Bessie Stephenson

Bessie Stephenson was born on January 4, 1885 in Uckfield. Her parents Tom and Eliza (neé  Hobden) were living in that town, having moved there from Iford, 3.5 miles away.

In 1891 the family -  wrongly recorded as 'Stephson' - were living at 79, Court House Cottages in Uckfield. Tom was a gardener and Eliza was looking after the children: William (10), Blanche (8), Bessie (6) and even Alice (3) were at school. Emily, the latest addition, was 10 months old.

In 1901 Bessie was a housemaid at Uppark House the large establishment of Lieutenant-Colonel (retired) Keith Turnour-Fetherstonhaugh and his wife Caroline in Harting, Sussex. For a portrait of Caroline, see here

http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/138290.2

For more on Uppark see

https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1000347

Like her mother, Bessie was a domestic servant; although she'd stayed in Sussex, she'd moved almost 60 miles from home:

The 1911 Census shows that she was still a servant but in a different county. 

41 miles by road

She was a housemaid at Durwood, Thibet (sic) Road, Sandhurst, Berkshire. Durwood was the home of Lesley James Probyn Butler, a 34 year old Captain in the Irish Guards and his wife Mary Christal (aged 28). The couple had a son and daughter and only four servants in all, so this was a much smaller establishment than Upppark.

We know from a postcard sent by her sister Alice that her address was Durwood in October 1910 - but Alice wasn't sure if she was actually there which might or might not mean that she was about to start there.

Captain Butler was to win the DSO in 1916. Mary Christal Butler was the daughter of Sir John Heathcot-Amory,[1] former M P. for Tiverton for Devon. I think it was through her that Bessie met her husband.

View of Tiverton across the River Exe: By en:User:Lew747 - en.wiki, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4603942

Herbert Eveleigh Arnold was born close to Bideford in North Devon, and in 1911 was a chauffeur for the Heathcot Amory family and living in Tiverton. Somehow the two employees came together.

They were married in the Westhampnett Registration District in the third quarter of 1912. Bessie's father, Tom, had his death registered in this district in 1907 and her mother Eliza was visiting a friend in Selsey, which is part of the district, in 1911. Banns were called on September 8 in Withleigh, Devon, where the groom was living, with Bessie's address given as Selsey. The wedding probably took place at St. Peter's Parish Church:

The Voice of Hassocks: This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

The couple had a son, Harry E. Arnold, who was born on August 19, 1914, just before the European war broke out. The birth is recorded in the Wokingham District. Edgar Williams, the husband of Bessie's sister Blanche, was from Twyford in this District, so it's probable that Blanche and Edgar were living there and helped look after Bessie, who was giving birth while her husband was away fighting.

Mr. Arnold first joined the Royal Army Service Corps (No. 2/191842) and then transferred to the Tank Corps (75044).  He was killed in action on April 23, 1917. Second-Lieutenant T. O. Norman wrote to Bessie saying that Herbert had done good work with the Corps on April 9 and 23 but was killed instantaneously by a direct hit on the latter day:

By the death of your husband, who was loved by everyone who knew him, I have lost the best man in my crew. I had previously recommended him for decoration for his excellent work. (North Devon Journal, May 17, 1917, p. 6).

Bessie was now living at Chevithorne a village close to Tiverton. This is the inscription on the Chevithorne War Memorial:

H. ARNOLD

75044 Private Herbert Everleigh Arnold of "C" Battery, the Machine Gun Corps (Heavy Branch). Son of Thomas and Mary Jane Arnold of the Bell Inn, Parkham; husband of Bessie Arnold of Chevithorne. Born  in Parkham in 1878. Died 23 April 1917 aged 33.

Harry never saw his father.

Wilfred Edgar tells us that Bessie became the postmistress of Tiverton; this is possible, but it's also possible that she was postmistress of Chevithorne.

In  the second quarter of 1923 Bessie re-married at Tiverton. Her second husband was Josiah Richards of that town.

Josiah was much older than her, having been born in 1865 or 1866 in Penryn (Cornwall).  He appears on the electoral register as early as 1893, so he must have moved to Tiverton by that year. In 1901 he was living there with his wife Edith (five years older than him) and five children. He was a butler. In 1911 the couple, with two children still at home and a sister-in-law moved in, were living in Samford Peverell, just outside Tiverton.


Wikipedia: By Martin Bodman, <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0" title="Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0

They'd been there since 1908 at the latest as he appears on the electoral register in that year. Josiah was now (1911) an agent for Prudential Assurance. In 1912 they were living at Bridge Cottage in the same town, and Josiah owned the property and some land freehold. The Cornwall Records Office holds a 'Deed of Partition and Release' signed in June 1912 by Edith, her sister Priscilla Phillips, and others, waiving rights to certain properties in St. Austell. Edith's husband is described as an 'insurance agent'.

There's a 'J. Richards', born in 1866, who was admitted into the Barnstaple branch of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters, Cabinetmakers & Joiners in 1918 and was still a member in 1921. If this is the same man, he had changed careers again.

Women (over 28) were given the vote in 1918, so on the 1918 register Josiah and Edith appear together at 2, Brickfield Terrace. In 1920 they've been joined as voters by his sons Joseph and Harold and his sister-in-law Priscilla Phillips is also registered. However, Edith is not on the 1921 register, which gives us an approximate date for her death.

So that 1923 marriage was between two people who had already lost their first spouse.

In 1924 Bessie and Josiah were on the electoral register at 2, Brickfield Terrace and the couple were still there in 1927. But by 1928 they'd moved to 209 Chapel Street in Tiverton, remaining there until 1930. By 1931 they had moved to 20, Frances Road, Windsor, perhaps to be close to Bessie's sister Alice, who had moved there in 1916/17. Although Harry was not yet old enough to appear on the electoral register, he almost certainly accompanied his  mother and step-father. He was to lose his second father too.

Josiah died aged 73 in the second quarter of 1938.

In 1939 Bessie and Harry were still living at 20, Frances Road, with two other people whose records are currently closed. Harry was single and working as a paper buyer.

Judging from a family photo, Harry served in the war.  On March 25, 1946 he married Aileen P. M. Yates ('Pat') in Kensington.

Pat Yates was born on November 17, 1915.

