Ellen: An Act of Bastardy

Christchurch, Hampshire in the mid-nineteenth century was an impoverished place, a market town whose inhabitants, living largely in small, rented, mud-walled cottages in streets known as Pit or Rotten Row, eked out a meagre living.  The location, although on the coast, was a remote one and the most common ways of making a living were through shepherding, fishing, as a tradesman or labouring on a farm. But, these occupations paid hardly enough to allow a worker to support a family, so most inhabitants became regular participants in the illicit trade of smuggling.  This last occupation was enabled by the town's proximity to the English Channel and the heathland surrounding it, where contraband was stowed pending the times when detection by customs officers was least likely.  Similarly, it was enabled when a flock of sheep crowding a road delayed the passage of those same officers in pursuit of a wagon containing rum, tobacco and silk.

The townspeople had taken to smuggling as a strategy to survive in a harsh and ungiving environment.  It seems they were always alive to new ways in which to make a living and when a new manufacturing industry set up shop in Christchurch, it was embraced enthusiastically by its inhabitants

This was the fusee watch chain industry.  Commencing in Christchurch in the late eighteenth century, it required nimble fingers and accurate eyesight to rivet its tiny chain links together to produce a chain as fine as horsehair.  Young girls gained employment making these chains from the age of 8, in the local factory or working from home, often at a specially extended window sill at the front of their houses, to catch the best light.  Families encouraged their young to become watch chain makers; their wages were a valuable addition to family income, and often meant the difference between paying the rent or not. 

As a source of work, watch chain making was thus a godsend to the average Christchurch family.  Previously, occupations open to its female inhabitants had been flax spinning, knitting silk stockings and plaiting straw for hats; watch chain making was able to be performed by children who were going to school as they could perform it at home on a part time basis.  The local workhouses provided some of the child labour employed by the manufacturers, but many of its employees lived at home with their families where the breadwinner had an ill-paid or seasonal occupation.  It was ill paid work itself; even by the 1890s the most a worker could expect to receive was only 8s 6 d per week.*

The industry flourished in the early part of the nineteenth and continued until 1899, when Hart's Fusee Factory was closed and the one remaining watch chain maker, Rose Drover, became a nursemaid. The industry declined slowly; my great-great aunt Louisa Boyt, born in 1853 and a watch chain factory employee from an early age, only ceased work as such during the 1890s. 

With meagre earnings and little to occupy themselves other than a Nonconformist Chapel, the townspeople of Christchurch were a rowdy lot in general.  They drank, swore and regularly got into fights with each other, even (or especially) the womenfolk who often assaulted each other when drunk.  Apart from twice-yearly fairs, the main form of entertainment for Christchurch's population was frequenting the taverns and ale houses present in every street, lane and alley of the town.  Petty Sessions records show repeat offenders, such as a woman called Keturah Jeffrey who was found guilty of assaulting a 20 year old woman known as Love Ward outside an ale house where she and her friend Ionida had been watching a Mummers^ play in 1853:

 

 After the Mummers had done...We left...As we were going out Jeffrey struck me on the side of  my face and pulled the crown of my bonnet out, took my apron away and kept it.  Threw me over in the road, tore the tail of my dress from my body...a young man named Duffett came out of the Halfway House, picked up my things for me...She had a baby on her left arm all the time.

Shrove Tuesday was a particular source of rowdiness, when a rabble regularly assembled and threw brickbats, potsherds, glass bottles and other dangerous missiles at the doors of the town's inhabitants.  Guy Fawkes Night saw similar behaviour and the Magistrates Court records are full of public order offences as well as those relating to the desertion of families, along with another offence known as bastardy, the act of giving birth to an illegitimate child, and as such, levelled only at women.

Bastardy usually came to the attention of the relevant authorities by the admission of a pregnant, unmarried woman to the local workhouse, there being no hospitals available at this time. The unfortunate woman was questioned by the court as to the identity of the father of her child, who was then pursued by the parish for maintenance for his 'bastard'.

And so it was that Ellen Boyt, unmarried, aged 19 of Christchurch, Hampshire, watch chain maker, was charged with an act of bastardy (or 'misconduct') in 1857.  She had given birth to a baby girl she named Charlotte on 26 February of that year in the Christchurch Workhouse before going back to the house of her parents to live with the baby. She could not write her name as she signed her daughter's birth certificate with an 'X.'  As Ellen was unmarried, the baby's surname was recorded as "Boyt."

It may have been that Ellen's baby was conceived at the May Fair held in Christchurch.  It appears this sort of thing mainly went on in the warmer months, or in stables, when the woman concerned was a single one and did not have access to a marriage bed.  One said her 'connection' happened in this way throughout August, "generally in the afternoon."

