Untold lives blog

The realities of life for working class women in the 19th century are often hard to envisage, but sometimes an individual story can bring things firmly into focus. 

From The Illustrated London News 15 September 1900 British Newspaper Archive

Beatrice Goodacre was born on 28 April 1880 in Rock Ferry, an area on the Wirral Peninsular south of Birkenhead.  Originally an place of genteel villas, Rock Ferry had expanded to house many of the workers from nearby Cammell Laird’s shipbuilders.  Beatrice’s mother Mary Elizabeth Goodacre was 25 when her daughter was born.  She was unmarried and had been working as a domestic servant.  Beatrice was baptised at St Peter’s Church in Liverpool rather than the local church, which may say something about her illegitimate status, although it was not uncommon for families to have their children baptised ‘across the water’ in the parish church of Liverpool.  There is no mention of Beatrice’s father on her baptism record or birth registration.

St Peter’s Church Liverpool from Henry Peet, ‘Reliquiae of St Peter's Church Liverpool’, Journal of The Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire Vol 74 (1922) 

Baby Beatrice was left in the care of her maternal grandparents William and Ann Goodacre.  The 1881 census enumerator failed to record that she was a granddaughter rather than a daughter.  Mary Elizabeth had found employment as a domestic servant in the household of architect and surveyor James Murgatroyd - not on the Wirral, but in Didsbury, Manchester.  In December 1884 she married George Davies, a carter, and in 1891 was living in Gothic Street, Rock Ferry, having had four babies in six years.  It’s a five minute walk to where Beatrice was living with her widowed grandmother in Medway Road.  The census is of course a snapshot and we can’t know whether Beatrice ever lived with her mother, step-father and half-siblings, or how she was treated as part of the family.  She didn’t adopt the Davies name and remained a Goodacre.

In a story that mirrors her mother’s, 18-year-old Beatrice found herself pregnant.  She was not abandoned and on 19 June 1898 married bricklayer’s labourer George Davenport, the marriage entry underlining the fact that Beatrice did not have a father to name.  The marriage not only gave Beatrice legitimacy as a married woman, it cemented that of her expected child.  The newly married Davenports set up home in (now demolished) Bold Street in nearby Tranmere, not far from her mother and grandmother and next door to her maternal aunt Alice Taylor.

Unfortunately, there was no happy ending.  Beatrice gave birth to daughter Fanny on 6 January 1899 and became ill days later.  After an agonising twelve days suffering from puerperal peritonitis she died on 22 January, a few months shy of her nineteenth birthday.  At that time, an estimated 4-6 women per thousand died in childbirth, almost half of those from sepsis like Beatrice.  Daughter Fanny was baptised on 12 January in a private baptism, which often meant that the child was not expected to survive.  In this case she outlived her mother by six short months, dying in July 1899.  Fanny died of ‘malnutrition marasmus’ which seems horrifying, but perhaps this was not an unusual fate for motherless babies as families were forced into artificial feeding, with foodstuffs such as cow’s milk, condensed milk, and cereals.

Mary Elizabeth outlived her daughter Beatrice by over 40 years.  She and husband George had five children, two girls and three boys.  She was widowed in July 1936 but continued to live at 19 The Causeway, Port Sunlight, in company housing supplied by George’s employer Lever Brothers.  She died in Port Sunlight on 23 May 1943.

Lesley Shapland
Cataloguer, India Office Records

Further Reading:
Irvine Loudon, Death in Childbirth: An International Study of Maternal Care and Maternal Mortality 1800-1950 (Oxford, Clarendon Press 1992)
Irvine Loudon, The tragedy of childbed fever (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)
P J Atkins, 'Mother’s milk and infant death in Britain, circa 1900-1940' in Anthropology of food 2 September 2003 https://doi.org/10.4000/aof.310

In 1859 a British Army medical officer, Henry Huggins Jones, published a booklet: Western Australia, recommended as a sanatorium, for the restoration to health and usefulness of European soldiers, prostrated by those diseases of India, for which the climate of the hill stations does not afford a remedy.

