grandmother, Esther Leech, was first married to Thomas Duncan in 1818. Sadly 23 years later Thomas passed away leaving Esther with eight children to care for. They had 10 children in all but two appear to have died before their father. Esther remarried in 1846 to William Kay. He was 11 years her junior and had not previously been married as far as I can tell, certainly he claims to be a bachelor when he marries Esther. In the meantime another of Esther's children had died, and two had married, but that still left William taking on five children not his own. In addition he brought his own son, George Kay Walton, to the marriage.

In 1841, the household of Thomas and Esther Duncan on Westgate had included seven children and three boarder or lodgers, including a William Kay, aged 27 years, and a Weaver. This is too much of a coincidence. I know that Thomas Duncan died on 7 June 1841, just one day after the 1841 census was taken (evidenced by his gravestone at St Mary's Barnsley), but it did take a very reasonable five years for Esther to marry her lodger.

Another of Esther and Thomas's children died in 1849 and I have lost track of one (Henry Duncan born 1826, present in the 1841 census but not thereafter), the OH's 3x great-grandfather Peter Duncan married Harriet Newsom in 1850, just before the next census, leaving the following household living on Westgate in Barnsley in 1851.

1851 census for Westgate, Barnsley. Piece 2332 Folio 347F

Two of Esther and Thomas's children are still living with her and there is George Kay Walton aged 14, natural son of William Kay, a warehouse boy, born in Dodworth. Note that William and Esther have two lodgers, probably to contribute to the household income. 

Natural son in the relationship column means that George Kay Walton was born out of wedlock (he was illegitimate) but the fact that he is living with William Kay means that he had been acknowledged by his father.  Being 14 years old in 1851 suggests that he was born in 1837 or thereabouts, so probably before civil registration began.  I have found a baptism, 1 January 1837, of a George Walton born 2 August 1836, parents William and Jane Walton of Gawber. I suppose this might be him? In 1841 I found a four year old George Walton living with Joseph Mitchell, a schoolmaster, and his family in Dodworth. Maybe George's mother had died and William Kay had paid for him to be fostered out until he married and was able to provide a home for him? This is all just guesswork of course. It was fairly common for brides to be pregnant when they got married in days gone by - but even so it's odd that William didn't marry George's mother when he was obviously so willing to acknowledge him. 

William Kay, George's father, was born in Ardsley in 1813, and baptised at Darfield 19 December 1813, son of Henry and Hannah Kay. Henry was a labourer and William appears to have been his and Hannah's third child. Edwin Kay, mentioned in the article above as the owner of the building where the first Co-op shop was opened, was William's younger brother, born in 1818 in Ardsley, and baptised at Darfield 5 April 1818.

Edwin Kay married Sarah Dyson at Silkstone in October 1845. Edwin's occupation was weaver and his wife's father was a labourer. In the 1851 census Edwin and Sarah Kay were living on Shambles Street in Barnsley and Edwin, now aged 33, was a grocer and provision dealer. They appear to have had no children, none are living with them in the 1851 or 1861 census returns and I can find no births Kay, mmn Dyson, in the GRO indexes.

1859 marriage of George Kay Walton and Sarah Greaves at the Congregational Church, Barnsley

On 3 November 1859 George Kay Walton married Sarah Greaves at the Congregational Church in Barnsley. I was not been able to find this marriage anywhere online except in the indexes so I sent for the certificate - it was worth the £11 to see that George was still using Walton as his surname at this point, but that he gave William Kay, a warehouseman, as his father. It appears there was no secrecy about the irregularity in George's antecedents. George's occupation at his marriage was also warehouseman. The address George gave at marriage was 9 Churchfields, which is where Esther and William Kay were living when the 1861 census was taken just 18 months later. Sarah Greaves gave her address as 12 Regent Street, Barnsley and her father was George Greaves, a shoemaker.

1852 map of Barnsley showing Churchfield Terrace (from Old Maps)

In 1861, George and Sarah Kay were living at 2 Churchfield Terrace, in Barnsley. This was a short street of 12 houses adjacent to the still extant High Field Terrace on Churchfield, Barnsley. The street is long gone and is now under the tarmac of the car park next to Barnsley police station.