The father of Ellen's baby was not forced into a shotgun wedding organised by the parish, as had been the case in the previous century when the father of a bastard was taken into custody and guarded while a marriage licence was purchased for the mother of his child and a parson paid to perform their marriage.  Ellen stayed living with her poor, but generous parents and younger siblings as well as her baby in the down-at-heel location of Purewell for the next few years, apparently having no continuing relationship with the child's father.  If he was a typical Christchurch man, and Ellen told Charlotte he was a 'sawyer', he would have had little money to give to her for their baby's upkeep.

'Connections' were always liable to take place.  Young men who were apprentices were not allowed to marry until they were 21.  It appears the fathers of bastards were not all callous or irresponsible; they were simply hamstrung by the laws of the time. 

But Ellen's sawyer did not come to her rescue.  She was to remain living with her family and working as a watch chain maker until she left Christchurch for London with her daughter some time between 1861 and 1863.  It was to Islington, in north London that she fetched up, perhaps unsurprisingly, as Islington is adjacent to Clerkenwell, a long established watch making location where the 1861 census recorded 877 manufacturers of clocks and watches.  Her migration was no doubt based on economics; she and Charlotte must have been a burden to the family, her father having died prior to the 1861 census.  There were four younger children still living at home and her mother was working as a cook and domestic in 1861.  Although Louisa and Eliza, the two youngest children aged 9 and 11 were 'scholars', it is likely they too worked as watch chain makers when not at school.

By 1871, Eliza and Louisa, their mother having died, were still living in Purewell as boarders with the Rose family.  Hannah and David, their older sister and brother, a watch chain maker and bricklayer respectively in 1861, no longer lived in Christchurch.  Hannah, and later Eliza, may have moved to Bournemouth, only five miles from Christchurch which, with its newly built hotels and villas, gave opportunities for employment to former chain makers as servants and chambermaids.  Ellen and Charlotte clearly felt themselves to be a burden on their family, but Ellen may also have felt there was little future for Charlotte as a watch chain maker, with its low pay and the fact the work was becoming increasingly less available.  In any event, Charlotte went to school; she was eventually able to write reasonably well and as a member of the poorer classes, Ellen may have reasoned that employment as a servant would always be available to her and more available in London, with its growing upper middle class.

And so Ellen and Charlotte joined the mid-19th century exodus of poor, working class women from country England to its capital to try their luck in that teeming metropolis where the streets, if not paved with gold, held better paid opportunities for willing workers than watch chain making in the impoverished, crowded, hand-to-mouth melee that was Christchurch.

Reference: The Christchurch Fusee Chain Gang Sue Newman, Amberley 2010
*The Christchurch Fusee Chain Gang, page 69
^Mummers were troupes of actors who performed seasonal folk plays.  These plays often contained plots based on the underlying themes of duality and resurrection.  A battle, representing good against evil, often took place between two or more characters. Main characters included a Hero, his chief opponent, a Fool and a quack Doctor.  Either the Hero or his opponent (generally the Turkish Knight in southern England) are killed during their battle and the Doctor restores the dead man to life, with  much conjecture from minor characters, such Little Devil Doubt and Robin Hood along the way.

The writer is the great granddaughter of Charlotte Boyt.

Lily and The Foundling Hospital

In December 1882, Charlotte Boyt, of  The Herne, Beddington Lane, Mitcham petitioned The Foundling Hospital at Corams's Fields for the admission of her infant daughter Lily.

Charlotte's was an unfortunate tale; she was aged 26 and had been a servant in more than one middle class household in the parish of Wallington, Surrey in recent years after leaving her birthplace of Christchurch, Hampshire.  She became engaged to George Robertson, a bricklayer she met when they both lived at East Dulwich. George eventually had to take employment as a gardener in a different location, due to lack of work in his usual occupation.  Their engagement continued for three and a half years, during which Charlotte was a regular visitor to the home of George and his mother, a widowed charwoman who lived at 3 Church Lane, Beddington.  All was well, it appeared, apart from the fact of no wedding date being set, possibly due to George's lack of money and employment prospects. 

Charlotte left her situation as a servant at Dr Hardy's, The Grove, East Dulwich to obtain one closer to where George now lived, on his suggestion.  She was well-liked by George's mother who said in an interview with a Foundling Hospital official that she was most happy to have Charlotte as a future daughter-in-law.

