The twisty, turny tale of Elizabeth Jane Dean …….. Didsbury, Manchester and Heaton Mersey

If there were  ever any pictures of the people who lived in Warburton Street at the beginning of the last century they have all been lost, or at best sit in an album, or cupboard, unlikely ever to see daylight.

No. 4 Warburton Street, 2020

And that is a shame because we know who they were, and something of their lives and families.

By extension it is possible to uncover many of the residents of the five cottages on the south side of the street back to 1845, along with the man who built and owned them.

The question as ever, is who to pick, and just what their stories might tell us about Didsbury.

I started with 1911, partly because I had the street directory for that year in front of me, and because the 1911 census was the most detailed of the eight census returns for the years 1841-1911.

Of the five, number 2 was occupied by John Crompton and Sons, and was listed as “paint stores”, no, 4 was William Richardson, plate layer, and no.6 was Mrs. Emma Smith who described herself as “Householder, but who I know was a “launderess”.

To which I can add that later in 1911, no 8, was home to the Schofield family, and that Mr. Walter Schofield was a “night soil man", and at no. 10 were the Blomileys, two of who worked as labourers, one was a charwoman and the youngest member of the family was a “gardener’s apprentice”.

And to complete the picture, while Mrs. Smith lived alone in her four roomed cottage, the six members of the Schofields has to manage in their two up two down, and the Blomiley’s to squeeze their lot into just three rooms.

The occupations of our residents might seem at variance with the popular image of Didsbury as a well healed and comfortably prosperous suburb of Manchester, but amongst the professionals, and wealthy business families there were still many who made their living from servicing “the better off”.

Barlow Moor, 1854

Mrs. Smith would have washed their linen, young Jane Blomiley cleaned their houses, and Mr. Schofield and one of the Blomiley’s were engaged as night soil men removing the contents of the privies of the rich.

And that left Mr. William Richardson a platelayer who ensured that the tracks on the stretch of line from Didsbury Railway Station to Manchester  Central were up to the scratch.

But instead of these families it is the story of Miss Elizabeth Jane Dean who captured my interest.

In the January of 1911 she was living on the opposite side of street, by the April had moved to Countess Road, of Hardman Street and earlier had lived at both no. 4, as well as no. 1 Warburton Street.

Added to which she spent her early years in the heart of the city in the space between the Rochdale and Ashton Canals behind Great Ancoats Street.

She was born in Didsbury in 1860 and was living on Warburton Street by the following year with her mother and sister. Over the next few years, the family moved to Hardman Street, but are lost to the records after 1866, until Elizabeth Jane turned up in Ancoats on Lees Street in 1871, living with her grandmother.

Elizabeth Jane's Manchester, 1881

Just where her mother was living is unclear, and a decade later Elizabeth Jane is just a few streets away, staying with her uncle and aunt, and described herself as a “Winder”, before reappearing in Didsbury, back with her mother on Warburton Street in 1891.

Trying to unpick the story underneath the census return is complicated, open to speculation and may just not be my business.

But her mother at some point had married a Mr. Blomiley, but by 1891 was a widow.

She shared the house with a son who carried the name Blomiley, and Elizabeth Jane, and a grandson aged two, whose surname was Dean.

It would be easy to leap to the conclusion that the young grandson was Elizabeth Jane’s, and certainly a decade later Elizabeth Jane acknowledged that this was her son and records a second one born in 1896 when she would have been 36.

All of which is rather murky and leaves me reflecting on what Elizabeth Jane might have made of her life in the city, in an area sandwiched between those two canals, and surrounded by textile factories, iron works and coal yards.

It goes without saying that this new world of noise, steam, and  drab streets would have been a world away from Didsbury which in the 1870s still had the appearance of a rural community even if it was filling up with houses and people.

I cannot be sure just when Elizabeth Jane gave up the factory and the house on the street by the canal, but her eldest son was born in Didsbury in the summer of 1888, which gives us a possible date.

Her later life was spent as a “tailoress”, and the last reference to her so far comes from the 1911 census which records her living on Countess Street, just minutes away from where she began life in 1860, living with her eldest son, and an Elizabeth Ann Woods aged 31.

A decade earlier Miss Woods was described as the foster sister of our Elizabeth Jane, which raises some intriguing questions about who her parents were given that she lived at no. 4  Warburton Street with Mary Blomiley and Elizabeth Jane.

Heaton Bank House, 1851

So that is about it.

We began on Warburton Street, and have pretty much ended up there, having travelled into the city and back out again, explored the occupations of some of the residents and along the way discovered a little of the life of one Didsbury resident.

