This war grave is a tricky one, because when we get down to William, outside of his war service there’s no heroes of the story – only a child to absorb the consequences of her parents’ and grandparents’ choices. Sometimes it’s hard to respect the dead and tell the truth.
Patrick Walls was born in Leeds in 1862. William Walls, his father, was a dyer’s labourer who went where the work was in order to support his wife Mary (Narey) and six children, living apart from them on occasion. They had married in 1858 when Mary was 17 and Patrick here was their first and only son. Later Walls children would marry in the Catholic church so it’s possible this comes from Mary’s Irish background, although of course you can’t assume anything (and this grave is certainly proof of that concept). By 1881 they had moved to Cleckheaton where Patrick was working as a mechanic’s labourer according to the 1881 Census. From there they would come to Halifax, although we don’t know exactly when this was.
Patrick married Mary Ann Allen at St. Mary’s Church (Catholic) in Halifax in October 1885. Mary Ann’s background was similar to his. She was born in Manchester in 1868 to Edward and Mary (Williams) Allen, baptised at St. John the Evangelist in Salford, and soon to move to Leeds where the family were situated in 1871. By 1881 the entire family plus two of Mary’s brothers were living in Todmorden at Calder Side in Cornholme. Edward was a fustian dyer and this, plus their Catholic roots, will have brought the two families into contact with each other. Mary Ann was only 17 when she and Patrick married, echoing his mother’s experience.
The Walls (who are consistently misspelled as Wells on various public records, very helpful) settled next door to the Allens at Calder Side and by 1891 Patrick and Mary Ann had four children with them. William, the eldest, had been born in 1886. Patrick and Mary Ann would go on to have eleven children that we know of which will have put an enormous strain on the family. Even with in-laws living so close, mouths to feed still needed feeding, and by 1901 the Wallses were living in Mytholmroyd at Sunny Bank. William was by this time a cotton spinner along with sisters Mary Jane and Alice Ann. He made his first appearance while here in the newspaper, as the witness in a case of sexual assault brought by a girl named Ada Maddocks against four boys from Heptonstall, testifying in support of Ada’s story.
This brief interlude passed though and by 1907 they were, again, back in Cornholme, now at 602 Burnley Road which is part of the short row of terraces known as Black Rock. Why do we know they were there before the 1911 Census took place? Because in those days you couldn’t be confident of all your children making it to adulthood, and sadly for Patrick and Mary Ann they were to lose two in quick succession. First was Mary Jane in August 1907 at the age of twenty, which will have been both an emotional shock and also – because let’s face it, times could be hard for big working class families – a financial one. Mary Ann would have been pregnant with her tenth child, Florence, at this point; Florence was born in February 1908. She also died in 1908, in November, joining her big sister here eleven months after the grave had been opened for the first time. Mary Ann was, again, pregnant at the funeral of one of her children. Catherine, later known as Kathleen, would be born the following spring.
William meanwhile had become a “shuttle maker labourer”, presumably a little less high-skilled than a shuttle maker, but maybe that’s just semantics? He was getting older too, and by 1910 was 24 years old – old enough to get married. And he did, to a girl from central Todmorden with Irish Catholic roots of her own: Ann Hanley of Back Longfield Road. This is where the story begins to get complicated. We like to think of whose who made the ultimate sacrifice (although that phrase is misleading, “sacrifice” implies willingness, and the men and boys who died in WW1 certainly did not all choose to be there) as heroes and role models, morally righteous. But not everyone who went was a good person. And despite his role in ensuring that Ada Maddocks got justice after her assault William was not a good person.
…but then, it might be the case that neither was Ann Hanley.
Ann’s life had been tumultuous by the time she married William at age 19. Her father Patrick had abandoned his wife Ann and gone to Bacup to start a new family. The older Ann, left with two little girls, found herself a new man on the casual and then had to take him to court for a bastardy order. Shortly after this in 1896 her other daughter, Mary Ellen, died (and is buried at Christ Church although we don’t know where). Her unnamed son also died at some point during this time. By 1901 she had remarried and was now Ann Lingard, or at least was living as Ann Lingard…all this is of course a very long winded way of illustrating the point. Ann Hanley had been through it a little bit. And she would continue to for the short time during which she lived as William Walls’s wife.