One night when Charlotte and George were out walking, as they did to have time alone together, he "violently seduced" her. She found herself pregnant soon afterwards. She told no-one of the incident and it was not repeated.  She and George, who initially acknowledged paternity, remained in contact.  Towards the end of Charlotte's pregnancy however, he started to deny the fact the child was his, and disappeared from his mother's home shortly after the birth.  Neighbours reported him as "going to Yorkshire to find work."  George's mother stated she was not in a position to help Charlotte as due to George's actions, their relationship was now "at variance".

And so Charlotte entered the Croydon Workhouse for her confinement.  She was delivered of a baby daughter on 27 September 1881 and named her "Lily Maud Boyt".  No father's name was indicated on the baby's birth certificate.  It is not known if Charlotte informed her family of the birth.  What is certain is that she did not go back to live with them, as she was offered a position as a wet nurse on the recommendation of the midwife who delivered her baby, which she went to on 12 October 1881.

After 12 months as wet nurse for Mrs Rickett of Benleigh House, Park Hill Road, Croydon, Charlotte had to find another dwelling place for both herself and her daughter.  Her options were limited; she could not take her baby with her to a live-in situation as a servant for a household and it appears she was able to resist the options of either prostitution, where she could possibly have kept Lily, or the workhouse, where they would have been separated in any event.  She managed to find a situation as servant for Mrs Webber in her household at Mitcham, but her baby had to be relinquished, if she was to stay there.

She thus found herself journeying in December 1882 from the lavender fields of Mitcham to Bloomsbury for the purpose of petitioning the St. Pancras Foundling Hospital.  If her petition was successful, she could be sure Lily would live in a safe place where she would be educated and looked after until she reached the age of 21.  She would be released into domestic service at the age of sixteen, but the position would be one where the employer was found and approved by the Hospital.

Charlotte was eligible to petition for Lily to be accepted as a foundling as she was not married, not widowed and Lily was her first child.  Lily was older at the time of the petition than the requisite twelve months stipulated by the Hospital, but this appears not to have been an issue.  Charlotte wrote on her petition that George Robertson "is gone right away" and this fact was verified by interviews with George's mother and neighbours.  Her petition was accepted on 5 January 1883.

Lily Maud was then received by The Foundling Hospital on 16 January 1883. On that same day she was baptised in the Hospital's chapel with the new name chosen for her by the Hospital. And so Lily became "Edith Irwin," the name by which she was to be known for the rest of her life.

Sophie Anderson, Foundling Girls in the Chapel  Copyright Coram in the care of the Foundling Museum

Thanks to the staff of the London Metropolitan Archives who assisted in locating the actual Petition lodged by Charlotte Boyt for the admission of Lily to the Foundling Hospital.

The Downstairs Cook

There had always been myth surrounding my maternal grandmother; born in London, she arrived in Sydney in 1910 and worked as a governess before marrying a stockman and settling on a property near Warialda in northern New South Wales, or so the family legend held.  She died in 1955, before I was born, so I never knew her - only of her reputation as a rather formidable, matriachal woman who eventually left her husband and moved their two children to the nearby town of Inverell so they could attend high school.  Always puzzled by her ownership of a 1900 edition of Mrs Beeton's Household Management (now passed to me), as it was not clear why a governess would need to refer to such a publication in her occupation, this mystery was finally cleared after I searched the online 1901 UK census records and found "Edith Irwin," aged 19, living in a residence in Streatham, London where she was listed as "Cook, downstairs."

My interest piqued, I searched the 1891 census records, but to no avail; there was no record of her at all.  My mother then gave me the clue, shortly before she died, that unlocked Edith's origins - she was an orphan "who lived with an aunt."  No "aunt" was located by me, but when I typed the word "orphanage" into the search engine, presto!  There she was - a resident of the St Pancras Foundling Hospital, along with many other girls aged from eight to 14.

I had found her, but needed to know more - what was life like for a young orphan girl in late Victorian London?  When and how did she arrive at the Foundling Hospital?  And were there any records relating to her parents - whose names she knew, as they appeared on her marriage certificate.  The items I have inherited from her - an exquisite crystal perfume bottle with an elaborate silver cap, a silver dressing table set with a glorious design of cherubs and angels had always fascinated me; she was clearly a woman who loved beauty.  The fact she had been born into a situation where she sat on the bottom rung of society in London, yet manage to acquire items of beauty, apparent self-sufficiency and self-reliance only made me more curious and determined to discover more about her and the eras in which she lived - the late Victorian and the Edwardian, the end of which coincided with her embarking upon the ship which would bring her to her new home (and a new era) in Australia.

My hunger leads me to commence a fabulous journey of discovery into the period of my grandmother's life which coincides with the elegant and glittering fin de siecle, together with the social, cultural and culinary aspects of daily life.  Please read on...