George and Sarah had one child, Emily, aged one year, and George's occupation was linen warehouseman. Sarah, however, was a shopkeeper (confectioner), so she ran a sweet shop! I noticed that George now appears to have stopped using Walton as his surname despite marrying under that name less than two years previously. I could see that Emily was born in Greasborough which is near Rotherham, which struck me as odd for a moment or two, then I noticed that Sarah was born in Thornhill, near Rotherham. I didn't know where that was, so I looked it up. It seems Thornhill was a tiny little place just to the west of Rotherham town centre in 1851. Greasborough, on the other hand, was about two miles further north, heading towards Wentworth from Rotherham. This was just not making sense. 

Emily Kaywalton's baptism at Greasborough in 1860

Eventually I found Emily's baptism, in Greasborough, under the surname Kaywalton.

Baptism 22 January 1860, birth 29 December 1859, Emily [daughter of] George and Sarah Kaywalton [of] Barnsley [father's occupation] Warehouseman.

So Emily was born less than two months after George and Sarah's marriage, born and baptised at Greasborough, where there had been some mistake or misunderstanding about what her surname actually was. Her parents' abode was given as Barnsley, so what were they doing in Greasborough? I thought I should look up Sarah's parents to see if they had moved to the area. Yes indeed, Sarah's parents, George and Hannah Greaves, were living in Greasborough in 1841. George's occupation was cordwainer, which is another name for a shoemaker. I looked for Sarah Greaves' baptism and that was also in Greasborough, October 1834, parents George and Hannah, with George's occupation given as cordwainer. Thornhill had turned out to be a bit of a red herring. 

I am imagining that Sarah met George in Barnsley - maybe she was a servant, 12 Regent Street, Barnsley sounds like a large house, or possibly the old courthouse (there are insufficient detailed old maps of that area at the right time for me to say for certain) - she became pregnant and they married. Then she went back to her parents' home until she had the baby, had little Emily baptised in the local church near her parents' home (hence the confusion over George's correct surname) before rejoining George once he had set up a household in Barnsley. That would have disguised the short gap between the marriage and the birth from the gossips in Barnsley.  None of the above irregularity over George's birth or his hasty marriage was sufficient to prevent Edwin Kay from suggesting or offering the job George with the Co-op in 1862, which, as we have read, came with a house included. Edwin maybe looked upon George as the son he didn't have?

In 1861 Edwin Kay was a Linen Manufacturer living in a new house on Regent Street - so new it didn't have a number in the census return. Living with Edwin and Sarah were two nieces, Hannah and Harriet Dyson, the daughters of one of Sarah's brothers I would imagine. Yes, further investigation showed that Hannah was the daughter of Christopher Dyson, Sarah's older brother, who had passed away in 1853. Another example of Edwin taking in young relatives because he had no children of his own? I wonder how Edwin made his money - both his and Sarah's fathers had been labourers, and yet by 1861/62 he is living in a new house on Regent Street and has property on Market Street to let out to the new Barnsley Co-op?

Edwin Kay's Obituary Barnsley Chronicle 24 April 1880

I found Edwin's obituary in the Barnsley Chronicle on 24 April 1880. It seems he was a 'steady, industrious and persevering young man' and had a shop on Shambles Street, opposite the top of Dog Lane, and was eventually able to buy the property. He sold that business and entered into a partnership with a Mr Carr as a linen manufacturer. In 1862 he became a Councillor and was a supporter of the Beckett Hospital, the Methodist New Connexion, for whom he was a preacher, and the Mechanics' Institute. He laid the foundation stone for the New Connexion Methodist Chapel at Ardsley in 1866. He died on 22 April 1880, just nine days after his wife Sarah, who had fallen in their house, and had been very ill. In modern terms it sounds as if he may have had cancer as various growths had been removed from his eye, ear and cheek. Maybe once his wife had passed he gave up struggling against his disease and followed her into death. He was 62 years old and Sarah was 67. There were no children and the executor of his will was his brother William Kay, George's father. 

Sarah and Edwin Kay were buried in Barnsley Cemetery in the same plot, E 669.  It's on my list for visiting and looking for a gravestone.

William Kay had unfortunately lost his wife Esther (my OH's 4x great-grandmother if you recall) in an accident in 1870 when she fell from his gig near Kexborough after the horse took fright. William, who had been leading the horse to drink at a trough, was knocked down as the horse bolted. Esther, having struck her head, survived only 40 minutes after the accident, despite a doctor rushing to attend. William Kay had an injured ankle, but it was not too serious. (Barnsley Chronicle 23 July 1870) William remarried at the Wesleyan Chapel in Pitt Street in February 1871 to Mary Coldwell, but died himself in 1884, just three years after his brother. 

