I am finding the imagining challenging, but interesting, and I have written some pages of the proposed book.
Please drop me a line and tell me how you are and what you think.
David responded quickly.
Subject: Re: At Work on the Slaidburn Murder Novel
Dear Sheelagh
… Since last speaking to you we have been to the site of the “alleged murder” and have taken more photos from in the field. We found that a ford under the bridge has paving which continues down stream for some 30 yards until it is edged with large blocks where the stream then drops about 10 feet into a pool. Most peculiar and suggested to us the possibility of a late or post mediaeval mill site. A difficult place to get to. The body was definitely not intended to be found….
Please let us know if you do intend to come over in November. We’d love to meet you and can probably arrange permissions to visit the relevant locations…. If you need a guide just ask.
Grace Isherwood’s reasons for her actions seem to me bound up in the shame and stigma of illegitimacy prevailing at that time. Her good fortune in finding a good man to marry her might in her eyes have been threatened by the revelation of a child by a previous relationship. Indeed, the court case seems to revolve far more on the origins of the child than the evidence regarding the circumstances of the day in question. The farming community in this area still frowns on children born out of wedlock….
As for your great grandfather losing his farm … perhaps legal fees? An agricultural depression? (There was a large migration from the Slaidburn area from the 1870s onward, particularly to the Liverpool area where many farmers became urban cow keepers and dairy men.)
As for my opinion, personally I think the difficulty in facing his neighbours in such a closed community where he would meet them at the Cattle Auction, agricultural merchants, pub, etc. or in the communal work that was a requisite of farming in those days would have led to him feeling “frozen out.” His relationship with Grace would have become one of shared adversity which perhaps brought a sense of “us against the world.” … The other thing is I think he genuinely loved her … and understood the pressure she must have felt in thinking she might lose her husband over an illegitimate child. Once things were in the open I think he must have trusted her with his children.
We are both well. I did a large web site for the Ulster Place-name Society during the summer (170+ photos) and then went and bought a “Boyne Curragh” (Irish coracle made of hazel branches with a woven willow gunwale, covered in a cow hide). I’ve been learning to paddle it on the River Hodder recently.
Sorry for my ramblings, but do keep us informed of how things are going. We are really interested.
Best wishes David (& Cathryn) Higham
Our plans began to develop apace. William and I needed to make a journey to Toronto in November, and if you hold a globe in a peculiar enough way you can find a justification for routing yourself from Canberra, through England and on to Canada.
Subject: Going to Slaidburn
Dear David
William and I would be delighted to have such a knowledgeable guide for our visit in November.
Could you help me out with a couple of locations? Where is Mill Brook, Bowland Forest, Lower Division, and do you know where Chapel Croft, Parish of Slaidburn, is? Also, do you know where Ash Knott is?
Finally, in any of the graveyards around is there a Jane Isherwood, died approx. 1884, or a John Green Isherwood, died near 1900 I guess, or a Grace Isherwood, died maybe in the early 1900s? They seem to have been members of the parish church of Slaidburn.
I loved the picture of you in your Boyne Curragh.
Yours S
Subject: From Slaidburn
Dear Sheelagh
Just checked out the Ordnance Survey map. Mill Brook is approximately 5 miles from Slaidburn near Browsholme Hall. Chapel Croft is about 300 yards from Meanley Farm where Grace lived! There is a farm in the Slaidburn Parish called Ashnott or Ashknott (associated with lead mining from at least the early medieval period) about a mile from Meanley.
Also checked the Slaidburn Graveyard Headstone transcription re Isherwoods. There are a couple, but not the ones you seek.
If you could, tell us where you plan to visit, especially if it is a specific farm like Chapel Croft. We are happy to ask in advance of your visit for permission for you to have a look around, especially where there is no public access via a footpath.
Locals have been very generous when asked in advance. It seems a far better way than turning up unannounced. Since you are coming in November the likelihood in Slaidburn will be that it will be wet and cold, so pack your willies [sic] or buy a cheap pair whilst you are here, and a good coat.
May we ask your connection to Mill Brook?
How is the book going?
Look forward to meeting you.
Regards David and Cathryn
PS Here is a Slaidburn joke
Judgement Day
A curious fellow died one day and found himself in limbo waiting in a long, long line for judgement. As he stood there he noticed that some souls were allowed to march right through the gates of heaven. Others were led over to Satan, who threw them into a lake of fire. Every so often, instead of hurling a poor soul into the fire, Satan would toss him or her to one side.
After watching Satan do this several times, the fellow’s curiosity got the better of him. He strolled over and tapped old Nick on the shoulder.
“Excuse me, there, Your Darkness,” he said. “I’m waiting in line for judgement, and I couldn’t help wondering why you are tossing some people aside instead of flinging them into the fires of hell with the others.?”
“Ah,” Satan said with a grin. “Those are folk from Slaidburn. I’m letting them dry out so they’ll burn.”
David’s note was my first indication that I was hopelessly naïve in my notion that one could just drive up to a farm of interest or traipse across a farmer’s land to look at the brook. Before then it had never occurred to me that one couldn’t just walk right up to a particular location like Chapel Croft and take a look. City dweller!
