Genealogy Em

Manchester has been described as the "cradle of the industrial revolution" and as the powerhouse of the cotton industry. As the cotton industry boomed so did the population. Nestled in amongst the mills, tanneries, gas works, and other industries, overcrowding was rife. What was once an upper class suburban settlement, had fallen so deeply into a state of disrepair that it no longer reflected the peacefulness conveyed by its name.  By the mid 1840's several slums had developed but none were more horrible than Angel Meadow. The slum itself formed around St Michael's Church and was bounded by Rochdale Rd, Miller St, Cheetham Hill Rd and Gould St. This brought the entire area of the 30,000 person slum to a mere 33 acres - that is equivalent to approximately 43.5 ft^2 (or 4 m^2) per person.  During the Victorian era, slums were often described as having two classes of people, and Angle Meadow was no exception. Of all the accounts given, Mercle held back the least when des...

They say that 1 in 10 people with British ancestry can trace their family back to the workhouse. For my family this statement is true. The process of filing for relief from the Board of Guardians was long and required the individual to provide detailed information about themselves.  In two of my previous posts I spoke of a woman named Bessie. After her father died in 1889, her mother mad no choice but to turn to the workhouse. She had six children between the ages of one month and 15 to support. The Poor Law records I found on this family contained a wealth of information - much of which I had never seen before.  Settlement Examination   The process began by with a settlement examination. The main purpose of this record was to determine what Poor Law Union was responsible for the pauper's upkeep (otherwise known as residency). The head of the family would be asked to provide the following information: where each member of the family was born if they are married and i...

When I first started my Scottish research I was caught off guard by the structure of the names. Some had long lists of names held in brackets after the first name, while others had reoccurring Gaelic words as a middle name of sorts. I have come to learn that these are referred to as patronymics and bynames respectively. This topic right here is one of the reasons I wanted to start this blog. It belongs to the lesser known parts of history - especially bynames. Researching this topic is difficult as few available sources of information have been indexed by Google. The ones that have, offer little more than a few sentences and maybe an example or two. I have compiled the information from these sources below.  Patronymics  Patronymics are commonly used in families which use a naming tradition because they help to differentiate two individuals which share the same name. More simply, a patronymic is a list of names which descend the paternal generations of the family. The names are...

Battersea: The Sinkhole of Surrey During the Victorian Era, Battersea had gained the reputation as being “the sinkhole of Surrey” due to its widespread poverty and slum-like conditions. Many of the poor in Battersea were subject to irregular income from the building trades. For a family to scrape by in the winter they would have to apply thrift spending during the summer. This was often complicated by the reliance on alcohol which was used as a means of escape from the depression of living in such widespread poverty. The irregular income caused many of Battersea’s poor to frequently be on the move. On average a family lived in one place for less than two years before moving no more than a few streets away. After hopping from neighbourhood to neighbourhood the family would eventually return to where they were once exiled from, moving in only a few doors away from their former address. Ford’s Folly and the slum of Little Hell In Keith Bailey’s report Orville Road, Battersea: a Victor...

If you look hard enough, your bound to find a black sheep or two in every family tree. In my case they were hiding in the places I least expected to find them. My grandmother was one of the most proper and well mannered women I have ever met. I'm pretty sure she is the closest thing I will ever meet to a saint, however not all of her ancestors shared these traits. One woman in particular was foul mouthed and not shy of throwing a fist (or two). To be honest, after reading of her fights, I think she could have held her own against one of London's prized fighters. This woman's name was Mary Ann Daniels (nee Taplin) - I spoke of briefly in a previous article  here . When I began performing FAN club research on her children I discovered that she had given birth to a son named Alfred during 1880 in the HM Westminster Prison! (Yikes! That is NOT a birth certificate I would ever want to have!) Of course this raised a number of questions for me: why was she in the prison? Why was s...