I noticed that in 1881 William and Mary were living at 21 Hope Street, Barnsley an address that is, in 1901 and 1911, the home of Sarah Kay, George's widow.

Esther and William's Gravestone

Meanwhile George Kay and his wife Sarah were living at 16 Wellington Street, quite near to the Co-op shop in Market Street when the 1871 census was taken, and had added a son Arthur (b.1863) and a daughter Sarah Ellen (b.1867) to their family. 

In the 1881 census George and Sarah Kaye (note the extra e) were living 'above the shop' at 44 Market Street with other shop staff living at number 40. A son, William Henry Kay, had been added to the family in 1875.

They had lost some children at birth or very young, and I have listed all those I can find below.

In 1881 Emily was 21 years old and a milliner, maybe making hats for the Co-op. Arthur was 17 years old and a Pawnbroker's Apprentice. Sarah Ellen and William Henry were both at school.

In 1891 George and Sarah were living at 58 Station Road in Barnsley. George's occupation was now Co-operative Society Secretary (Cashier) suggesting he had taken on additional responsibilities over and above running the shop. Still living at home was Sarah Ellen, now aged 24 years and working as a confectionary saleswoman. Also in the household was a little grandaughter, Dorkas M Rogers just 2 years old. Enumerated after Dorkas and a servant I found William H. Kay, son, aged 16, and a Joiners Apprentice. I wonder why he was listed at the end?

All seven children of George and Sarah Kay in birth order:

*Emily Kay Walton b. 29 December 1859 in Greasborough, baptised 22 January 1860 at Greasborough
William Kay Walton b. Q1 1862 in Barnsley, buried in Barnsley Cemetery 26 January 1862 aged 3 weeks from Churchfield Terrace
*Arthur Kay             b. 1863 in Barnsley (I can't find a birth registration or baptism for Arthur)
Unnamed male Kay  b. Q4 1864 in Barnsley, buried in Barnsley Cemetery 2 Nov 1964 aged 30 hours from Wellington Street
*Sarah Ellen Kay     b. Q3 1867 in Barnsley - baptised at the Ebenezer Methodist Church 25 Dec 1871 aged 4 years and 9 months
George William Kay b. November 1873 in Barnsley, buried in Barnsley Cemetery aged 1 day, 10 Nov 1873 from Market Street.
*William Henry Kay b. March 1875 (I can't find a birth registration) - baptised Ebenezer Methodist 7 April 1875 aged 3 weeks

* = survived to adulthood

Sheffield Evening Telegraph 4 October 1895 Death of George Kay

George Kay was buried in Barnsley Cemetery on 7 October 1895 and there was a huge response across the town. The directors of the Co-op decided to close all their places of business and the employees 'turned out as a vast body of mourners to show their unanimous tokens of respect'. The article in the Barnsley Chronicle fills an entire column of the then broadsheet newspaper, overflowing into the next column. There are lists of names of the main mourners, including fifteen coaches bearing family and friends.  For example in the first coach was Mrs Kay (widow), Mr. Arthur (son), Mr. W. and Miss Nellie (son and daughter), Misses Cissie Rogers and Emily Kay (granddaughters), in the second coach were Mrs Arthur Kay, Mrs Wm. Kay (daughters in law), Mrs Sykes and Miss Stephenson (nieces) and on and on and on ... The heads of the various departments at the Co-op are named, for example, Mr. Gandy (grocery), Mr. Langford (butchering), Mr. Reeves (boot and shoe), Mr. Taylor and Mr. Peak (drapery) and many more.

1889 map of junction of Station Road and Perseverance Street (Old Maps)

Part of a 1929 picture of the Perseverance Estate (from Barnsley Council's YOCOCO site)

George Kay's interment procession wound its way from Persverance Villa via Station Road, Summer Lane, Town End, Peel Street, Peel Square, Queen Street, Cheapside and Sheffield Road to the Ebenezer New Connexion Chapel on the junction of Sheffield Road and Doncaster Road. Both sides of the streets along the route were lined with spectators and there were crowds at the chapel and the cemetery. At the chapel the coffin was taken inside by the central entrance and placed on trestles in front of the pulpit. The Rev. A. Smith addressed the congregation and the Barnsley Chronicle appears to have captured his entire speech. Various hymns were sung and after the benedition the coffin was taken to the cemetery. There is even a description of the coffin, which was of solid oak, unpolished, with deep gilt mountings. There was a coffin plate bearing the inscription "George Kay. Died October 4th 1895. Aged 59 years." The coffin was covered in floral wreaths, many of them from workers at the different departments of the Co-op, such as the mill department, the tailoring department, the bakery department and so on. 