But not quite, because just as I was finishing, I came across Mary Dean, who had been born in 1828, baptized in St James Parish Church, and at the age of 32 had given birth to Elizabeth Jane. Her father was a handloom weaver, and in 1841 the family lived in Barlow Moor.

Ten years later and Mary was a employed as a house servant at Mersey Bank House in Heaton Norris, whose owner was the grand Sir Ralph Pendlebury, who proudly recorded on his census return that he was not only a Knight but a factory owner, “employing 170 hands”.

All of which I think will takes us off on a new journey.

But before I do, I am adding a comment from John S Horton, "Sir- regarding the gentleman engaged as a plate layer, being an ex railwayman born in Didsbury but growing up in Kent, 'platelayers' worked on and were allocated 'patches' of line for which they were responsible for maintaining, not only the track but also the vegetation on the embankments and drainage, but the 'patch' was only 2 miles long, and therefore the gentleman would not have been responsible nor would it be possible for him to maintain the line as far as Manchester Central. Such a distance would have engaged several Plate layers or even gangs to maintain however I am happy to be corrected if my understanding is incorrect".

Adding, "sorry to have disrupted your wonderful tale, - the platelayer would have been under the authority of the “District Engineer” . Said platelayer would notify the signalman of his “direction of work” be it towards “Withington and Albert Park” Station ( Down Line) or towards the bridge over the track carrying “Kingsway”., (Up Line). 

The signalman would notify the platelayer of any reported track issues by train crew, be it “wet patch” caused by blocked drainage, making the train bounce as it went over and if at line speed could cause a derailment, engaging the platelayer having to “dig out the offending patch and re pack with fresh ballast” or by simply jacking up the track with his portable bottle jack and placing a simple soup tin full or less of small stones/ gravel to level the track up. I could go on and on but don’t want to bore you lo

".

Location; Didsbury, Manchester, and Heaton Mersey

Pictures; No. 4 Warburton Street, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Barlow Moor, 1854, & Heaton Mersey, 1854, from the OS map of Lancashire, 1854, Elizabeth Janes’ Manchester between the two canals, 1894 from the OS map of South Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives Association,  http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

A Didsbury weaver, a housemaid and lots more …………………

This was to be the story of Mary Dean of Didsbury and her time as a housemaid in the very big house of Sir Ralph Pendlebury, who lived at Heaton Bank in Heaton Mersey.

Mersey Bank House, Heaton Mersey, 1854

Sir Ralph described himself as the employer of 75 hands, and his house was recognized as a grand one, with a large “spacious entrance hall, with stone staircase, and dome light, a dinning room, breakfast room and study, five bedrooms, water closet and bathroom fitted up with a bath and hot and cold water”.


Added to which there was a wash house and laundry, sundry outhouses “with an excellent coach house and good stabling for five horses harness room and hayloft …… and a large conservatory heated by hot water”  and finally a large south facing garden, well stocked with fruit trees, [and] commands a delightful and picturesque view of a great part of the county of Chester”.*

All of which meant that Mary Dean who along with a cook was the only domestic servant, must have had her work cut out.

Sadly, we will never know what she thought of the job, as the only reference to her time there comes from the 1851 census, which had been taken in the April of that year.

Just when she started and indeed when she left is unclear, but I know she was back in Didsbury by 1860 for the birth of her daughter, Elizabeth Jane.

The sale of Mersey Bank House, 1843

Back then “service in a big house” remained one of the prime means for a young woman to earn a living, and it was usual for employers to recruit from outside the district, which ensured that the secrets of the family were less likely to become common gossip.

I doubt we will ever get to know how she got the job, but there was an informal arrangement by which clergy would write to neighouring parish churches, alerting them of vacancies in the big houses.

Barlow Moor, Didsbury, 1854, with the cottages stretching north

And for Mary, Heaton Mersey was close enough to her family in Didsbury to mean that the occasional visits home were easy enough.

I suspect she would have walked, although there were always itinerant traders and even carriers plying the route from Manchester through Didsbury and the Heatons to Stockport who might have offered her a lift and perhaps even for free.

I would like to know more of her time as a housemaid, but as sometimes happens, there is no more.

Not that this is the end of the story of Mary, who I know was born in 1826, and spent her early life in Barlow Moor.

And at this point the story takes a surprising turn, because at her baptism in the parish church, her father gave his occupation as a weaver, a job he had been pursuing since at least 1821 when he married Mary Thompson.

Barlow Moor, pre 1880

Even using the rate Books and census returns it is difficult to pinpoint exactly where in Barlow Moor he lived, but I rather think it will have been one of the cottages which stretched north along Wilmslow Road from the junction with Barlow Moor Road.

