 |
| Gravestone of Rachel Rochester Pickles Saxton at Harehills Cemetery in Leeds |
When Rachel married Samuel Luke Pickles on January 9, 1864, she was just 20 years old, and she and her future husband were both living on Windsor Street in Leeds. They may have been neighbours or one of them was living in the household of the other.
They were married in the parish church at Burmantofts, which is in Leeds. Because the certificate does not say that the church was Catholic, it would have been Church of England (Anglican). There were two Anglican churches listed for this parish: St Stephen and St Agnes, which apparently have since merged.
Husband Samuel Luke Pickles was born in Leeds in 1832. He was the second child of David Pickles and Mary Styran. Samuel's father was born in Leeds, but his mother was born in France. David and Mary Pickles had at least seven children in Yorkshire, living in Leeds, Tadcaster and the city of York.
Samuel (who may have gone by his middle name Luke) followed in his father’s footsteps and became a tobacco pipe maker and was making pipes by the 1851 census. The family was living at 17 Wheat Street in Leeds at the time.
Some time between the 1851 and 1861 censuses, they moved to York, about 40 km west of Leeds. Samuel Luke was still living with his parents and younger siblings and making pipes in the 1861 census. The family was living in St. Cuthbert parish in the municipal ward of Monk in York. He was conceivably still living with his family when he married Rachel in 1864, but had moved back to Leeds.
In 1866 Rachel and Samuel were living in the city of York and had a son there that they named David after Samuel’s father, but the child appears to have died the same year. Then in 1868, they were back in Leeds and had another son, this one named Samuel. This is, apparently the only child the couple had who survived.
Baby Samuel’s father, Samuel Sr., died on December 2, 1870 in the city of York, so they were back there again. The cause of death was shown on his death certificate as phthisis, which is a type of tuberculosis, and he was only 37 when he died. Samuel Jr. was only two years old, and his mother was left a widow (for the first time) before she was 25.
It is unclear why the couple went back and forth between Leeds and York and why Samuel died in York, but it was likely related to the pip-making business. Perhaps the family had shops in both locations. The actual location of Samuel's death was shown as the Layerthorpe Buildings. Samuel Luke's parents were shown to be living at St. Cuthbert's in York in the 1861 census, but by the 1871 census, his father was dead and his mother was living with her married daughter in York, so Samuel Luke certainly had family in York. We know that the Pickles family had a pipe-making business and my belief is that they had shops in both Leeds and York and family members went back and forth working as needed, but this is just a guess.
An 1872 York city directory showed tradespeople living at the Layerthorpe Buildings in York (where Samuel died) including a milliner, upholsterer, tailor and clerk. I also found the location in a book called “Poverty and Prostitution: A study of Victorian prostitutes in York,” by Frances Finnegan (1979, Cambridge University Press). The author notes that the Layerthorpe Buildings had been described in the 1800s as “wretched hovels of the poor.” It is possible that the buildings had either deteriorated since or been improved by the time our ancestors lived there. It is also possible that they were just that. If Samuel was ill with tuberculosis and couldn't work, the family may have been in dire straits and could only afford tenement accommodation.
After her husband died, Rachel was on her own with son Samuel. They were back in Leeds living at 19 Plato Street in the 1871 census. Rachel's parents had lived in Leeds for several years, so she may have moved back to be near to her family. Rachel’s occupation was shown as a pipe trimmer. Since her late husband, his father and other Pickles family members were tobacco pipe makers, we can assume that was working for someone in the Pickles family. So it is possible that being a widow, Rachel needed to make money to support herself and her son, and Samuel's family helped her by providing a job. In relation to pipe making, the trimming process involved using a sharp steel instrument to cut excess clay from seams and edges before the clay pipe was fired.
But Rachel did not remain single for long. With few prospects as a young widow, marrying again was her only safe option. In 1872 she married a coal miner named William Saxton. Rachel was living on Wheat Street in Leeds at the time of the marriage, which took place at St Stephen, Burmantofts, Leeds. Interestingly, Wheat Street was where her first husband was living in 1851 census, so she may have been staying with his family. Rachel had four more children with William, but one died the same year it was born.