It surprised me to see that the article ended with a note that the funeral service would be held in the Ebenezer Chapel the following Sunday (or Sunday evening week as it said in the article which I calculate would be 20 October) and would again be conducted by the Rev. A. Smith.  So a burial (interment) was not the same as the funeral in 1895 and there was more ceremony to come. 

The memorial service was reported in the Barnsley Chronicle on 26 October 1895. It was a slightly shorter article and gave a very brief precis of George's life. 'In the sermon Mr. Smith gave an outline of Mr. Kay's career from his early days in Dodworth, where he attended the Town School, down to the close of his life. The rise and progress of the Co-operative Society was briefly touched upon but it was the upon the leading traits of Mr. Kay's character that the preacher chiefly dealt.' And that was it!

Given in how much detail the speeches had been reported in the previous article I found this editing frustrating. There were a couple of odd notes 'A stranger might think my picture of Mr. Kay a little highly coloured' ... 'I have spoken but simple truth' ... 'You may remind me that he was a man and therefore imperfect' ... I would love to have a transcript of the entire speech!

George Kay was buried in plot H 491 in Barnsley Cemetery, the same plot in which George William Kay, the 1 day old baby, was buried in 1873.  That's another gravestone for me to search for when I can finally get out of the house. Sarah Kay survived George for another 17 years before joining him in the same plot in November 1912 from 21 Hope Street, as previously mentioned. The house then passed to the Thompson family of her daughter Sarah Ellen.

What Became of George's Children?

Arthur Kay, eldest son of George Kay, married Elizabeth Taylor on 14 June 1886 at the Ebenezer Methodist Chapel in Barnsley.
They moved to Hoyland Common where he set up shop as a Pawnbroker. They had two children.

 - Emilie Margaret Kay b. Q4 1887 in Barnsley, baptised at the Ebenezer Methodist Church 29 December 1887. She died in Q1 1896 aged 8 years.  

Penistone, Stocksbridge & Hoyland Express 25 February 1928, p. 2

Barnsley Chronicle 26 June 1886, p. 5

Emily Kay, eldest daughter of George Kay, married John Rogers on 25 Jun 1886 in Barnsley at the Ebenezer Chapel on Sheffield Road. John was a Congregational Minister from Leek in Staffordshire. They appear to have travelled around the country after their marriage, presumably as part of his job as a minister, and had two children.

 - David Rogers b. Q2 1887 in Barnsley. David died in Leek, Staffordshire in July 1887 aged 3 months, and was buried in Barnsley Cemetery, plot Q 517.
 - Dorcas Mary Rogers b. 6 October 1888, in Barnsley, but baptised in Manchester in December 1888. She was living with her grandparents George and Sarah Kay in 1891, but was back with her father in Staffordshire in 1901 and 1911. She became a Registered Nurse in 1916. She did not marry.

Emily Rogers (nee Kay) died in March 1890 at 58 Station Road, Barnsley, the home of her parents. She was buried in Barnsley Cemetery, plot Q 518, right next to her little son. John Rogers remarried to Janette Chambers in Wakefield RD in Q3 1891. They went on to have at least three children together, one of whom, Persis Rogers b. Q3 1892 in Dudley RD and died Q4 1892 in Chester RD, appears to be buried in the same grave, Q 517, as little David Rogers. I cannot see any other reason why a child who died in Hawarden, Flintshire, would be buried in that grave in Barnsley.