On October 21, 1921 young Pat and her family set sail for Demerara in British Guiana Her father is described on the ship's manifest as a missionary, so that was presumably why they were going. It looks like she might even have born there, as her father was appointed to work with Indian immigrants in British Guiana in 1912 (missionaryhistory-whathappenedwhen.htm).

In 1939 Pat was single and living with her father, a Methodist minister, and other family members in Rayleigh, Essex. She was working as a charity secretary. 'Yates' has been crossed out and replaced with 'Arnold', which suggests that changes to the 1939 Register were made as late as 1946. Between 1929 and 1933 the Reverend Yates had been working in the Windsor, Maidenhead and Slough area, so perhaps that was when they met.

Harry's life ended in the Islington district of London in 1965.

Bessie died in 1962 on a visit to her family.

---

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesley_James_Probyn_Butler

Note:  Pat Arnold remarried. In 1973 Aileen P. M. Arnold is recorded as marrying George J. T. Gilks in the St Pancras Registration District. This new name has been added to the 1939 Register!
George James T. Gilks, who was born in 1907, died in Barnet in 1992.
Aileen P. Gilks is on the electoral register between 2002 and 2006, residing at a care home in north London. She'd been there 6 years but it's not clear if that was in 2002 or 2006.
Note: This is a portrait of Pat's father from along article about him in The United Methodist, February 11, 1926, p. 64:

He is the Rev. H. M. Yates, a Wesleyan minister who has laboured as a missionary since 1912 in the difficult field of British Guiana. He is at present resting in a cottage, near Land's End in the hope of restoring his shattered health. Originally he hailed from Wakefield, and With all his kindness and gracious bearing could soon disclose his solid Yorkshire grit, if you scratched him ! 

Mr. Yates is a very kindly personality, good to know, and he has already won the hearts of all my church members in this little village chapel of Drift.  


And there's this intriguing question to the author of a blog post on British Guiana:

Comment by John C. Yates — September 20, 2009 @ 7:51 pm  | Reply

• Would you happen to a descendant of the Reverend Yates from the Methodist Church in Guyana. My grandmother Hiria Marks had a picture of him and told me that she was adopted by him after her parents died. Our last name is Sukhdeo and there are none of us left in Guyana

And this:

For his dedication and work, Peter Ruhomon was honoured by becoming the first holder of the Yates Gold Medal awarded by J. A. Veerasammy to perpetuate the name of Rev. H. M. Yates, founder of the EIYMS.
He was also a founder/ member of the British Guiana Literary Society launched by Cameron in 1930 which included Rev. Dingwall and Rev. Pollard.


 EIYMS = (Wesleyan) East Indian Young Men's Society which Yates founded in 1919 in Georgetown.

Alice Edgar in 1910

On October 4, 1910, Alice Edgar sent a postcard to her sister Bessie. Analysis of this cards tells us something about her life in service.

The 1911 Census shows that she was a parlour maid in the house of wealthy Australian widow Elizabeth Jane Osborne, who lived with her unmarried daughter Susan Phillipa Frances Osborne at 33, Wilton Place in Knightsbridge. The text of the postcard tells us that she was already in Mrs. Osborne's employment in October 1910 - and possibly for some time before that.

Alice tells her sister that the household is very upset: 'the Colonel' died suddenly last Friday morning:

 She obviously assumes Bessie will know who the Colonel is, so she's been with the family long enough to have given her sister this information.

He was  in fact Colonel Claude de Courcey Hamilton, who died of heart failure on September 30, at Broomshouse, near Duns, Berwickshire, aged 49.[1] He had gone there in July because of poor health[2] and Mrs. Osborne and her household must have followed at some point.

Duns from Duns Law: By Brian Turner, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2919335

Colonel Hamilton was born on September 23, 1861 at Corfu. [3] The son of a holder of the Victoria Cross, he was commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1880. He first saw action in India in 1889 and, after a rather typical imperial career including service in the Boer war and in India, he was placed on half pay in 1907 and 18 months later retired due to ill health. He married Mrs. Osborne's second daughter, Jane ('Jeanie') Kathleen on March 17, 1887 at the Victorian-Gothic church of St. Philip and St. James, Cheltenham, his cousin performing the ceremony.[4]

 By Terry Jacombs, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13839272

He was buried with military honours on October 3.[5] Alice refers to the funeral, and she must have seen at least the first stage: Hamilton's remains were taken from Broomhouse to Christ Church Burial-ground in an impressive polished oak casket, carried on a gun carriage with an escort from Leith Fort Royal Artillery.[6] Alice's card says that the family are returning to London the next day.

The report of Colonel Hamilton's probate gives his address as 33, Wilton Place, which suggests he was living with his mother-in-law before going to Broomhouse.  The total of his estate was £91, net 'personalty' (moveable property)  nil: this is a small sum for such a distinguished man - he was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1906 - and my guess is that most of his estate passed directly to his wife.

Jeanie Kathleen de Courcy Hamilton died on November 24, 1944. The Times obituary suggests that her mother - Alice's employer - had moved to 45, Ennismore Gardens, another house  in Knightsbridge - it's estimated current value is £7.5 million.[7] But Mrs Osborne died peacefully at Westport House, Malmesbury - presumably another property - on October 19, 1938.[8] Jeanie was one of the two women named in an Australian newspaper as organising the probate on her estate - the other was her sister Louisa Margaret Atkinson Peake.[9]

The front of Alice's  postcard is a photo of three woman with Edinburgh's Forth  Bridge as background. 

Alice is seated in the centre. One of Alice's descendants has told me that the two other women in the photograph were fellow servants - clearly they were all on a trip to Edinburgh. According to the same source, one of the women - 'Auntie Maggie' - was to visit the family frequently when they moved to Windsor about six years later. I suspect she is the older lady on the right of the photograph and that she is Mary Thomas, the household's cook, 49 years old in 1911 and born in the Welsh town of Newcastle in Emelyn.

Alice addressed the card to Bessie at 'Durwood, Sandhurst':

Alice says that she's not sure if Bessie's there. which might suggest she had only recently entered - or had recently left - their employment. According to Wilfred Edgar, her husband was killed in WW1 and she later became the postmistress at Tiverton in Devon. Later still she was to follow Alice to Windsor.