In the 1881 census, Rachel (as Rachel Saxon [sic]) was again living alone with her children. They lived at 6 Duke William Street in northeast Leeds. Rachel's 14-year-old son Samuel (from her first marriage) was working in a coal mine, a hard life for a teenaged boy.
Rachel's husband was away from the household at the time of the census. There are several possibilities as to where he was at the time. There was a coal miner named William Saxton living as a boarder in another town, which means he might have been away working. There was also a record of a person with his name in prison. The census shows a William Saxton in Armley Gaol, which was His Majesty's Prison Leeds, a Category B men's prison, located at Gloucester Terrace in the Armley area of Leeds. The prison opened in 1847, and is still known locally as Armley Gaol (or Armley Jail). A newspaper article published in April 1881 showed a William Saxton being convicted of theft and sentenced to two months of hard labour. That William Saxton was working as a gardener's labourer. It is not clear which of these two William Saxtons was Rachel's husband.
William was back with his wife in 1891, but only with the children they shared together. Rachel’s son Samuel from her first marriage had joined the army by then. The house Rachel lived in with her second family was at 7 Crossfreehold Street in northeast Leeds and had four rooms. Rachel’s daughter was apprenticing to a cigar maker.
Rachel's husband William was shown on the census as blind with no occupation. Just because previous censuses didn't show he was blind, we can't assume that he wasn't. However, his occupation as a coal miner would indicate that he was sighted otherwise he’d have been unable to do the work. The blindness may have been the result of a work-related injury but could also have been a degenerative illness such as diabetes, because on 5 July 1897 Rachel became a widow again. The family was living at 2 Parker Court in Leeds when William Saxton died.
In the 1901 census, Rachel was wrongly listed as having been born in Scotland instead of Northumberland, which is near the borderlands of Scotland but still in England. Living with her were the three children she had with William, even though they were all grown.
In the 1911 census, Rachel was living at 2 Willoughby Mount in Holbeck, a suburb of Leeds. Her occupation was ‘fruiterer,’ which was a person who sells fruit, basically a greengrocer. Further research indicates that she had a shop at that location. According to the census, the house had five rooms and living with her were her 26-year-old daughter Sarah, Sarah’s husband (a house painter), and their daughter.
This census had columns to show the number of children born to the woman along with how many had died. Shockingly, in Rachel’s case it showed that she had given birth to 12 children and that eight had died. We know that she lost at least one child with her first husband, but we know nothing of the other lost children.
Rachel died in 1920 at the age of 76. Her address was 102 Domestic Street in Holbeck. Domestic Street and Willoughby meet at the corner, likely the corner where Rachel's shop was located. So where she was living in 1911 was likely the same building as the shop with the entrance on the other street. Rachel was buried in Harehills Cemetery. So while she was born in Northumberland, she lived almost all her life in the Leeds area of Yorkshire with a significant portion of that without a man, which was unusual in those days. There is a monument to Rachel in the cemetery (see above image). There are no records to show who purchased this gravestone or when, but since her son Richard Saxton and Richard's wife are listed on the opposite side of the monument, it is possible that Richard purchased it for his mother.
Rachel's shop was taken over by her daughter from her second husband, Sarah Ellen Saxton, who married Alexander Oliver. The 1921 census shows Sarah and Alexander running the shop at this location, which means that the transition happened some time between the 1911 census and the 1921 census. A family photograph shows the A. Oliver Fruit Stores location on Willoughby Court, but the photograph is not dated. Based on the clothing and hair, it would seem to have been taken after the First World War but before The Great Depression. We can assume from this that either Rachel left the shop to her daughter and son-in-law when she died or they took over the shop when she retired (or became too ill to work).
The shop that had been owned by Rachel Rochester Pickles Saxton, which was taken over by her daughter and son-in-law. The two little boys on the right will likely be Sarah & Alexander's children, Rachel's grandchildren.
Prepared using information available as of 25 August 2023.
No comments:
Post a Comment
To prevent spam, your comment must be approved before it appears. Thank-you for your patience.