As I came to learn, the country sense of one’s property, and who should be near or on it, is very important in the Slaidburn area, and the notion is one of long-standing.
Reflecting on that information, I realized that back in 1885, farmer Bargh’s concern about what Grace and Isabella were doing on his property on a spring evening probably played a key role in the quick discovery of the body of poor little Thomas.
Chapel Croft Farm.
Photo by Sue Barton.
Having grasped the literal importance of respect for other people’s property, I was very appreciative of David and Cathryn’s efforts to make sure that we had permission in advance to tramp about on farmer’s land and to walk up to their houses.
We had a little confusion over the kind of clothing William and I would need in the North. David sent a note telling us to bring our “willies” which I innocently interpreted as “woollies.” When I wrote to him that we would certainly bring warm clothes, and arriving from Australia, could be counted on for woollies, he replied: “As for needing woollies … I meant to put wellies (Wellington boots) and ended up typing ‘willies’ … Freudian slip?”
A Strange Coincidence
The social history of Victorian times seems to be enjoying a certain vogue right now, probably driven by all the Pennys and Sheelaghs out there on the ’net looking for their forebears. The long reign of Victoria, and the long reign of the present Elizabeth, have led to interesting comparisons about culture and government.
Both David in England and William in Australia came across newspaper articles about the latest theory concerning Jack the Ripper, the fascinating, unsolved, grisly Victorian serial-murder mystery that bears frequent reinvestigation. And David’s proximity to the scene of our Victorian “crime” turned up an article about workhouses that was almost ridiculously close to home.
Subject: Re
Slaidburn
Dear Sheelagh
… Another strange coincidence … Yesterday I was reading our local paper The Clitheroe Advertiser & Times and noticed an article about a new book about Clitheroe Workhouses. The author, Mr. Frank Lofthouse, is the great great grandson of Mr. and Mrs Young Lofthouse who were the first keeper and matron of the Clitheroe Workhouse (who refused entry to Thomas Dockrah because of the lack of a letter from the relieving officer).
… In the guestbook is an entry regarding the book which I reproduce here:
A colleague and friend of mine Mr. Frank Lofthouse has recently published a book entitled Keepers of the House — A Workhouse Saga which gives a detailed history of the Clitheroe Union Workhouse based upon board of guardian minutes and contemporary newspapers of the time. The Author Mr. Frank Lofthouse is the great-great-grandson of Mr. & Mrs Young Lofthouse who was [sic] the first keeper and matron of the Clitheroe Workhouse in a building which still stands and is currently occupied by Clitheroe Community Hospital. It was the family connection which first gave him the interest in the project and has finally published the book following five years of research and 120,000 words. It is a detailed fly-on-the-wall account of what it was like to be on the breadline in Clitheroe in the middle of the 19th Century. The book details how the decision by the Poor Law commissioners to group Lancaster and Yorkshire parishes to form the Clitheroe Union was a recipe for trouble. To begin with, the Yorkshire parishes deeply resented being governed from Clitheroe on the Lancashire side of the Ribble. At the time, paupers were considered to be an urban Lancashire problem and the Yorkshire districts saw no reason why they should be taxed to solve it. For more than 30 years after the Act, the Clitheroe Union defied the Government by refusing to build a new workhouse until the Government issued an ultimatum in 1869. Mr. Young Lofthouse and his wife had 11 children while they were in office at the workhouse. Two of the daughters became Assistant Matrons. Abandoned, orphaned or abused children entered the workhouse, only to be claimed by relatives when reaching a working age. Bear in mind that at this time the working age began at around 10 or 11 years of age. Trade in the cotton industry was in a constant state of flux and periodic strikes, fires and mill failures swelled the ever-increasing numbers of those seeking relief…. Order your personal signed copy of Keepers of the House — A Workhouse Saga by F.H. Lofthouse and published by Hudson History of Settle direct from the Author for the special price of …
Best wishes David
Cathryn hurried to the Clitheroe library the next day to look up the Lofthouse book and quickly sent me a scan of an amazing photo from the book: Mr. Young Lofthouse and his wife Catherine Lofthouse — the very woman who refused to admit little Thomas into the Clitheroe workhouse on the day that he died.
The photo bears a remarkable resemblance to American Gothic, painted by Grant Wood in 1930. The Art Institute of Chicago’s notes on the painting say: “Wood was accused of creating in this work a satire on the intolerance and rigidity that the insular nature of rural life can produce.” In the 1880s, though, such a picture was not so much satire as it was a reflection of the state of the photographer’s art and the rigid strictures of Victorian society.
The word workhouse is itself one to conjure with. The forbidding demeanour of the Lofthouses, although partly due to the requirement in those days to stay still for several seconds to be photographed, seems simply to underscore the sense of misery and dread the name evokes.
Some years earlier, Dickens had been horrified by the workhouses of Yorkshire. Through his fiction, he did what he could to try to bring their appalling circumstances to the attention of his reading public. If Dickens was horrified at the plight of a child like Oliver Twist, what might he have thought about poor little Thomas, whose first internment in a workhouse took place when he was not yet two years old?