Bessie in 1948, Frances Road, Windsor

---

[1] The Scotsman November 6, 1910, p. 11.

[2] Berwickshire News and General Advertiser, October 4, 1910, p.3.

[3] Berwickshire News and General Advertiser, October 4, 1910, p.3; https://www.red1st.com/axholme/getperson.php?personID=I1750047243&tree=Axholme

[4] "Marriages." Times [London, England] 22 Mar. 1887: 1. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 16 Oct. 2016.

[5] Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, October 4, 1910, p. 4.

[6] Berwickshire News and General Advertiser, October 4, 1910, p.3.

[7] "Deaths." Times [London, England] 1 Dec. 1944: 1. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 16 Oct. 2016.

[8] "Deaths." Times [London, England] 20 Oct. 1938: 1. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 16 Oct. 2016.

[9]https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1301&dat=19390819&id=83JVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=jZUDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2524,3274105&hl=en

John Hobden: Walking Between Worlds

Alice Edgar's maternal grandparents were John Hobden, who was born in 1821 in Lindfield, Sussex and died in Hove  in 1899, and Eliza Page, who was born in 1824 in Brighton and died in Lewes in 1886.

John lived at a time of great change - even in Sussex which was a long way from the coalfields that fuelled the growth of  the economic  'powerhouses' in Lancashire, Yorkshire, lowland Scotland and parts of the Midlands. He was  known in his family as a great walker and two treks he undertook during this period show how the new developments were affecting even the largely rural south of England.

Nineteenth century threshing machine: By Unknown (Dictionnaire d'arts industriels) - cropped image from 1881 Dictionnaire d'arts industriels, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=425243

The cumulative effect of these changes is sometimes called the modernisation of society. One aspect of this process was a gradual shift in attitudes to violence. When he was a young man people were hung for crimes that we would now regard as meriting little more than a short jail sentence, perhaps not even that. In one case, at least, they were hung for actions that are now perfectly legal and accepted, as we shall see. And public hanging was regarded as entertainment - although educated people were already starting to turn against the grisly spectacle, especially as children were sometimes taken 'as a warning' - contemporary accounts suggest that the behaviour of both the young and the old hardly suggested they were out to be reminded of the  majesty of the law and the stern necessities of justice. For many going to an execution was rather like a pleasant if rather disorderly day out. Public hangings continued in England until 1868.

The reason I'm recounting all this is that John's great-grandson tell us he walked from Lewes to Horsham - 45 miles there and back again- to see the  last man publicly hanged for sheep stealing in Sussex. Unfortunately this is not as clear as it seems. The last case of execution for sheep stealing in Sussex that I have been able to find took place in 1805, sixteen years before John's birth.[1] And it seems the last man to be publicly hanged anywhere in England for this crime was John Clarke, who paid for what he did - dying in 'a proper and penitent manner' after receiving the sacrament -on Friday 19 March, 1830 at faraway Lincoln.[2]

So John walked to see a man hanged, but for what crime?

 23.5 Miies

I have a theory. I think John saw what many of us would now call the judicial murder of a young man. If my theory is correct, John himself was possibly even younger than the victim and the nature of 'the crime' gave him an incentive to tell his family that it was 'sheep stealing' even though it wasn't.

First of all though, the tragic hanging took place in the County Goal- up until 19, August 1820 criminals were executed on Horsham Heath, but after this date they were relocated to the Goal. The first such execution took place on 24 August 1822 and the last on 6 April 1844. [3]

I believe that John witnessed one of these executions: the hanging of John Sparshott for sodomy - or, as another source puts it, 'an unnatural crime'.

The first name of the unfortunate victim is given as James as well as John[4] and his surname also takes the form 'Sparsholt'.But the date of the event is clear. This is from the Brighton Gazette, a local newspaper:[5]

The return {the Government had asked for a report of those executed at Horsham in the recent period} contained the names of Richard Shepherd for burglary, and James Sparshott for an unnatural crime, convicted at the last Summer Assizes, and executed at Horsham on the 22d August last.

That makes the execution August 22, 1835. A local historian claims it was the last public hanging at Horsham[7]  - which would make the story that John saw the last public hanging more credible, even if he declined to tell his family the true nature of the crime. Against my theory is the fact that Richard Shepherd was hanged for burglary on the same day and surely the family tradition that preserved the memory of John's walk would have also recorded the fact that he saw two men hanged. I have a hunch, though, that this was the execution John saw and the 15 year old was too embarrassed to report the nature of crime so substituted the more innocuous one of sheep stealing.

The next thing we hear of John is in the 1841 Census when he was an agricultural labourer living in one of the cottages at St. John Under the Castle, Lewes.  If I'm right in identifying his 'execution walk' he'd been in Lewes for at least six years.

12 Miles

However, this is just one snapshot of a working life that seems to have been a lot more varied:

As a young man he was said to have had employment at one time as a shepherd; at another occasion as a cowman and general dogsbody to farmers within the county, so with long personal experience, was very useful in handling livestock - horses, cattle, sheep, poultry - and in all-round landwork.[9]

At about the time of the 1841 Census, Eric Hobden tells us that John walked the same rough land from Lewes to Horsham to watch the arrival of the first steam train in Sussex. It came from London Bridge station. The creation of the London to Brighton railway was complex, but I think the most probable date for John's walk was July 12 1841.[10]

The railways were creating a new world. 

English and Scottish Railways 1850: By Charles F. Cheffins - Cheffins's Map of English & Scotch Railways, 1850 (preserved at University of Chicago Digital Preservation Collection), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31265009

Industry was stimulated to even faster growth and individuals felt their horizons expand as travel became quicker, easier and cheaper. The train journey from London to Brighton took less than half the time of the coach and was much safer and more comfortable.[11] Even standard national time came from the railways: the clocks at stations were the first co-ordinated timepieces.

John's was right to think it was worth making the effort to be there- it was a historic day!

John married Eliza Page at Newick on February 25, 1847.[12] This is what Eric Hobden tells us about his great-grandmother:

Eliza (was) a delicate, rather gentle lady who gathered her children round when they were young in thunderstorms to sing  'O God our help in ages past'.

The 1851 Census finds the couple still living in Newick. 