Title page of Western Australia, recommended as a sanatorium, for the restoration to health and usefulness of European soldiers

The ‘invaliding season’ in India started at the end of autumn.  Regimental officers put forward the names of men incapacitated for further Indian service.  The annual invaliding board then passed the men who usually went back to the UK.  If other men showed symptoms of needing a change of climate after the board had met, the army surgeon had no alternative but to carry on treating them unless the regiment was stationed within reach of a sanatorium.  Jones believed that men were dying unnecessarily and proposed that they be taken from India to Western Australia.  The voyage by steam vessel would be beneficial because of the ‘health-reviving influence of the S.E. trade wind’.

Jones criticised military hygiene – cramped living quarters, stinking urinals, ‘confined’ bathrooms, bad drainage, imperfect clothing, unfiltered water, badly managed cooking.  Western Australia offered a plentiful supply of fresh water, natural products and food crops.  It was free from epidemics which hit other parts of Australia.  There were few fever cases, and no syphilis.  Dysentery, diarrhoea, and liver disease were rare.  The climate was healthy: from mid-March to the beginning of November ‘not surpassed by any in the world’.  During April to October ’there is an elasticity of the atmosphere indescribably exhilarating, when nature allows a license to the European, denied to the resident of India.  Man feels intended not to die’.

The advantages of the plan were said to be:
• Many useful lives would not be lost in India.
• Soldiers might like Australia and take their discharge to settle there rather than be invalided to the UK.
• Once their health improved, soldiers could be dispersed throughout the colony to strengthen the military presence.
• If there was another uprising in India, an immediate large force would be available in Australia.

A principal hospital at Perth and convalescent barracks in different parts of the colony could be staffed with medical officers from India who had suffered from the climate.  Once recovered, soldiers could be returned to India in early November to avoid the hot season when temperatures could reach over 100˚F.  This heat caused lassitude ‘though totally differing from the same sensation experienced in India’.

Henry Huggins Jones had been born in India.  He was baptised in Calcutta on 8 February 1824, the son of John Benjamin Jones, a writer in Palmers & Co’s office, and his wife Frances.  He joined the British Army as a surgeon and served in both India and Australia.  In 1854 Jones married Frances (Fanny) Brockman at Gingin in Western Australia.  Henry and Fanny had eight children, born across the globe where the Army postings took them: Australia, India, Ireland and Gibraltar.

Jones was appointed to the rank of Surgeon Major in January 1869 on completion of 20 years’ service.  However he died on 21 May 1869 at his home in Bristol aged 46, leaving Fanny to raise their family, the youngest aged just eleven months.  Fanny did not remarry and died in Bristol on 21 February 1925.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
Jones’s postings to different British Army regiments can be traced through the British Newspaper Archive – his name is often recorded as Henry Higgins Jones.

In a previous post, I promised to share any further discoveries about the Dessa family, whose son George Edward Dessa (d. 1913) had attempted to assassinate Viceroy Lord Lytton whilst struggling with mental health problems.

George’s mother, Ann Elizabeth Dessa (otherwise De Sa) had undergone her own mental health struggles, having been admitted to the Bhowanipore (Bhawanipur) Lunatic Asylum in 1849.  A snapshot of Bhowanipore in 1856-57 certainly challenges perceived notions of Victorian lunatic asylums.  Sited on a two-acre plot south of Fort William, its well laid out gardens were said to ‘impart to the Asylum a pleasing feature of rural quiet’.  The boundary walls were hidden by climbing plants. Emphasis was on the circulation of fresh air, hygiene, liberal quantities of well-cooked quality food, and kindness, the latter being ‘the real substitute for mechanical restraint’.  Ann Elizabeth was released back into the care of her family in 1874, having been institutionalised for a quarter of a century.  She died in Calcutta on 12 December 1888.