William Henry Kay married Sarah Jane Stephenson on 28 March 1895 at St George's Church, Barnsley. They only had one child.
  - Jennie Ivy Kay b. 8 Oct 1898 in Barnsley, baptised at the Ebenezer Methodist Church 1 January 1899. Jenny Ivy Kay was living with Sarah Ellen and George Edward Thompson in 1901 and with Arthur and Elizabeth Kay in 1911. Jenny Kay married Arthur Peasegood in Q3 1928 in Barnsley. Arthur had served in the First World War.  In 1939 Arthur and Jenny were the gardener and cook in the household of a businessman in Exeter, Devon. They too only had one child, who died young.
     - Joan Peasegood was born in Barnsley in Q3 1929. She died in Q2 1931 in Barnsley.
Sarah Jane Kay(e) (nee Stephenson) died in October 1898 aged 28 at 13 Middlesex Street, Barnsley, and was buried in Barnsley Cemetery, plot H 583. The closeness between the dates of her death and Jenny's birth suggest she may have died from the effects of childbirth.
I have been unable to discover, with any certainty, what happened next to William Henry Kay. It is a more common name than you might realise. He appears to have left Barnsley, possibly in grief after the death of his wife, leaving his little girl to be cared for by his family. There is no-one else buried in Sarah Jane Kay's grave plot to give me any clues.

Barnsley Independent 17 August 1918, p. 3

 - Doris Isabella Thompson b. Q3 1899 in Barnsley, baptised at the Ebenezer Methodist Church on 7 September 1899 from Queens Road, Barnsley. She married Ernest Wright in Q4 1923 in Barnsley.
        - Oswald Wright was born 11 December 1924 in Barnsley.
        - Joyce Wright was born 25 September 1927 in Barnsley.
    Doris Wright died in July 1929 aged 29 years, and was buried in Barnsley Cemetery, plot 4 331.            Ernest remarried in 1932 to Ida Firth.

 - Kathleen Thompson b. Q4 1901 in Barnsley. She died in July 1923 at 21 Hope Street aged 21 years, and was buried in Barnsley Cemetery in plot 4. 333.
George Edward Thompson died in August 1923 at 21 Hope Street and was buried in Barnsley Cemetery in plot 4 333.
Sarah Ellen Thompson (nee Kay) died in July 1938 at 21 Hope Street and was buried in Barnsley Cemetery in plot 4 333. 

What does this all mean?

At the end of all research that it seems that any descendants of George Kay still living would have to come via Doris Isabella Thompson's children Oswald and Joyce Wright. All the other family lines appear to end with premature death or childless marriages. Unless William Henry Kay started a family somewhere else in the country after he left Barnsley?
It was nice to find a couple of First World War men connected to George Kay though - it just goes to show that most people in Barnsley had some relatives who served in the war, it is just a case of finding them.  Now I just have to add all this information into my OH's family tree before I forget how I worked it all out! 

Thank you for reading.

Last night I got my first draft chapter back from my supervisor, Prof Laura Ugolini, at the University of Wolverhampton. As expected there were lots of useful comments, and some which made it apparent to me that I have been overestimating what I will be able to include in my thesis. It also seems that I need to include a lot of explanations that I had hoped would be unnecessary, such as 'what is a war memorial?' and the difference between and obelisk and a plaque (surely not .... aren't the names self explanatory?)

University of Wolverhampton history theses have a word limit of 90,000 - now that looks like a lot, but it includes footnotes and the bibliography (the list of books and articles that I have used as reference for the work). You are allowed a certain amount of extra space in your Appendices - which is where I usually put tables and maps and lists - but that must not exceed 20% of the total allowed for the thesis, so in my case 18k words, which is soon taken up with long lists of memorials and various tables showing categories and groupings. 

For comparison my MA dissertation had a word limit of 15k, but that did not include footnotes and the Bibliography. I carefully wrote 14,992 words, but if I include everything it came to 23961 with the footnotes and Bibliography and I used 6506 words in my Appendices (as opposed to 20% of 15k which is just 3k). One table alone, that of the 237 memorials we knew about in Barnsley in February 2019 (not counting 520 war memorial gravestones or 47 memorials that don't commemorate the FWW), came to 3278 words. Should I miss out that table? No, of course not, it's what everything is about after all.

For my first draft chapter, which was on the different groups of people who had planned memorials, I started off aiming at 10k words, that was soon upped to 15k when I realised the lower amount didn't allow enough space to fully discuss all the categories I had devised. 