8.2 Miles

John is an agricultural labourer and Eliza isn't working - or, to put it another way, she's working very hard looking after her husband and her house and making ends meet. On Census Day they're being  visited by 6 year old Martha Page from Lewes - I'm not sure if she's Eliza's niece, cousin or sister.

Family tradition states that the couple lost their first four babies at birth or soon after. The first child to survive was named after her mother: Eliza (Jr.) was born in 1853 - she.  was to become Alice Edgar's mother. Richard followed in 1854 - and by the time of the next Census he and Eliza had three younger brothers.

In 1861 John and Eliza are living at Church Cottage, Chailey with Eliza (Jr.) who's at school, as are Richard and  William, aged 5. Alfred is 2 and baby Robert just 8 months. The first three children were born at Newick and the last two at Chailey, so the family must have made the short move some time between 1856 and 1859. John is still an agricultural labourer, but maybe he's got a new job.

 2.6 Miles

A word about Robert - his full name was Robert Owen Hobden and it seems most unlikely that he was not named after the great philanthropist, socialist, reformer and creator of model factories, Robert Owen, who had died two years earlier in 1858. 

John Cranch: Robert Owen in 1845: By John Cranch - painting of John Cranch 1845, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=719799

Owen's House at the model factory in New Lanark, close to Glasgow which he managed and part-owned: By Gordon Brown, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=484332

The previously irreligious Owen converted to Spiritualism in 1854, but I doubt that was the reason for the naming. I think one or both of the Hobdens was probably a socialist - and perhaps this was passed on through Eliza (Jr.) to her daughter, my grandmother Alice Edgar. Eric Hobden notes that she was always interested in anything that improved the lot of ordinary people and it sounds to me as if she was a left-winger long before she got involved with the Labour Party and the Co-operative Movement in Windsor in the 1920s.

The next Census marks a shift in John's working life.

In 1871 he was a gardener, living with Eliza at 75 South Street, Chailey. Richard, aged 16, William (14) and Alfred (12) were all agricultural labourers -  even Robert Owen, aged only 10, was working in the fields. Only Sarah Ann (7) is at school. Lydia Fanner, John's seventy-year-old  aunt, was also there on Census Day. All of the children are now said to have been born in Newick, but I'm almost sure the 1861 division between the two villages is correct.

There's no sign of John and Eliza in 1881 or of John in 1891. Eliza Hobden's death aged 62 was registered in the April-June quarter of 1886 in Lewes. John's death, aged 78, was registered in the first quarter of 1899 at Steyning. The Steyning registration district includes Hove.

I have no idea why they are not in those two Censuses - perhaps they are and I and the other family historians who've put Trees on Ancestry.com have simply failed to find them. But with these clues and Eric Hobden's letter we can try to reconstruct John and Eliza's movements in the last period of their lives.

This is what Eric tells us about John:

(H)e lived some time of the time with Aunt Sallie and Alfred King as well as with my Grandparents (Robert Owen Hobden and his wife Charlotte).

On March 27, 1886 Robert Owen Hobden and Charlotte had a son, Arthur, whose birth was registered in Lewes: this places them in Lewes, where Eliza's death was registered just before -so I think that John and Eliza were living with Robert and his wife at that time. In 1881 Robert was working at a footman at a large house called Newick Park. In the first quarter of 1884 he married Charlotte Rogers Duddridge, and my guess is that he took his parents into the home he set up with his new bride.

There is, by the way, an intriguing Edgar mystery about that marriage: Charlotte was from Somerset, but the church the couple married in was St. George's, Hanover Square. Reader's of his blog will know that this church is given on Find My Past as the one at which Alice Stephenson  married Herbert Edgar in 1911. They in fact married at St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, but Hanover Square was close to the home that Alice worked in as a parlour maid in 1911. There's a long gap between 1884 and 1911, but we don't know when Alice first went to work in that part of London and I think it's just possible that Charlotte kept in touch with her old employers and put in a word for Alice when some neighbours needed a servant. It's also worth noting that in 1891 her husband (Robert Owen) was a butler for an Australian in Reigate and Alice's employer was an Australian widow.

Eric tells us a little about his life with Robert Owen and Charlotte:

Seemingly he (John) did not have any formal education so was thought not able to write, and definitely could not read...(but) he liked newspapers being read aloud to him. This charming pastime was provided by Florence, a friend of...Charlotte's, but the kind old lady's own reading ability was little above kindergarten level and the outcome was sometimes riotously funny. When Florrie found difficult passages (she) simply spoke out the parts she understood, and for those which puzzled her (she) just said 'Big Word' as replacement! In other instances she invented a lot of nonsense as she went along. The old man, despite lacking 'academic' knowledge, was no simpleton, so when this good soul read aloud some piece outrageously 'haywire', he would call out, 'It doesn't really say that does it Flo; it sure sounds quite daft...'

John was born a long time before the state provided education for all and whether or not the children of agricultural labourers got any schooling at all was largely a matter of luck, and John missed out. Another thing that modernity means is decent standards of welfare and educational provision for all, and it seems to me that the naming of his son, which I discussed above, suggests that John Hobden longed for such a time to come about.

The Robert Owen Hobdens were in Hove by 1911 but my guess is that at the time of his death in 1899 John had moved in with his daughter and her husband. 'Sallie', as she's called in Eric's letter, was the family name for Sarah Ann Hobden, who was born in about 1864 and married Alfred King. In 1891 they were living in Argyle Road in Brighton. This was in the Preston sub-district of Steyning.

John Hobden was in most ways a man rooted in the old world, but one day in July 1841 he walked over 20 miles to watch a new one come into being. The world he died in was very different from the one he was born into - and if he'd lived a little longer he would have encountered a century in which the pace of change was to become faster still.

---

[1] http://sussexhistoryforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=2284.0

[2] http://parishes.lincolnshire.gov.uk/Files/Parish/91/websitehistoryCLARK1.pdf

[3] http://sussexhistoryforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=2284.0

[4] http://rictornorton.co.uk/eighteen/1836news.htm

[5] January 7, 1836 - cited in http://rictornorton.co.uk/eighteen/1836news.htm

[6] http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/1828.html

[7] http://sussexhistoryforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=2284.0

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Pratt_and_John_Smith

[9] Eric Hobden, Letter, 1986.