We can find a little more about Ann Elizabeth's background in the records.  She was born on 15 October 1818 at Mirzapur, daughter of Jacob Rogers and his wife Elizabeth, and was baptised there on 10 August 1821.  According to the East India Register, she married George Henry Dessa, a writer, at Chuprah on 11 October 1832, days before her fourteenth birthday.  Entries in the East India Register refer to the birth of two sons, on 23 May 1837 and 22 October 1843.  These are possibly her sons William David and George Edward, although we know she and her husband had at least three boys, the youngest of whom died aged 12.  The family moved to Calcutta, and appear to have suffered from financial difficulties despite George Henry working in various government roles such as in the Civil Auditor’s Office, and later on the East Indian Railway.  There are five entries in the London Gazette between 1842 and 1862 referring to petitions filed in the Court of Relief of Insolvent Debtors naming George Henry Dessa.

Portrait of Jacob Rogers by Jiwan Ram, Bodleian Library LP 846. Photo: © Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. Terms of use: CC-BY-NC 4.0. 

It should have been so different for Ann Elizabeth. Her father Lieutenant Jacob Rogers had been in the service of Maharaja Daulat Rao Scindia, the ruler of Gwalior state, and was an East India Company pensioner.  A portrait of him by the Indian artist Jiwan Ram entitled ‘Quartermaster Rogers’ survives; it once formed part of the collection of the Begum Samru (Joanna Nobilis Sombre) at Sardhana palace.  Bought by T. R. Wyer, a Collector in Meerut, in 1894, it was gifted to the Indian Institute, 1913 and now forms part of the Bodleian Library collections. 

 Copy of the will of Jacob Rogers dated 12 March 1819 IOR/L/AG/34/29/36, pp.97-100

Ann’s early life was comfortable, living in a bungalow in Mirzapore surrounded with servants and possessions, all of which Jacob left to his wife Elizabeth in his will written of 1819. Jacob’s death on 10 January 1824, age 41, changed everything; the worth of Rogers’ estate was almost identical to the outstanding claims against it, effectively leaving few assets for his wife and daughter. All his belongings – books, furniture, pictures, carpets, guns, plate, jewellery, clothing, horses, buggy – were sold at public auction just weeks after his death.

Estate  papers of Jacob Rogers showing his servants' wages IOR/L/AG/34/27/81 p.659

Lesley Shapland
Cataloguer, India Office Records

Further Reading:
Report by Theodore Cantor, Superintendent of the Asylums… at Bhowanipore and Dullunda for 1856-57 can be found online.  
Sir Evan Cotton ‘The Sardhana Pictures in Government House, Allahabad’, Bengal Past and Present vol LII, part I (1936).

British Library India Office Records available via Findmypast -
IOR/N/1/64, f.43 Baptism of Ann Elizabeth Rogers (later Dessa), 10 Aug 1821 at Mirzapore.
IOR/L/AG/34/29/36, pp.97-100 Copy of the will of Jacob Rogers dated 12 Mar 1819, proved 25 Feb 1824.
IOR/L/AG/34/27/81, pp. 641-661 Inventory of the estate of Jacob Rogers, including a catalogue of the sale of his goods at auction.
IOR/L/AG/34/27/80, pp.618-619 and IOR/L/AG/34/27/80, pp. 702-704 Accounts relating to the estate of Jacob Rogers.

On 25 January 1893, the India Office in London received a letter from James Irwin residing in the Garden Hospital, Dublin requesting help in returning to his home in India.  James stated that he had been born in Poona and that he had travelled to Ireland with an ‘invalid gentleman who died in three months time after embarkation in the year 1891.  I have since that time been very bad suffering from a very severe attack of fever & ague, but thank God I am quite recovered and able to proceed home’.  James went on to say that, his wife had died from smallpox in June 1889, that he had four little children in the Byculla School at Bombay, and that he wished to return to them.  He claimed that his friends would be able to obtain employment for him as a guard on the Great Indian Peninsula Railway, as he had previously worked for the Railway before leaving due to illness.   A second letter from James was received on 3 February, reiterating his situation.

Letter from James Irwin to the India Office received 3 February 1893 IOR/L/PJ/6/337 

The letters came across the desk of the Political A.D.C. at the India Office, Sir W.G.S.V. Fitzgerald.  As it happened, his nephew Edward Macartney-Filgate was in Dublin and was given the task of investigating James’s story.  Investigations disclosed that the Garden Hospital was a portion of the South Dublin Union Workhouse.  Macartney-Filgate was at first refused admission when he went there, it being a Saturday and not visiting day.  On explaining that he was on business from the India Office, he was allowed in and was able to talk to James.  He claimed he was born in India to English parents, that he had been a soldier, and then worked on the railways.  He came to Dublin as a servant, got out of employment and fell into poverty. 

