Brother and sister, the only two of Young and Ann Ashworth‘s children to survive to adulthood – this is a story about sticking together.
You know about the story so far; Young and Ann suffered many losses. This might have been one of the reasons why Harriet and James stayed close, well into adulthood. Were there other reverberations as well? Who knows. Certainly these two siblings remained very close. Marriage, of course, got in the way for a little while though, and Harriet was the first to fly the nest. In 1897 at the age of 28 she married the appropriately named Young Newell. He was six years older than her but it was a forename she was familiar with, at least. Young Newell was a cotton spinner, like Harriet, and lived at Henry Place in Walsden.
The couple did not have an easy time of things though, with Harriet losing two children during the course of their marriage. One was never registered at birth but the other, Albert, was born in 1898 and died in 1899. He was buried at St. Peter’s so it’s likely his sibling is there too, although they aren’t in the sexton’s book.
Come 1901 and the Newells were at their home facing onto Hollins Road, and James was still with his parents at what had now become 154 Bacup Road. He was busy working as a cotton spinner as well, occasionally dabbling in agriculture, and gearing up to start courting Emily Mitchell of Newell (no relation to Young) Street in Walsden. Emily was part of a blended family, with one full sister, one stepsister, and two stepbrothers. One or the other had a connection with Inchfield Bottom Methodist and the two were married there in 1905. James and Emily had a single son, Fred, in 1907.
1911 came and went. Young and Harriet now, as we said, had two lost children, and had an older male lodger living with them. James, Emily and Fred had Young Ashworth and James’s aunt Susan Greenwood lodging with them. Harriet was suffering from heart disease and something else, something that wasn’t considered relevant to her death but must have been incapacitating…something that sent her to Storthes Hall Asylum near Huddersfield. Storthes Hall was for the “insane”, not for sick people, and it seems that James was the one who applied for her to be sent there rather than Young. We know that because in the newspaper it gives her address as 154 Bacup Road. She died there in April 1913 at the age of 44.
The death certificate implies that Young is living there too but we know he never left. He remarried a year later and went on with his life. James, meanwhile, bought this plot and put his sister into it. There was only one space left in their family grave and it was probably reserved for their father.
James and Emily had losses coming too. First James’s father Young died in 1916, and then in 1917 Emily lost her stepbrother Fred to a gassing in France. Emily was hit hard by his loss and became a peace campaigner who collected signatures and worked alongide the Quakers to present petitions to the area MP asking for a fair settlement for all European countries, Allied or Axis. As we know from later events (yikes) she wasn’t very successful, but that’s how she processed her grief. James meanwhile kept on working as a picker maker at Stoneswood Mill with young Fred alongside him.
WW2 came and went and young Fred was spared fighting – whether because of sharing his mother’s principles or because of the motorcycle crash he’d gotten into in 1938 where he broke his arm in several places, we don’t know. The family continued on at 154 Bacup Road until James’s death in 1950. Emily stayed at their home until her own death in 1962, having spent her final years making donations to the Todmorden Cripples’ Aid Society (in James’s memory) and the Society for the Blind (in her sister Louisa’s memory). She’s buried at Christ Church and we don’t know where, but our money is on here.