by John Martin, Martin Family archivist, Tweed Heads (June, 2013)
My paternal great-grandmother was
always some of a mystery to me as I knew very little about her partly due to
the fact that I did not know her
father’s family were Roman Catholics and somewhat difficult to trace. Her
generation were baptised in St John’s Protestant church. An apocryphal story within our family
suggested that she had married a German Bandmaster after her first husband had
died; it sounded quite interesting so I was determined to find out the truth in
the story. It turned out to be much stranger than I thought so I will attempt
to give some details of her life.
Margaret was
born on 20th December 1842, Preston, Lancashire. Her father was James
Standen (joiner) who was born in Lancaster on 1st July 1799 and her
mother was Ann Cuthbertson born on 8th April 1803, Lancaster,
Lancashire. The parents were married on 27 May 1828, St John’s church, Preston.
A great source of information about Margaret’s life has been traced through the
British Census which started in 1841 and every subsequent ten years to present
day i.e. 1841, 1851 1861 etc. in 1841 Margaret was not yet born but her family
are given as living in Coffee Gardens which I have been unable to trace at this
time. Preston was still undergoing a transformation due to the rise of the
cotton mills and weaving-shop houses. Some of the housing areas were
redeveloped for industry. The formerly genteel resort of the local gentry was
fast disappearing, making way for a densely packed and predominately working
class community. Indeed Preston would become the classic mill town of popular
folklore. Her father James being a carpenter/ joiner would probably have earned
above the local wages paid to millworkers. Margaret’s father’s family
originally had been farmers but moved out of the country and into the city
attracted by the prospect of better paid jobs in textile production. As the
towns sprang up around the factories, living conditions declined. Open sewers
and shared toilets meant disease was rife
The 1851
Census shows that Margaret was only eight years old and a scholar but her
sister Elizabeth was a gold thread maker. The 1861 Census begins to shed more
light on her life as it details that she was eighteen years old and a Cotton
weaver. It is interesting to note that three quarters of the weaving trade at
that time were less than eighteen years old. Up to 1802 children’s hours were
generally unregulated which included children as young as eight and it has been recorded that children were
set to work as soon as they could crawl often at the urging of their parents.
In 1819 children less than nine years of age were prohibited from working in
the cotton mills. In 1825 things became more civilised and children under 16
years of age only had to work
no more than twelve hours a day and nine hours on Saturday (excluding meal
times). In order to get extra money some
children worked as cleaners on Sundays from 6am to noon. We can’t start to imagine
the horrors of the cotton mills which lead to an excessive mortality rate due
to high noise levels, high humidity and dangerous work practices which required
them to work in bare feet.
It is not
known where Margaret met her future husband William Crook (Printer) but her
father and future father in law were joiner/carpenters there might have been a
connection there. Margaret and William got married on the 23rd
Aug1863 in St John’s church, Preston and Grandmother Emily Crook was born on 2nd
October 1863 which bears out the fact that pregnancies were shorter in those
days. No scandals in my family –thank you. William died prior to the 1871 Census and a
Death Certificate has been sent for. Margaret after a brief time as a widow and
still only 23 years old married Frederick Daubert born in 1840, Hanover,
Germany but now a British subject. He turned out to be a Tailor not the Band
Master according to family stories. They had five children together with the
first three being shown on the 1871 Census. It is assumed that Margaret did not
want a child from her first marriage living with her and consequently Emily, my
grandmother at the age of seven was sent to live with her Grandmother Dorothy
Crook (a Milliner) and lived with her until she got married apart from a brief
period of being a school teacher.
By the time
that the 1881 Census came around Margaret was once more a Widow living with her
children from the second marriage in Elizabeth Street, Preston. I found it
interesting to note that although two of her children were listed as Cotton
Weavers one of them was aged ten years old and also listed as a scholar. However, in 1885 Margaret married a Thomas
Lawton (Widower) with five children and had two children by him being forty
four years old at the birth of the last child. In the 1901 Census she was a
Widow once more and children from her third marriage were given but not either
of the other two marriages. Currently I am trying to track them down and find
out why Margaret’s three husbands died after only a few years of being married.
Needless to say my family have their own theories with some of the being on the
rude side. I think that it is important that we researchers are also aware of
the social conditions that surround our early families which of course have a
direct bearing on life span, occupations, etc.