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_and_Brighton_Railway

[11] http://vichist.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/with-opening-of-london-to-brighton-rail.html

[12] http://person.ancestry.co.uk/tree/7622423/person/-584703941/facts

The William Stephensons: Two Yorkshire Shoe-makers and their World

Alice Edgar's great-grandfather was William Stephenson, a shoemaker of Askham Bryan, now a suburb of York but then a village about 6 miles to the south-west. He was born  in 1781 and he married Mary, who was born in 1791. I don't know Mary's maiden name. William was born at Thorp Arch, about 7 miles from Askham Bryan and Mary at Long Marston, less than 5 miles away from the village they would make their home in. Their first child (surviving one at any rate) was also named William. He was born in 1821, followed his father into shoe making, and married a woman called Jane - this time I think I can take a reasonable guess as to her maiden name. Their boy Tom, born in 1857, was Alice's father.

Let's see if we can put some flesh on these bare bones of our family history.

This is from nineteenth century descriptions of Thorp Arch, which is the currently known origin point for 'our' branch of the Stephensons:

The river Wharf (e) runs with a rapid stream through this delightful place, and the cascade seen through the arches of the bridge, with the church and houses embosomed in woods, on the banks of the river, afford a rich and varied landscape that can scarcely be excelled.[1]

By Gordon Hatton, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4062315

The 'arches of the bridge' have nothing to do with the village name, which alludes to the De Arcubus (or De Arches) family, which came to Britain with William the Conqueror.[2]

As for Long Marston, the childhood home of first female ancestor in this line: one of the crucial engagements of the English Civil War, the Battle of Marston Moor, took place  just outside the village in July 1644:

 By John Barker - http://www.bridgemanartondemand.com/art/154979/Battle_of_Marston_Moor_1644, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5210134

At some point the couple moved to Askham Bryan (now known mainly for its Agricultural College) where they remained for the rest of their lives. 

7.8 Miles

4.9 Miles

Their son, also a William Stephenson and my great-great-grandfather was born there in 1821. To avoid any confusion I'll call the two Williams 'Sr.' and 'Jr'  from now on but please remember this was NOT how they were named. And while the distinction between 'Stephenson' and 'Stevenson' is said to have been important to my grandmother Alice it was of no significance to the Census takers who used both forms - and on two occasions recorded them as 'Stephsons' perhaps suggesting an idiosyncratic family pronunciation!

What of the trade of shoemaker that was followed by both William Stephenson's?

Shoe maker and apprentice, illustration of 1821

Shoemakers had been at work in Askham Bryan since the seventeenth century.[3] William Stephenson Sr's prospects as he set out on this path were bright: he was a skilled worker and it must have seemed there would always be a demand for his products. He would have served an apprenticeship - probably for seven years  and starting at the age of seven - although I don't know if, like William Jr., his father was also his 'master'. The earliest reference to his work is in a Directory for 1823 where William is listed as a shoemaker - and he has one fellow craftsman in Askham Bryan, John Beck.[4] It seems certain that the two didn't live by making and repairing shoes for their fellow villagers: they did that, no doubt, but it's likely they made most of their money by producing shoes that were sold in York. Shoe making, like most other industries in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, was organised in what is now sometimes called  'the domestic system': shoes were made at the worker's home, paid for on a 'piece work' basis by a merchant capitalist, and taken to be sold, often from warehouses, in the nearest suitable town[5] - in this case almost certainly York. Sometimes the capitalist owned the tools necessary for the job, sometimes the worker. As the nineteenth century wore on, shoe making - again like other manufactures - was transferred to factories where workers needed little skill to operate the steam-powered machinery owned by their boss, but could produce a satisfactory much more quickly and for much less cost than trained craftspeople like the Stephensons. In most cases, artisans (as they were generally called at the time) were clear losers, but here is a huge debate as to the effects of this 'industrial revolution' on the working class as a whole. I think it would be a reasonable summary to say that the majority - or at least a good number - of the class enjoyed  slightly higher wages but the conditions of both their work and their lives became worse in more ways than they improved. It's hard to believe that either William Stephenson would been tempted by higher wages to give up their pleasant rural surroundings for the streets of nearby York, where the grim conditions faced by many workers were highlighted by social investigator Seebohm Rowntree in an influential 1900 report.

But even those who like the Stephensons stayed out of the rapidly expanding northern cities were deeply effected by the great changes going on around them.

They did their work at home, but the first factory (or factory-like) institutions for shoe manufacture appeared in the late 1850s.  In 1861, when William Sr. died, the situation wasn't too serious because the only process that had been mechanized was closing the uppers, which had traditionally been 'women's work'. Nevertheless, the march of industrialisation was unstoppable: by 1865 a single factory in Northampton was producing 100,000 shoes a week using steam-powered machinery[6] and in the next 25 years every process in shoe manufacture was mechanised,[7] and skilled craftsmen like the Stephensons were driven out by mass production.

American Shoe Making Factory, 1872:  By B. F. Spinney & Co(Life time: NA) - Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30709646

It's time to say more about the place the family lived and worked in and its relationship to the industrial revolution. My guess is that Wikipedia's description of the village today gives us a pretty good idea of what our ancestors would have seen:

The village consists of two main streets, Main Street and Askham Fields Lane, which are surrounded by closes and cul-de-sacs. There is a small duck pond opposite the church which was believed to have been dug as part of a medieval drainage system. Several species of waterbirds, including mallard, moorhen and the Canada goose have been seen on and around the pond. The centre of the village is the oldest part of Askham Bryan but it also includes the 18th century Nag's Head pub, the Victorian Doctor's House and the old school...