Dickens Would have Wept
The brief and tragic life of Thomas Gardner certainly had Dickensian undertones. The last of his hired minders, Mrs. Gordon, looked after little Thomas for roughly three months in the late summer of 1884. He was by then one-and-one-half years old. Having not received timely payment for his maintenance, she put the toddler, all alone, into the Ulverston workhouse.
Grace Gardner had written to Mrs. Gordon from Bolton-by-Bowland and then from Meanley, asking after Thomas and sending the odd bit of money. Given that she knew Grace’s whereabouts, it is hard to imagine that Mrs. Gordon did not try to send word to Grace that she was putting the baby into the workhouse. At least his grandparents must have known.
As the matron of the Clitheroe Union Workhouse had made clear, admission was a process requiring the formal approval of a relieving officer. The master of the Ulverston workhouse would have had to assess Thomas’s situation and to agree to his admission, so somebody must have had the opportunity to reflect for a while on putting Thomas into such a place.
Poor baby. In 1881 the UK census catalogued the 253 people who were inmates of the Ulverston workhouse at the time. Of the inmates, thirty were children five years of age or under, but only three appeared to be in the workhouse without other family members to watch out for them. Of the three, little Elena Livesey, a scholar aged two, did at least have her seven-year-old sister, Margaret, to look out for her. William Cross, two, and Charles McCann, four, seem to have been all by themselves in that harsh and desolate place. Just reading their names makes one want to weep.
In 1884, when Thomas was admitted, the situation would have been much the same. Who would have looked out for a child not yet toilet trained? Little children, even boys, wore petticoats, not breeches, to help deal with the problems of toilet, but there still must have been a lot of mess and bother. And who made sure they got food? One has to suppose that their fates rested entirely on the sympathies of others.
Maybe little Elena Livesey, six by then, or William Cross, who would also have been six, if they were still alive, tried to show young Thomas how to cope.
How did the baby eat and sleep, and keep from killing himself by falling downstairs or eating poison? Who got him up in the morning and put him to bed at night?
Ulverston Workhouse Children’s House.
By kind permission of Peter Higginbotham.workhouses.org.uk.
Workhouse food, consisting of gruel and boiled meat and vegetables, was probably well-suited to a child’s digestion, but who would make sure he was served and able to feed himself?
In 1881 there were two women described as nurses and a matron at the Ulverston workhouse, but they would have had their hands full. In addition to the inmate children, there were a number of inmates described as imbeciles, as well as the deaf and the blind to look after. Men, women, and children were segregated, so perhaps one of the nurses looked after the children.
Toys were not allowed in workhouses until around 1900, so what did a little one like Thomas do to pass the time? Did anyone take the time to talk to him or to try to teach him anything? There was school for older children, so was a baby left even more alone while the older children attended classes? Was he left cooped up all day like those poor babies in the pictures of Romanian orphanages, with sad eyes and no residual belief in the value of tears?
The children of the poor were expendable. In all probability, nobody even really noticed Thomas, much less cared.
As for the demeanour of Thomas Gardner, he was probably a very passive little person. He was not wanted at birth, and nothing ever happened subsequently to make him feel otherwise. Even at two, he probably had a vocabulary of only a few words.
He had been serially abandoned. Looked after by a procession of different women, none of whom, including his mother, ever displayed any real attachment to him. He must have had a biological father, but that was the extent of his paternity. Only his Gardner grandparents seemed to care much at all whether he lived or died.
By any civilized standard, a lot of damage had already been done to Thomas. But, of course, that was nothing compared to what ensued.
Cold Case Investigation
: 1885 Child Murder
During my trip to the Preston Gaol, I came upon a fascinating book in the gift shop called Lancashire Lasses — Their Lives and Crimes by Steve Jones. It is full of wonderful old photos and stories about the lives and crimes of women in Lancashire in the late Victorian period.
What particularly interested me was Jones’s list of thirty Lancashire women sentenced to death between 1860 and 1914. In 1885, the year when Grace and Isabella went to trial in Yorkshire, two women were sentenced to death for infanticide, though their sentences were later commuted to penal servitude for life.
The facts were uncomfortably similar to those in the instance of the death of little Thomas Gardner. As Jones wrote in his book:
Those unfortunate children born out of wedlock appeared to be at great risk. Elizabeth Lane … from Ancoats told everyone she was going to take her illegitimate child to its father in Warrington. It was found abandoned in mud by the edge of a canal.
21-year-old Margaret Higgins … from Chorlton-on-Medlock murdered her illegitimate 14-month-old daughter Josephine when she took up with a new lover. The body was found in the river Medlock some 200 yards from the bridge in Cambridge Street. Margaret had a row with a new boyfriend to whom she threatened to drown herself in hopes that he would follow her and show some interest. When eventually she gave herself up to police, she told them that she had thrown the child over the wall into the river. The defence argued unsuccessfully that she’d accidentally dropped the child when climbing a wall near the river. (Page 89)
The Slaidburn Angel Page 15