Table of Memorial Types (horizontal axis) by Groups (vertical axis) as of 14 April 2021

Prof Laura made a useful comment about the table above - using codes was not helpful for readers, who would be forced to flick backwards and forwards to discover what the types of memorial were. She suggested presenting it landscape (ie turning that page on its side) so that I could write in the words Obelisk, Plaque, Roll of Honour etc in full. Later on she pointed out that I use the category 'Individuals' to describe memorials erected by family members to commemorate individuals. I had got the people being commemorated mixed up in my head with the people planning the commemoration. She proposed calling that group Families and I totally agree. 

As you can't see what my codes mean either here's the list:

Obelisks, Cenotaphs, Crosses, Columns, Figures etc (O)
Plaques, Tablets, Boards (P)
Rolls of Honour, Books of Remembrance (R)
Church fittings (like bells, pews, lecterns, windows, altars, screens, candlesticks, etc) (C)
Trophies, Relics etc (T)
Lychgates (G)
Endowed Beds (B)

Even landscape it will be 'fun' fitting the Church Fittings (ha!) at the top of a column if I use the full list.

Additions to Gravestones (but not graves) is also a main IWM category - which I am excluding from the main part of my thesis as they are really hard to research and never (?) appear in newspaper reports. I really didn't want to do this - there are hundreds and hundreds of them in Barnsley - but apart from analysing the inscriptions and researching the families I can't really say much about them.
On the other hand, mass-produced commemorative items, which the IWM exclude - I am including these - items such as gold medals or watches given by work places to men who returned or the dependents of men who were killed. There will have been hundreds of these, most of them inscribed with an individual's name. They are particularly common amongst the collieries in Barnsley who awarded little medals to all their workmen who had gone to the war at large, well reported events, often rather than erecting a stone or metal memorial or plaque. Did they feel this fostered good will as it showed they were considering everyone? Or was it a good advertisment for the paternalism of the company?

I can see another problem in my list above - use of etc is not advised in a thesis, I should write out lists in full. The Imperial War Museum's categories contain etc and these are the ones on which Pete and I based most of the above.  Not all the categories the IWM use are useful for my thesis - for example, we have no land based memorials such as parks or gardens which date back to the First World War. 

Here a couple of screen grabs from the IWM War Memorials Register site, specifically the filters for choosing what kind of result you want to get when you do a search:

The IWM call the above 'Types'

The IWM call the above 'Components'

Yet if you search for 'Bed' on the website you get 906 hits! Ok, some of them are in Bedfordshire! And if you open up an entry for an actual bed the type used in the listing is 'Endowed Bed', which doesn't appear in either of the lists above. Clicking on Endowed Bed in a listing (where it is underlined to show it is a link or option) brings back 109 records. None for Barnsley because we only have an existing plaque for one and that one hasn't been added to the War Memorials Register yet. However I know, from newspaper reports, that there were at least 5 endowed beds relating to the FWW in Beckett Hospital.

The IWM doesn't use Groups of people as a category, I'm not surprised, it can be very difficult to allocate a memorial to one of my groups. One example is the memorial plaque for Tom Lockwood in Hoylandswaine Church, a Community memorial, a church memorial or a family memorial? Well, the church must have applied for a Diocesan Faculty in order to erect it, but it was possibly proposed by the local Council because he was a local hero. It's for just one man and usually those memorials are promoted by family members. As I haven't seen the Faculty yet, or read the Hoylandswaine Council minutes I've been calling it a Family memorial in case it was his family behind the proposal after all. 

Prof Laura also suggested I explain who people were. I had done that for some of the names mentioned in the newspaper cuttings - I find it quite easy, and very satifying, to track a man down, either in the census returns or using the newspaper indexes, or both. The trouble is it uses up quite a few words to explain who they are. For example, one of the churchwardens at Darfield, named on the Diocesan Faculty for the church memorial tablet, was Thomas Cherry. I wrote a little about him in a footnote to try to explain why his opinion might have carried weight when he spoke at a meeting. 

"Thomas Cherry was the treasurer of the Darfield Conservative Club, MST, 29 July 1922, p. 2, and the secretary of the Parish Church War Memorial Committee, PSHE, 16 July 1921, p. 9. His son John Albert Cherry served in the Royal Navy during the war."

MST = Mexborough & Swinton Times, PSHE = Penistone, Stocksbridge and Hoyland Express.

That little biography was 44 words! And I haven't referenced how I know who his son was (I looked Thomas up in the 1911 census and checked his son in the military records on Ancestry to see if he served). I will have to reference it, but that will be quite a lot more words. 