The Main Street in 2010: Courtesy of D. S. Pugh, Creative Commons Licence ( http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1707798)

Askham Bryan was a small village. Even in the 1870s there were only 362 people living in 68 houses.[8] In 1831 the population was 377 - the largest figure until the 1950s,[9] so the community was not undergoing the growth experienced by northern places on or close to the coalfields - it was coal that was powering the industrial revolution. In the same year  (1831) there were 18 men in the category 'retail and handicrafts', which probably included William Sr., and 44 agricultural labourers. The third biggest category was 'farmers employing labour' - 10 men. There were only 7 non-agricultural workers. In  other words, this tiny community was overwhelmingly agricultural, but with a number of skilled workers like William Sr. who practised their craft at home.[10] The number of men in the category 'manufacturing' workers was zero,[11] which means there were no factories in or near the village - about fifty years into the industrial revolution these great changes have had no direct impact on Askham Bryan. As the century wore on this changed a little, but not by enough to destroy the quality of life. In 1881, when a more complex system of classifying workers was in operation and statistics for women were also collected, agricultural workers still easily outnumber all other categories of male workers, while over 80% of women with known occupations were in domestic service. There are now 4 workers in various minerals, but Askham Bryan is still a basically agricultural community where the men work on the land and women either don't work or go into domestic service.

This made Askham Bryan a relatively pleasant and unpolluted place to live. And the family's position in the village wasn't bad either.

A modern analysis of social structure in 1831 places the largest number of men in the 'labourers and servants' class (58), with 17 in the 'middling sorts' (this would have included our ancestors), 14 'employers and professions' and 3 'others'). So at this time the Stephenson family occupies a solid position in the village, a cut above the average.

What of the trade followed by the two William Stephensons?

At the time of the 1841 Census, shoemakers were the largest group of artisans (excluding the textile trades) in the country - 133,000 adult males.[12] They had a rather contradictory image: on the one hand, they were believed to be the group most prone to celebrating 'Saint Monday' - taking Monday off because they were too drunk or hung-over to work after the weekend's indulgences. On the other, they seem to have been thought of as more literate and thoughtful than comparable artisan groups. I think there was some truth in both stereotypes - and I shall present evidence that places one or both Stephensons in the second category! But if they did want to drink that wasn't  a problem: in 1865 the vicar noted as one of the impediments to the success of his religious work the presence of three pubs in a community of not much more than 300 people.[13]

The Eighteenth Century Nags Head: By Christopherson78 at English Wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41342471

This is a good time to point out that we mustn't idealise the life of our two ancestors. They would have worked long and hard and without our modern 'safety net' to look after them in times of economic downturn or personal sickness. Not being able to work meant not being able to earn, and, as we shall see, every worker had good reason to dread old age.

With this general picture of relevant developments in mind, we can look more closely at the particular lives of our two ancestors.

                        

As I mentioned in my first paragraph, William Sr. and Mary gave birth to their first child, my great-great-grandfather William Jr., in 1821. They had a daughter, Hannah, in about 1824 - she's 27 years old in the 1851 Census. Their second son Robert was born in about 1829 - he's 12 in the 1841 Census. William Penty was born in 1840 -  he's just 1 in 1841.

In that 1841 Census William Stephenson Sr. is a shoemaker living in Askham Bryan - there is no village numbering system, - as we've seen there were many houses - and he's on the first sheet of the records. Much of Askham Bryan is now conserved because of its historic interest, and the account of the nineteenth century village in the conservation area description suggests that their house was part of a 'cluster' of buildings around the Hall (see below). There would be a gap and then another cluster, and so on.

He is 60 and his wife Mary is 50. Robert and William Penty are living at home, but William Jr. isn't. Nor is Hannah, who's 17 - my guess is that she's in domestic service, which, as we've seen, was the fate of most women of the village later in the century when female employment starts to be recorded. To jump ahead a bit: wherever she was, Hannah had a daughter Jane Ann in 1845[14] - she's given as five years old and a 'scholar' in 1851. But Hannah was unmarried, so she had returned with Jane Ann to live with her parents. Jane Ann was born in Askham Bryan and her father is unknown.

What of Hannah's older brother, our direct ancestor? In 1841 William Jr. is following in his father's footsteps - he too is a shoemaker, having almost certainly acted as his father's apprentice. But at aged 20 he's moved away from home - although not very far. He is in a different house in Askham Bryan, lodging with William Vincent (aged 50), a tailor and his wife Hannah (60).

At some time, most probably in the early 1840s, William Jr. married a Jane, who was also born in Askham Bryan about three years after her husband - that means in about 1824.  There's a Jane Farley, a farmer's daughter, living close to William in 1841 - she's given as 15, but ages in the 1841 Census were meant to be rounded to the nearest five, so that means she could be 17. She disappears from the record after 1841 and no other Janes born in Askham Bryan at anywhere near the right time come up in my searches, so she looks a promising candidate for my maternal great-great-grandmother!

In any case, William and Jane soon began to produce the large family characteristic of the Victorian period, when contraceptive methods were primitive and many children died in infancy. In the 1851 Census the couple's eldest daughter, Mary, is 9, Ann is 6, George 4 and Charles 2. Their youngest child, Robert. was a baby - just 1 month old. Only Ann was described as a 'scholar' - perhaps poor Mary was already working. The family still live at Askham Bryan.

In the same year (1851) William Sr. is recorded as 70 and his wife Mary is 60. As we've seen, their unmarried daughter Hannah has returned home bringing with her their granddaughter Jane Ann. The family are in the closest house to 'The Hall', where dwells Ann Fawcett a 'gentlewoman' with four live-in servants. Nearby live  a tailor, some agricultural labourers, and a man whose both stockbroker and farmer of 71 acres - I'd like to know more about the social relations in this very mixed 'cluster' of houses! Ann Fawcett died unmarried in January 1856 and her estate went into the notoriously slow Court of Chancery to be squabbled over - it was still there in 1860[15] and no doubt this gave the village several years of enjoyable gossip.

Mary Stephenson - William Sr's wife not William Jr's daughter - died later in 1851 - some time after Census Day which was March 30. She's buried in St. Nicholas Church.[16] Her grand-daughter, Jane Ann, died in 1867 and is named on her grandmother's tombstone so is perhaps buried in Mary's grave.[17]

By Ken Crosby, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3052230

That 1851 Census also gathered information about religious worship, so we get another piece of information about our ancestor - although it's unfortunately not certain which one! In 1851 there were two churches in Askham Bryan, the Anglican St. Nicholas ('an Ancient Church recently repaired' where Mary was soon to be buried) which could cater for a congregation of about 150, and the Missionary Chapel, a Wesleyan Methodist church erected in 1836 which could seat 100. The church 'steward' who provided the information about the Chapel to the Census takers was none other than 'Wm. Stevenson'. Nearby Askham Richard also had a Wesleyan Chapel, which suggests that Methodism was strong in this area. The chapel in Askham Bryan was  a 'plain brick building'[18] and it was replaced in 1893 by a new chapel that has now been modified into the village hall.