Letter from Macartney-Filgate to his uncle about his visit to James Irwin, dated 20 February 1893 IOR/L/PJ/6/337 

Macartney-Filgate’s opinion of James was mixed, he believed James to be ‘plain pure and simple an Englishman’ but admitted that he showed ‘accurate knowledge of India as far as I was able to sound him’.  In the end, Macartney-Filgate thought, ‘His story may be true or not, I really could not form any definite opinion.  I do not believe many people but he seemed to withstand questioning.  On the other hand, as he has been in this workhouse since 1889 he may have simply raked together the whole story from some other inmate’.

Cover of India Office file on James Irwin IOR/L/PJ/6/337 

Although Fitzgerald noted that this seemed to be ‘an unhappy case’, he thought that it was not one in which the India Office should interfere.  A letter was sent to James on 3 March 1893 stating that the Secretary of State was unable to assist him.

Letter from James Irwin to the India Office 2 May 1894 IOR/L/PJ/6/372

A year later, James tried again, sending two letters to the India Office in April 1894.  He claimed that he had been given a promise of doing something to send him back to India, although he now wrote that he had two little children in the Byculla School in Bombay.  He asked for the boat fare to London so that he could have a personal meeting with the Secretary of State.  The India Office noted: ‘This man’s case has already been fully considered’, and a further letter declining to help was sent to him.  In reply to this, James wrote a final letter to the India Office expressing his disappointment and requesting help in obtaining employment on a P&O ship.  An instruction was written at the bottom of this letter to resend the previous letter declining to help.

John O’Brien
India Office Records

Further Reading:
Application from Mr James Irwin for assistance to return to India, 23 January to 15 February 1893, reference: IOR/L/PJ/6/337, File 146.

Application from James Irwin to be sent back to India, 13 April 1894, reference IOR/L/PJ/6/371, File 627.

James Irwin; request for assistance in returning to India, 2 May 1894, reference IOR/L/PJ/6/372, File 778.

South Dublin Union Workhouse.

Dublin Workhouses Admission & Discharge Registers 1840-1919 on Findmypast.co.uk

In 1839 The Emperor of China’s Sauce was introduced in England.  Newspaper adverts said that the sauce was originally prepared by an eminent English physician living in India.  It was remarkable for its richness, fullness, piquancy, and strong digestive properties.  In India ‘it maintained a celebrity previously unknown among Sauces, and was there considered indispensibly requisite with every kind of fish, meat, game, made dishes, or curries’.  Bon-vivants at London West End clubs declared it to be ‘the finest in the world’.  It could be taken to promote digestion - half a wine glass full should be drunk an hour before dinner.

The sauce was manufactured and sold wholesale and for export by David Morse who lived with his wife and family at Cullum Street in the City of London.  Morse had paid a large sum to secure the recipe.  The public could buy the sauce from respectable chemists, grocers, oilmen and fruiterers throughout the UK, including Fortnum and Mason, and the Dundee Marmalade Warehouse in Regent Street.

Advert for Emperor of China's Sauce City Chronicle 12 October 1841 British Newspaper Archive

By 1841, adverts for The Emperor of China’s Sauce included endorsements from a number of publications.  The Conservative Journal described it as ‘particularly palatable’ and said its only fault was that it made you eat more than you would without it.  The Age reported that Sir Charles Metcalf had remarked in 1839 that the sauce was the best he had tasted since his return to Europe from India.

The Emperor of China’s Sauce was just one of David Morse’s business interests.  He was a tea dealer and the publisher of a weekly newspaper City Chronicle, Tea Dealers’ Journal and Commercial Advertiser.  First published in May 1840, the City Chronicle aimed to advocate the rights of traders such as tea dealers, tallow chandlers, cheesemongers and hop merchants, but published articles on a wide range of topics – politics, law and crime, sport, and fashion.