It will be useful to do these little biographies, as I do want to try to explain the differences in social class between some of the groups. But I suppose it also means I'm going to have to be very choosy about which men (and they are usually men) I mention in my text. Actually I don't like the idea of editing the words I use from the newspaper reports so much (picking and choosing which speaker to name and research) as it might unfairly bias my analysis of the committee or group. A man with a distinctive name, like Thomas Cherry, would be much easier to find than a John Smith for example. A local clergyman or businessman would be easier to find in the newspapers than a bricklayer. Such a lot of pitfalls once you really start looking at the pros and cons. I did ask if I could put the biographies in an Appendix, but that is when Prof Laura reminded me about the 20% rule. I suppose I will just have to see what they amount to.

The main reason I was running out of words and failing to provide a good discussion about each group of people appears to have been that I was including too many examples in each section. With 249 memorials to choose from I am quite spoilt for choice, but if we imagine I divide the 65,000 words I have allowed for my main body by 249 that allows only 261 words per memorial which is about one long paragraph. Nothing left for headings, or footnotes, or discussion or the (very important) argument. Going forward I will have to be even more selective about which memorials I discuss, thinking about what I want to propose as the unique feature of each group and picking examples to illustrate my argument. 

I feel somewhat hampered by my MA as when I want to include a mention of an aspect of a memorial that I talked about in my dissertation I now need to reference it in the same way I would if they were someone else's work - I think that's how to do it - anyway I mustn't plagarise myself, that is, reuse my own discussion as if it were new thoughts. One of Prof Laura's comments said that I should explain what I discovered in my MA, just like outlining another historian's 'unique contribution' to the topic of war memorials. Sometimes I forget which memorials I talked about ... and I have to open up the final copy of my dissertation and do a 'Find' on it.

Here's a list of the memorials I mainly discussed in my MA:

The main Barnsley Civic memorial (now in front of the Town Hall and previously discussed by Alex King in his book but I added a lot more detail about fundraising and the whole lack of names scandal [that's my own personal opinion of the matter by the way, during the planning of the memorial the Council said they were going to produce a list of names and it was never done, hence, partially, the reason the BWMP produced their Roll of Honour in 2018])
Farrar Street Congregational's plaque (Non-conformist, I discussed fundraising and how that influenced what they eventually ended up with)
Dodworth's obelisk with a soldier on the top (a combination of the Council there and the Gardeners Association and way in which the two groups had initially been in competition with each other)
Barnsley Co-op's endowed beds (a Workplace - though I now see I got the number of beds wrong in my MA)
Shaw Lane Sportsman's obelisk type memorial (a Club, I mainly discussed the arguments about who had contributed subsciptions and who was invited to the unveiling ceremony)
Hoylandswaine's obelisk (proposed by the Council there but where the working committee included working class men as well as councillors and clergymen and got on with the job quite speedily)
Monk Bretton's church memorial (initially proposed by the Council there, but which was objected to by non-conformist groups and some smaller parts of the area which resented being clumped together by the Anglican parish boundaries)
Monk Bretton Cliffe Bridge Wesleyan Reform Chapel and Monk Bretton WMC (as a response to the above)
Thurlstone's various plans culminating in brass plaque in the church (ambitious utilitarian plans were originally suggested but came to nothing)
Worsborough Dale's obelisk (which had to be scaled down due to cost)
Thurgoland's stone cross - grouped with obelisks in my categories (the elements of the inscription changed due to space available)
St Peter's Church, on Doncaster Road, large wooden tablet (which had to have extra names added later)
Woolley's stone cross (how they collected the names and discussed who should be included)
The York and Lancs memorial plaque in St Mary's Church (who was intended to be commemorated and how the funding was taken from the town's civic memorial fund - because the Council had promised a contribution to it in the early days when they combined both funds)

That is only 14 memorials in 15k words. I only really discussed the main Civic memorial's whole story, the rest appeared in bits and bobs under fundraising or changes to plans. I mentioned at least 33 memorials in my 15k word draft chapter, and some others just in passing, so definitely far too many. 

I have an online meeting booked with Prof Laura for next week, and I'll happily re-write the chapter taking her comments into consideration. I will aim to use no more than two or three memorials per section (2 or 3 x 7 sections = 14 to 21 memorials in 15k words), and write nice long paragraphs beginning with my argument explaining and justifying the inclusion of each example. It will be a different kind of writing to get used to.

