Wellington Street, the silk factory, a romance an illegitimate birth and marriage along with seven children and a life in Whiteman’s Yard.
I tried finding Smith’s Buildings on Wellington Street in Derby because it was here that one of my relatives lived before she got married. It was a daft idea really. She was there in 1861 when it was a close packed mix of houses and factories. Now it is just a stretch of car parks.
Maria Boot the mother of my great grandmother was born in 1845, brought up seven children and died in Whiteman’s Yard aged just 43.
She died of phthisis or tuberculosis which was a common enough disease in the 19th century and one that killed her father and mother. Like many who succumbed, she may well have been aware that the chronic cough; with its telltale signs of blood, the night sweats and weight loss were all signs that that she had been infected.
A poor diet, long hours of work and an absence of professional medical care made her vulnerable and like many of her generation she would have looked much older than she was.
No photograph has survived of Maria but I doubt we would have caught her smiling into the camera. This had less to do with being camera shy or a natural disposition to being stern but was a form of vanity. Smiling would reveal the row of missing and bad teeth which was the lot of so many of her class.
But once in the 1860s she would have been both youthful and I would like to think attractive. John Boot certainly thought so. He was a railway labourer and she a silk worker and they lived in the same house on Wellington Street.
Maria had worked as a silk winder which covered a number of different tasks, ranging from winding the silk on to the bobbins, cleaning the silk thread, to strengthening the filaments by a process called throwing. Much of the work was done by machines powered by overhead belts which in turn were connected to a drive powered by steam. These machines were spread out across the width of the mill floor.
Her job would have been to watch the bobbins on the machines, removing them when they filled with silk and replacing them with others and where necessary joining the ends of broken threads. It would have been repetitive and monotonous work, dominated by the clack thump and humming of the machines. Like as not she would have worked at either
the Mitchell and Slater silk mill or the Carrington Street Mill.
She was a boarder in the house that John Boot rented with his brother. Now I am at heart a romantic and I like to think that the two of them fell in love and planned when to marry. Alas as with so many love matches reality played out a little differently.
In 1862 Maria gave birth to her first son well away in Chesterfield while still single and it was not till 1864 that the two married. Perhaps it was out of consideration for decency that she gave Nelson Street as her residence on the marriage certificate.
I am less sure. Child birth outside marriage was less of a scandal than we like to think. In rural areas many brides were either pregnant when they stood in front of the altar, or had actually given birth before their marriage. In my own village there were sixty-seven illegitimate births during in seventy two years up to 1842 with some mothers having a second and even a third child. I doubt that it was any less so in the towns and cities.
Indeed one of Maria’s children did just that. Eliza was born in 1872 in Whiteman’s Yard fell in love with a young soldier and bore him five children. The children were born in Bedford, Birmingham Kent and lastly in the Derby Workhouse. The couple never married and sometime in 1902 they parted company. She came home to Derby with three children and pregnant with their fifth and he stayed in Kent where he married and had another five.
She went back to the same familiar patch living just streets away in Hope Street. This too has long gone and has also become a car park.
Picture; A silk machine,from A Day at Derby Silk Mill the Penny Magazine, 1843
I tried finding Smith’s Buildings on Wellington Street in Derby because it was here that one of my relatives lived before she got married. It was a daft idea really. She was there in 1861 when it was a close packed mix of houses and factories. Now it is just a stretch of car parks.
Maria Boot the mother of my great grandmother was born in 1845, brought up seven children and died in Whiteman’s Yard aged just 43.
She died of phthisis or tuberculosis which was a common enough disease in the 19th century and one that killed her father and mother. Like many who succumbed, she may well have been aware that the chronic cough; with its telltale signs of blood, the night sweats and weight loss were all signs that that she had been infected.
A poor diet, long hours of work and an absence of professional medical care made her vulnerable and like many of her generation she would have looked much older than she was.
No photograph has survived of Maria but I doubt we would have caught her smiling into the camera. This had less to do with being camera shy or a natural disposition to being stern but was a form of vanity. Smiling would reveal the row of missing and bad teeth which was the lot of so many of her class.
But once in the 1860s she would have been both youthful and I would like to think attractive. John Boot certainly thought so. He was a railway labourer and she a silk worker and they lived in the same house on Wellington Street.
Maria had worked as a silk winder which covered a number of different tasks, ranging from winding the silk on to the bobbins, cleaning the silk thread, to strengthening the filaments by a process called throwing. Much of the work was done by machines powered by overhead belts which in turn were connected to a drive powered by steam. These machines were spread out across the width of the mill floor.
Her job would have been to watch the bobbins on the machines, removing them when they filled with silk and replacing them with others and where necessary joining the ends of broken threads. It would have been repetitive and monotonous work, dominated by the clack thump and humming of the machines. Like as not she would have worked at either
the Mitchell and Slater silk mill or the Carrington Street Mill.
She was a boarder in the house that John Boot rented with his brother. Now I am at heart a romantic and I like to think that the two of them fell in love and planned when to marry. Alas as with so many love matches reality played out a little differently.
In 1862 Maria gave birth to her first son well away in Chesterfield while still single and it was not till 1864 that the two married. Perhaps it was out of consideration for decency that she gave Nelson Street as her residence on the marriage certificate.
I am less sure. Child birth outside marriage was less of a scandal than we like to think. In rural areas many brides were either pregnant when they stood in front of the altar, or had actually given birth before their marriage. In my own village there were sixty-seven illegitimate births during in seventy two years up to 1842 with some mothers having a second and even a third child. I doubt that it was any less so in the towns and cities.
Indeed one of Maria’s children did just that. Eliza was born in 1872 in Whiteman’s Yard fell in love with a young soldier and bore him five children. The children were born in Bedford, Birmingham Kent and lastly in the Derby Workhouse. The couple never married and sometime in 1902 they parted company. She came home to Derby with three children and pregnant with their fifth and he stayed in Kent where he married and had another five.
She went back to the same familiar patch living just streets away in Hope Street. This too has long gone and has also become a car park.
Picture; A silk machine,from A Day at Derby Silk Mill the Penny Magazine, 1843
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