I do know that he was paying three shillings a week, and his may be one the cottages which appear in a series of photographs, taken before 1880.

His name was Henry, and he is one of only a handful of Didsbury weavers that appear in the official records.

And his was a declining industry.

Handloom weaving was conducted in a wide arc both north and south of Manchester and in the areas bordering on northern Cheshire, Derbyshire, and the West Riding of Yorkshire.

By the mid-18th century cotton had replaced wool as the main textile material and across the county areas specialized in such things as cambrics, muslins and ginghams. Just over 5 miles to the east near Gatley they had been growing flax and weaving linen from at least the mid-17th century.

Possible cottages lived in by the Dean family, pre 1880

But exactly what and how it was produced in the township is unclear. It may be that Henry and his family delivered each of the processes from carding and spinning to weaving but it is more likely with the mechanization of spinning and its concentration in the factories of Manchester that he may have been involved just in weaving.

At one stage our weavers may also have been involved in dyeing, because there are large numbers of crocuses that grow locally. In the past they were used for dyeing clothes alongside their culinary and medical uses.

In Stretford in 1826 there were 302 looms providing employment for 780 workers supporting 151 families,**  and as late as the 1840s there were still seven, while in Withington there were nineteen cotton weavers, mostly concentrated in Lady Barn and Fallowfield where they specialized in “weaving checked handkerchiefs and ginghams.”  ***

Nationally weavers had been the largest single group of industrial workers, and at any one time during 1820s, 30s and 40s, and they came third in the list of occupations after agricultural labourers and domestic servants.

Possible cottages lived in by the Dean family, pre 1880

The estimate of the Select Committee of 1834-5 reckoned that 800,000 to 840,000 were wholly dependent on one of the branches of weaving.****

But the onward march of mechanization and factory production in al three processes of making textile, meant that Henry and his fellow weavers were on borrowed time.

And so while we find him listing his occupation as a weaver during the 1820s through to 1841, in the following decade he described himself as a “Porter” and by 1861 as a “labourer”, while the numbers of weavers across Burnage and Didsbury fell between 1841 to 1851.

All of which points to the very personal tragedy of the collapse of weaving locally, and leaving me with just the observation that his granddaughter worked briefly in a Manchester cotton factory before returning to Didsbury and becoming a tailoress, which I suppose is the closest we get to her grandfather’s trade.

Location; Didsbury, Heaton Mersey

Pictures; Heaton Mersey and Barlow Moor, 1854, from the OS map of Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Sale by Auction, The Manchester Guardian, December 16th, 1843

** Leach, Sir Bosdin, Old Stretford, Privately Printed, 1910, page 23

***Williamson, C, Sketches of Fallowfield, John Heywood, Manchester, 1888 page 34

**** Thompson, E.P., The Making of the English Working Class, Pelican Books edition 1968 page344

Memories of distant wars ........ Quetta Afghanistan 1886 and a poppy cross

I am wondering who placed a simple poppy cross in the old parish church yard beside the gravestone recording the death of  James Dean who died in Afghanistan in 1886.

And that made me return to a story I wrote back in 2012.

It is easy for forget the reach of the British Empire in the 19th century.

But I was reminded recently when I revisited the parish church yard.
Amongst the few remaining tomb stones is that of the Dean family, which is all the more remarkable given that the Dean’s were not rich or famous but by an accident theirs was one of the headstones saved when the church yard was landscaped at the beginning of the 1980s.

In their way they tell the story of the township. Old Henry Dean had farmed an acre of land in the 1840s on what is now St Clements Road just north of the Horse & Jockey for which he paid the Lloyd estate £10 a year.He and his wife had been born here in the 1820s.

For whatever reason later in the following decade they had moved down to Brownhill's Buildings on what is now Sandy Lane and he described himself as an agricultural labourer, later they were living in what were then the new terraced houses on Stanley Grove, close again to the green.

His sons played in the brass band and are recorded on the 1893 photograph when the band played at Barlow Hall.

But what caught my attention was the entry on the family headstone recording Henry’s second son,
James Dean late 2nd Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers who died and was interred at Quetta Afghanistan August 23d 1886 aged 27 years.

Now Quetta had been captured by the British during the second Afghan war and leased to the British from 1883.

Today it is in Pakistan. Now a lot more research needs to be done to reveal the full story of James Dean but I think a start has been made. The family headstone is just south of the lych gate against the wall and is just a short distance from its original resting ground opposite the entrance to the old church

Picture; detail of the Dean headstone, from the collection of Andrew Simpson