It can only get better??

This morning I changed the date for our proposed holiday again. We had been booked on a Leger Beer and Battlefields tour, something for the OH, the beer, and something for me, the FWW history. It should have been in September 2020, then on a similar date this year. We have deferred for another year, with crossed fingers. It's not so much a fear of Covid, but that after fifteen months in lockdown I have lost all my stamina and a lot of confidence around other people. Hopefully in a year's time I will have built that back up.

My recent glimmer of hope was caused by the receipt of an email reply from the Borthwick Institute in York. On the advice of the West Yorkshire Archive Service (WYAS) in Leeds I had contacted the Borthwick re Diocesan Faculty documents for my Barnsley War Memorials. A Faculty is needed when a church plans changes to their building or land, so installation of most kinds of war memorial, from an obelisk in a churchyard to a tablet on the wall inside, will have required one. Dr Nick Melia at the Borthwick was most helpfully able to send me a set of lists of their Faculties covering my period, 1915 to 1939. I found ten entries for Barnsley and just beyond, 1918-1923.

The Borthwick Institute in York (picture from the Family Tree Magazine's article on research there.)

Five of the index entries were for war memorials that I am pretty sure I can identify, Royston, Cudworth, Carlton, Brierley and Monk Bretton, the other five were for either for memorials, without the word war, or for war memorials in areas just outside Barnsley that I'd just like to see. One of those is for the war memorial panels in St Helen's Church in Hemsworth where one of the OH's Pagett relatives is remembered. 

The Barnsley listings at York end in 1923 which probably reflects the move of the parishes to another Diocese.  There were lots of boundary changes in Yorkshire in the 19th and 20th centuries, both for civil and church organisations. So many that I have had to create a flow chart for my thesis demonstrating that between 1914 and 1939 the Barnsley churches were in either the Diocese of York, the Diocese of Sheffield or the Diocese of Wakefield,  but after that the ones in Wakefield moved to the Diocese of Leeds. There is a very long document dated 2010 downloadable from the Church of England website which explains most of this. Apparently a review recommended that all the Barnsley Parishes be moved to the Diocese of Sheffield, for consistency, but they were overuled. It would have made my life easier! The Faculties in Sheffield Archives that I saw in 2019 were lovely and accompanied by architectural drawings and correspondence too. Very helpful, giving me dates, descriptions and the names of the person or people who had applied for the permissions. 

Part of the Faculty for a stone tablet in memory of Harold and Reginald Caunt, to be placed in St George's Church, Jump, near Wombwell (Sheffield Archives Dioc/Fac/65)

The picture above is just a part of one of the Sheffield documents, which came in a folder with a Petition requesting the Faculty and letters between the vicar at St George's and the Registrar in Sheffield. Note the preprinted generic text at the top, the typewritten insertions specific to the request and the embossed seal. The Faculty was requested by their brother Frederick. The copy Faculty documents that I saw in Parish Records in the Wakefield office of the WYAS in 2019 were single page typewritten documents. I have searched the online catalogues for the WYAS several times in the last couple of years, but only found references to the copies. 

Yesterday I made another breakthrough. A Google search hit on an article written in 2020 by Anne Christine Brook about Faculties after the First World War.  Although I was unable to view the article, the University of Wolverhampton library didn't have permissions to that publication, the references were shown on the index page. Two of them were to the WYAS at Wakefield and mentioned Faculties.  Anne C. Brook's 2009 PhD thesis was on Commemoration in Huddersfield after the Great War and I have read it a number of times, in fact alongside Denise Coss's 2012 thesis on War Memorials in the North East they are my 'go to' examples for writing my own thesis. 

I have written to WYAS in Wakefield with the references Anne Brook gave. I could not find anything for WD100 on the online catalogue apart from one hit within the description of a document in a different category. I assume they are boxes or files that are only indexed in a paper catalogue. I am familiar with the problem at Barnsley Archives where the staff have thousands of entries to transfer and a huge number of boxes that have not been fully catalogued at all. Too much work, too little money, the usual story. 

So now I am planning trips to both the Borthwick Institute and Wakefield's office of the WYAS. But that will be after our family's own historic event, expected sometime mid to late June. My daughter is expecting her own little daughter to make her appearance, making me a grandma, and my mum a great-grandmother,  for the very first time. 

Thank you for reading.