Which one of our ancestors was the steward? My guess would be William Stephenson Sr. as I think it more likely to be the 70 year old than the thirty year old in a position of responsibility. In any case, this proves one (at least!) of them was both literate and respected in the community - and perhaps a man of sober and industrious habits, too, although not all Methodists lived up this ideal of course!

But if the family was Methodist - the chances are that both the Williams were of that faith, whichever one was the steward - is it strange that they were buried in St. Nicholas, the Anglican church?

In 1865 William Whaley, the Anglican vicar, reported that only 10 or 12 people in the village were absolute dissenters who had no truck with the established church - the rest either attended both services or had no objection in principle to so doing.[19] Tom Stephenson - William Jr's son - had a fine voice and he's reported as singing in either York Minster or Durham Cathedral and other Anglican churches, so he either defected to the Church of England or was one of those willing to combine Methodist and Anglican worship. My grandmother - Tom's daughter Alice - sent her children to Anglican Sunday School, so by that time all trace of 'Dissent' had vanished from our line of the family.

In fact, John Wesley, although he set out to reform the Church of England, never left it. The first Methodists - originally a term of contempt used by their enemies - challenged a church they saw as corrupt, spiritually moribund, and indifferent to the fate of the vast majority of the population - the workers and the poor. According to historian Jeremy Black, Methodism was of particular appeal to artisans (skilled workers like our ancestors). It was often a way for them to show the proud independence from the established order of men who possessed a valuable and hard-won skill.

What all this means is that it's likely our family were never particularly hostile to the Church of England, and like other Methodists were buried in Anglican graveyards when there was no one of their own available.

William Sr. was 70 when his wife died and he faced an uncertain future as ageing made physical work more and more problematic. There was no old age pension, of course, and in many areas the only way for the elderly to get any help at all  was to go into the dreaded workhouse. Although Askham Bryan did have a couple of 'grace and favour' homes[20] where the 'deserving poor' could live for a nominal rent, most people who couldn't support themselves ended up in a workhouse in nearby Tadcaster. But it looks like William Jr. saved his father from this fate by taking him into his own household, as the 1861 Census records that there's a 'late shoemaker' and 'widower', also a William Stephenson, aged 80, lodging with his family.

That 1861 Census shows the house must have been pretty crowded: also living with William Jr. and Jane are Anne (16, a labourer), George (14, a labourer), Charles (12), Robert (10),  and William (7- William Jr. Jr.!). Charles, Robert and William are at school.  But it's one of the two new additions to the family I'm most interested in: my great grandfather Tom Stephenson is 3, and he has a baby sister Eliza aged 1.

William Stephenson Sr. died in the summer of 1861 and is buried in St. Nicholas  churchyard in Askham Bryan.  He too is on the memorial with Mary and Jane Ann.

So far we have a picture of a family living a tough life although somewhat above the bottom of the social scale. But even though he's well on onto middle age, perhaps even old by the standards of the time, Willliam Jr. (I'll drop the Jr. from now on as his father is dead) makes a remarkable attempt to improve or rescue his social position and economic well-being.

The 1871 Census shows that he is now both a shoemaker and a farmer of about 15 acres. He's obviously saved or otherwise acquired the money to buy or rent a small farm. It's possible this was an attempt at economic betterment, but it's also possible that he saw the writing on the wall and realised that his craft skills were being made redundant by mass production (see above). And his family had continued to grow: William, Tom and Eliza have now been joined by Anna M. (9), Emily (6) and Arthur (4). Both Anna and Emily are 'scholars' and  it's time to say something about the local school.

It was a 'National School' - that is, it was run by the Church of England. There was no rival 'British School' in the village - this chain was run by Dissenters and the Stephensons might have preferred to send their children there. The school had an endowment for teaching poor children. This is from a description in 1890:

The school is attended by 45 children. It is a neat brick building, erected some years ago, and is supported by a voluntary rate and school fees. [21]

The school records in the National Archives start in 1864[22] but another source provides an indication that there was a school in the village in the 1820s[23] and there was certainly  a schoolmaster (one William Jackson - but he was also a farmer so perhaps his job wasn't full-time) in 1823[24] so either the earlier records have been lost or there was a school in the village before the National School. My guess is the former.

In 1865 there were 69 'scholars' aged above 5. The school was supported by a £6 a year endowment and private donations but also got some help from the Government. There was a Sunday School with 45 attendees that was entirely funded by private gifts. The village was lucky: nearby Askham Richard only had a 'dame' school and some children from that village came to get the better education offered by the Church.

It seems that a number of children of both Williams died in childhood or after a relatively short life by today's standards - William Penty, for example, is mentioned only in the 1841 Census.  On December 31, 1877 William Jr's daughter Mary died at Far Headingley, now part of Leeds - 'the beloved wife of  Richard Dalton'. She was 36.[25]

In 1880 there was a new development: William Stephenson was appointed an Overseer of the Poor at Askham Bryan.[26] I need to do more research on this position - and perhaps even to track down William's accounts book! Before 1834 - when a major change to the English Poor Law was introduced - the Overseers had a variety of tasks connected with the administration of poor relief, but this changed in complex ways in the new system.. In  any case, the appointment - whether voluntary or, as in some cases, against the will of the new Overseer - shows that he had a certain standing in the community and that he had achieved reasonable standards of both literacy and numeracy - skill with numbers was common amongst shoe makers as they had to keep careful note of the foot size of their bespoke customers.[27]

If William did have anything to do with the running of the local workhouse he would have some grim reminders of  the fate that could befall anyone. In the Tadcaster Workhouse in 1881 was Robert  Hodgson, a former shoemaker of South Milford, perhaps a victim of the industrialisation I described earlier.[28] There were seven residents of Askham Bryan there, including a family who had lived close to William and, one Samuel Stephenson, a 15 year old scholar - I don't know if he was a relation or not.