In 1840 Morse advertised in the City Chronicle for a youth wishing to perfect himself as a man of business.  He offered the opportunity of gaining practical experience of the different properties of tea and a general knowledge of all colonial produce, hops, tallow etc.  The premium for one year’s placement was 100 guineas.

Advert for Anti-Slavery Sugar Company in Morning Herald  (London) 15 August 1840 British Newspaper Archive

Morse was Secretary to the Anti-Slavery Sugar Company founded for the cultivation of sugar, rum and other crops by free labour in British India.  The Company was raising capital in 1840 and Morse undertook to supply prospectuses to potential investors.

However it appears that Morse’s business ventures did not progress smoothly.  At the time of the 1861 census he was working as a daily labourer.  The London Gazette of 8 November 1861 announced his bankruptcy – David Morse, late of 14 Little Tower Street, City of London, wholesale tea dealer, now of 3 Amelia Place, New Cross, out of business.

David Morse’s wife Charlotte died in 1870 and the 1871 census records him as a pensioner living at Morden College, a charitable institution in Blackheath.  Morse died in Peckham in 1880 aged 78.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
British Newspaper Archive  also  available via Findmypast e.g. Weekly True Sun 1 December 1839; City Chronicle 1 December 1840, 12 October 1841; Morning Herald 15 August 1840.
London Gazette 8 November 1861.

In late May 1839 a former East India Company soldier, weak from hunger, applied to Bow Street magistrates for assistance.  Charles Daniels, described as sickly and emaciated, said that he had served as a private in the Company’s Bengal European Regiment for sixteen years and seven months.  He had been declared unfit for active service and sent home to England, arriving at East India Docks about twelve days earlier.  To corroborate his story, he produced his discharge certificate showing his good character and reporting that the vision in his left eye was impeded and he had an enlarged liver and spleen.

Charles Daniels's application to Bow Street magistrates London Courier and Evening Gazette 30 May 1839 British Newspaper Archive

Having no relations or friends to help him and with no money for a night’s lodging, Daniels had gone to East India House to enquire whether anything could be done for him, and whether his service entitled him to a pension.  He was given three shillings ‘marching money’ and told that nothing more would be forthcoming.  The workhouse in the parish of St Giles in London, where his father had lived for many years, had turned him away.

Magistrate Mr Thiselton expressed surprise that the East India Company had sent Daniels adrift upon the world, with a constitution broken down in its employment.  He directed that a letter should be written on Daniels’ behalf to the overseer of St Giles and granted him a small sum from the office poor box to tide him over.

Charles Daniels enlisted in June 1822 at Westminster, aged 20, and arrived in India in January 1823.  After serving with the Bengal European Infantry, he was sent in 1829 to join the European Infantry Invalids at Chunar.  He was afterwards stationed at Buxar.  In October 1838 the Bengal Army decided to send him to Europe, and he was not recommended for a pension.

Charles Daniels in the Bengal Army muster rolls 1837-1838 British Library IOR/L/MIL/10/159

On 4 June 1839, Daniels wrote to the East India Company asking for relief, ‘having no prospect of supporting himself’.  He wrote again on 6 November 1839 requesting that he be allowed to rejoin his regiment as he was now ‘in perfect health and a ‘fit and able soldier’.  Both petitions were rejected.  In June 1840 he applied for prize money and was granted 4s 11d for the Burmese Campaign.

What the newspapers and Company documents fail to tell us is that Charles Daniels had left a wife and children in India.  He married Catherine Griffiths, a pupil of the Lower Orphan School, on 23 May 1825 at Fort William Calcutta.  Catherine was born on 25 April 1810, the daughter of Morgan Griffiths, a soldier in the Bengal Artillery.  The couple had at least four children: William (born 1830, died 1832); Charles (born 1834, died 1842); Sarah Maria (born 1837, died 1838); Margaret (born 28 February 1839).

Catherine Daniels stated that she was a widow when she married John Shillcock, a pensioned Company sergeant, at Buxar on 3 January 1843.  It seems that they had two children, Martha and Henry, who both died in infancy.  John Shillcock died at Chinsurah in September 1855 aged 54.