William and Ann had a single daughter, Ann, who was named as Ellen on the 1911 Census as presumably this was her nickname. William and Ann’s marriage was a terrible one and for all intents and purposes lasted for less than two years before the two Anns moved out. They went to Leeds; more about this later. William moved back home with Patrick and Mary Ann and when WW1 arrived he enlisted. Or was conscripted. It isn’t clear at what point he joined as his war records are mostly missing due to a fire in the 1920s that destroyed many of them. He joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and served as part of the East Lancs Field Ambulance Division. We know, though, that he was the last of Patrick and Mary Ann’s children that they would outlive. He died from wounds received in action on October 11th 1917 while working as a stretcher bearer, trying to remove wounded soldiers from the field and to safety and medical assistance.
He is remembered on a CWGC grave at Nine Elms British Cemetery in Belgium. His parents and siblings mourned him, but Ann did not. Ann did, though, try to claim his war pension.
Here’s where the story gets complicated though like we told you it would. We have to hesitate before condemning Ann because we don’t know why she made the decisions she made, partly through not being able to see into someone’s head but also because there is no publicly available information about what happened to her after this date. At some point after the two Anns went to Leeds, the older Ann left little Ann at St. Vincent’s Home of Our Lady of Sorrows for Roman Catholic Friendless Girls. What a name! Homes like these were places where orphans without capable family were placed, or sometimes fatherless or motherless children, or sometimes children who had been removed from the home due to abuse. We don’t know why little Ann Walls was there, but there she was. And somehow Patrick Walls got wind of this and appealed to the War Office not to pay the pension to the older Ann. The pension was denied to Ann Hanley Walls on the grounds that she was an “unworthy wife”, which is a first for the researchers here! They decided instead to pay the pension to the guardian of the Home, Sister Hannah Gaunt, to be used for Ann’s benefit. Ann also received a “motherless rate” uplift.
The full red text should be read from the bottom up, and reads:
(1) Sp. Gr. C. Decision, 29.6.18, that widow is unworthy to receive a pension, that motherless rate be issued for child of at St. Vincent’s House, [illegible] Rd. Leeds.
(2) Instruct I. V. to re-issue pension in respect of the child Ann Walls to the lady Superior, Margaret Jane, Leeds, from the date payment issued, according to our instructions of the 8.7.18 at the motherless rate of 9/2 week. I.V. instructed 28.7.18
I.O.W. instructed 18.7.18 to issue payment of pension to guardian.
Now, does this last bit mean Patrick Walls, as the guardian whose name is written on the card after Hannah Gaunt’s was crossed out? You’d expect, but then, in 1921 Ann Walls was still in the home. Surely Patrick wouldn’t have been given the money if she wasn’t home with them. Did she go home and then get sent back? Ann would eventually leave the home and ended up marrying William Reeve in 1932 in Halifax. William was another boy who had lost a parent young, but had been a bit luckier in that he and his brother Stanley obtained places at Crossley Heath School as boarders on the “orphan” rate. The two would have had a lot to talk about, wouldn’t they? Her life seems to have turned out all right in the end, but spare a thought here for the person who is always the most affected by domestic violence and poor parenting: the child.
Back now to Patrick and Mary Ann. For whatever reasons their granddaughter (the daughter of their dead son! Why wouldn’t you?? Arrgh!) never came home, and by 1921 Patrick was an unemployed night watchman for the dyeworks. He soon found work again at an iron foundry but he died in October of the same year, and given the cause of death – cardiac disease and rheumatism – perhaps this choice of work hastened things along.
Mary Ann was now a widow but she had support, mainly from daughter Teresa who as we can see was the informant in attendance at Patrick’s death. The pair moved to Wellington Road in the town centre and Mary Ann died 16 years later, in 1937, also from cardiac disease and complications from a benign tumour on her thyroid. Teresa would again be the informant at her death.
What does this story tell us, and what’s the point of dragging this “dirty laundry” into the open? It reminds us that people are complicated. We can thank William for his heroic service and role saving the lives of his fellow soldiers but condemn his domestic abuse; we can wonder what the hell Ann was thinking, while also acknowledging she may have been carrying some trauma that led to her making poor decisions, or even that she may have had a very good reason to leave little Ann somewhere safe if she herself couldn’t care for her; we can wonder why Patrick and Mary Ann didn’t bring their granddaughter home while also understanding that grief is complicated and doesn’t always bring out the best in us. If we all acted logically and decently then things would be very different wouldn’t they?