12.3 Miles

The workhouses had never been places of comfort and joy, but after 1834 they became a lot worse. The Poor Law Amendment Act of that year banned 'out door relief' - help given to the poor outside the doors of  a workhouse - and to guarantee that no-one entered a workhouse unless they really had to the Act also decreed that life inside one should be less desirable than the life of anyone outside. Of course, the life of the worst-off labourers was about as bad as it could be in terms of food, shelter and so on, so the only way to make existence less desirable was to persecute the inmates with petty rules (no talking at meals for example), give them pointless work (breaking up stones that would never be used in some cases) or - and this was the most hated thing of all - house the sexes in separate accommodation so that husband and wives and parents and opposite sex children were split up.

In practice it was impossible to implement this brutal act in full - the attempt to end all outdoor relief was soon abandoned, for example - but enough of it remained in place to make fear of ending up in the workhouse a shadow over every working class life. I only know of one family member who ended up there -  a tragic story I'll tell in a future post.

In  the 1881 Census - taken a year after his appointment as Overseer - William was described as  a farmer of 16 acres - so he had held on to his improved social and economic position in the decade between censuses. He and Jane were living in  Askham Bryan with three children - not including my great grandfather Tom - he'd married Eliza Hobden and had gone down to her home county, Sussex, in search of work. At home were Robert, his age given as 29 but probably a little older, and unmarried, who was an agricultural labourer, Arthur, 14, a 'scholar', and a granddaughter, Florence, aged 9 who was  also at school. Perhaps she was Robert's daughter, but the Censuses only state the relationship to the head of the household so we can't be sure.

On November 16, 1884 Eliza, described in the newspaper report as their eldest daughter - which means that Anne must have died as well as Mary -  married Joseph Anderson of York at New Street (Methodist) Chapel.[29] Eliza outlived her husband, and the 1911 Census finds her working as an office cleaner in York.

There was to be one more development in William's working life. Bulmer's directory for 1890 tells us:

Post Office at William Stephenson's, shoemaker. Letters via York arrive at 8-0 a.m., and are despatched at 6-30 p.m. [30]

I guess this means his farming enterprise had failed and he'd sought another way to supplement his income from shoe making at a time when, as we have seen, the process had become fully mechanised and craft production was on the way out.

The next year's Census (1891) gives us William Stephenson (69) and Jane (67) living in Village Street, Askham Bryan. He's described as a shoemaker and 'postman' - it would be interesting to know how much of the former he was actually doing. Arthur aged 34 is still living with them - he's a groom and domestic servant. Florence, their granddaughter, is aged 19.

William's final appearance in the records is in the 1901 Census, when, aged 77, he is a 'sub-postmaster' and a worker at home - so presumably still making shoes. Jane is 74 and they are living at the post office in Village Street. I can find no death record for William Stephenson, but one source states he died in the early part of the 1900s. This is plausible as I can find no entry for him or Jane in the 1911 Census either.

In 1901 Tom, living in Sussex with his 13 year old daughter Alice probably just out of school and about to enter domestic service, was pursuing his career as a gardener. Whatever the Stephensons did now, it wouldn't be making shoes.

---

[1] http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/ARY/Thorparch/

[2] http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/14363

[3] file:///C:/Users/brian/Downloads/ca14askhambryan.pdf

[4] http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/ARY/Askhambryan/Askhambryan23Dry.html

[5] http://staffscc.net/shoes1/?p=126

[6] http://www.tredders.com/history

[7] http://staffscc.net/shoes1/?p=126

[8] http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/11226

[9] http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/unit/10389707/cube/TOT_POP

[10] http http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/unit/10389707/cube/OCC_PAR1831_SIMP://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/unit/10389707/cube/OCC_PAR1831

[11]

[12]https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_IONAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA122&lpg=PA122&dq=apprenticeship+in+england+lane+shoemakers&source=bl&ots=vmcIqQgSfq&sig=MIl__bo6HwrHYLmF_k5fqBxyjYE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjRleDS_KnOAhWFAsAKHWcJCEIQ6AEILDAC#v=onepage&q=apprenticeship%20in%20england%20lane%20shoemakers&f=false

[13] https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=iBB34569X4sC&pg=PA21&lpg=PA21&dq=askham+bryan+methodists+whalley&source=bl&ots=6WBrF-piez&sig=QYZOSDwxnYm_d3tU_hL9-s2X5Q4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiW2MHyvMjOAhWJIMAKHfqEBE8Q6AEIMTAD#v=onepage&q=askham%20bryan%20methodists%20whalley&f=false

[14] http://www.gravestonephotos.com/public/gravedetails.php?grave=57827&scrwidth=1258

[15] Perry's Bankrupt Gazette , Saturday, January 21, 1860, Issue 1659, p.49/50.

From British Library Newspapers

[16] http://www.gravestonephotos.com/public/gravedetails.php?grave=57827&scrwidth=1258

[17] http://www.gravestonephotos.com/public/cemeterynamelist.php?cemetery=500&limit=201&scrwidth=1258)

[18] http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/ARY/Askhambryan/Askhambryan90.html

[19] https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=iBB34569X4sC&pg=PA21&lpg=PA21&dq=askham+bryan+methodism+1865&source=bl&ots=6WBrE1offF&sig=KWDad9iDAP-DBtDs6xTSR_S1raA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiN6KGLjsbOAhVkI8AKHaQBCg4Q6AEIPTAF#v=onepage&q=askham%20bryan%20methodism%201865&f=false

[20] http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/ARY/Askhambryan/Askhambryan90.html

[21] http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/ARY/Askhambryan/Askhambryan90.html

[22] http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/ARY/Askhambryan/Askhambryan90.html

[23] http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/ARY/Askhambryan/

[24] http://dp.genuki.uk/big/eng/YKS/ARY/Askhambryan/Askhambryan23Dry

[25] Deaths, York Herald, January 7, 1878, p. 4

[26]  APPOINTMENT OF OVERSEERS, York Herald, April 3, 1880, p. 6

[27] http://www.tredders.com/history

[28] http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Tadcaster/Tadcaster1881.shtml

[29] Births, Deaths, Marriages and Obituaries, York Herald, November 22, 1884, p. 4

[30] http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/ARY/Askhambryan/Askhambryan90Dry.html