The last mention I have found of Charles Daniels dates from 6 May 1842 when he received a duplicate discharge certificate from the Company.  I don’t know what happened to Catherine and her daughter Margaret. Can any of our readers help?

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
British Newspaper Archive e.g. London Courier and Evening Gazette 30 May 1839.
Service records for Charles Daniels: British Library IOR/L/MIL/9/41; IOR/L/MIL/10/146-160; IOR/L/MIL/17/2/287.
Discharge certificate for Charles Daniels British Library IOR/L/MIL/10/301.
Petitions of Charles Daniels to the East India Company: British Library IOR/L/MIL/2/92, 98 & 106.
Marriage of Charles Daniels and Catherine Griffiths: British Library IOR/N/1/13 f.591.
Baptism of Catherine Griffiths: British Library IOR/N/1/8 f.292.
Marriage of Catherine Daniels and John Shillcock: British Library IOR/N/1/64 f.118.
The baptisms. marriages and deaths referred to in the story can all be found in the IOR/N/1 series which has been digitised by Findmypast.

On 3 April 1903 Alexander James Jones, Chaplain at Holy Trinity Church, Bangalore, addressed a note to the Registrar in Madras.  On receiving the note, the Registrar instructed that two copies of it should be inserted into the register of Baptisms, Marriages and Burials in Madras for January-June 1903 (IOR/N/2/93) on folios 17 and 20.  The note related to a child named Charles Marsden whom Rev Jones had recently buried in Bangalore.

Holy Trinity Church, Bangalore from Frank Penny, The Church in Madras (1922) via Wikipedia 

Charles Marsden had been born on 9 February 1903 in Bangalore, to Richard Travers Marsden and his wife Alexandrina Matilda.  According to the record, the baptism had taken place the same day at the family’s home by a Mrs Curtham (IOR/N/2/93, f 17).

Baptism of Charles Marsden 9 February 1903 in Bangalore IOR/N/2/93, f 17

A few pages later in the register, Charles Marsden appears again.  On 10 February 1903, Chaplain Jones buried Charles at Holy Trinity Church in Bangalore.  The burial register records that the death had occurred on 9 February, with the child having only lived about 20 minutes.  The cause of death given was premature birth (IOR/N/2/93, f 20).

Burial of Charles Marsden 10 February 1903 Banglaore IOR/N/2/93, f 20

The reason for the note written by Jones to the Registrar however was to do with the family’s decision to name the child Charles.  The Chaplain wished it to be on record that the family had chosen the name Charles at baptism, even though the baby was a girl.

Note by Chaplain Jones that Charles Marsden was a girl IOR/N/2/93

Rev Jones had written the note to prevent the anticipated correspondence that would otherwise have occurred from the Registrar and others assuming that he had made an error in listing the child as a daughter.  He wanted it to be clear that the child in question was indeed Miss Charles Marsden!

Charles’s father, Richard Travers Marsden, was born in London in 1871 and was a Captain in the Royal Regiment of Artillery, having entered as a Gentleman Cadet in 1888.  On 18 January 1902, he married Alexandrina Matilda Carthew, daughter of Charles Alfred Carthew in Bangalore, Madras.  Their first two children were born prematurely: son Richard in June 1902 and daughter Charles in February 1903.  The family returned to England soon afterwards and had two more daughters who survived past infanthood: Susannah Catherine born in 1905 and Ina Matilda Christie born in 1906.

Richard continued to serve with the Royal Regiment of Artillery, being promoted to Lieutenant Colonel by 1915.  He served in France during World War I for which he was awarded the Legion d’Honneur, Croix d’officer.  His wife Alexandrina appears to have travelled to with him as she worked in France as nurse with the French Red Cross during the war.  Following Richard’s retirement from military service the family settled in Camberley, Surrey, where Richard died in 1946 and Alexandrina in 1969.

Karen Stapley
Curator, India Office Records

Further Reading:
IOR/N/2/93, f. 17 – baptism of Charles Marsden.
IOR/N/2/93, f.20 – burial of Charles Marsden.