The last of our Leek graves is here, and we rejoin the story of Jeffrey Leek and his family. As you might recall, one of his children is buried with his mother and father in law, and we briefly touched on the family there; now we return and discover a story of apparently amicable separation. Because Jeffrey isn’t here…
Ann Orrell was the middle child of her parents and was born in 1838, nine years before her future husband. Ann’s occupation prior to marriage was cotton weaver and perhaps thought that marrying the ambitious Jeffrey Leek in April 1867 would be the start of something big. Yes he was younger than her – six years younger according to their marriage certificate, although that was number-fudging by Ann rather than by him – and yes he was only a weaver, but he wanted to be his own boss and was keen to get started in another industry, that of restauranteur.
In terms of children, you could say their marriage was successful; in fact that aspect started even earlier, as their first child Albert was born before their wedding, and registered over in Bradford as a Leek even though by law he ought to have been registered as an Orrell. Next came John Henry, then Fred (who is buried with Ann’s parents John and Mary), then Ruth, and finally James William in 1879. In other ways their marriage was less than ideal. The 1871 Census online doesn’t include the sections where the Leeks might have lived, but a warning sign is already there in baby Albert being found in Bowling staying with his grandmother Mary Leek. Jeffrey receives few mentions in the news before 1879, when the wooden refreshment stand he ran on the outdoor marketplace burned down (taking Thomas Gibson’s pea booth with it. Not the pea booth!). Jeffrey quickly regrouped and took over an unnamed “eating establishment” on North Street, but the 1881 Census is bad news for the marriage. Jeffrey, Albert, John Henry and James William live with him at Market Place along with two servants and his niece Elizabeth Ann (John and the deceased Sally Leek’s daughter). His own daughter Ruth is staying with John and Sarah Leek at Sourhall. And Ann? Ann is lodging on Cable Street with Maria Towers and working again, as a weaver.
Was the Orrell family’s history of alcohol problems partly to blame? Ann certainly wasn’t getting herself into any trouble that we know of, but her brother Henry was a regular in the newspapers for drunk and disorderly issues. And don’t forget John and James Leek’s own issues with drink. Henry, pertinently, had a grudge against one of Jeffrey’s servants and was even taken to court in 1884 for calling her “very nasty names” in the street. When in court he repeated his allegations and made some others that didn’t endear him to the jury. Was Jeffrey a rake? Maybe, but it would also take a rhino hide to carry on that way in the town where you lived and made your living while your wife was living nearby and working. A curious situation that no public records seem able to cast light on.
The following year Jeffrey was off. He’d had enough of the Orrells…all of them, apparently.
In 1889 their son James William died aged nine – James does seem to have been an unlucky name for the Leeks – and by 1891 Jeffrey and Ann were further apart than ever, even more than simply geographically. She was living at Lock Street in Shade with John Henry and Ruth and still naming herself as married, and he was in Salford boarding with a widowed female eating-house keeper named Elizabeth Milburn. They were still together in 1901 and 1911. In 1901 they were calling themselves man and wife, although by 1911 they had reverted to Leek and Milburn and made no mention of more than a professional partnership. Then Jeffrey called Elizabeth his servant and naming himself as the proprietor of the Kings Eating Rooms at 8 Albert Place, Manchester. Elizabeth was supposedly merely the manager. Hmmm. He died in Salford in 1923. Anyway; that’s the end of that. So what about Ann?
Ann was continuing on in Todmorden with her children. She gave her occupation as “retired cotton weaver” in 1891, so time and hard work had clearly caught up with her. In 1897 Ruth married Walter Clegg of Lydgate and the two settled at Kitson Wood Road, with Ann accompanying them to help look after their children. Their first child, another John Henry, arrived the same year so she was straight to work.
In 1911 we find Ann in Salford with the older John Henry, who had clearly caught the restauranteur bug from Jeffrey. He had started as a cotton weaver like his parents when they were young, but had gotten bored and decided to give the West Riding Constabulary a try. He moved up to Low Moor in 1896 for training and to start work, and there he met Edith Harker. Edith was the youngest child of John and Nancy (Collins) Harker of North Bierley, but Edith grew up at Low Moor where her father worked as a foundryman. She too, of course, became a cotton weaver…and after meeting John Henry Leek, she became a mother. What other choice did women have those days?
John Henry and Edith settled in Cleckheaton for a time, and he saw out his term as a police constable. Contracts in those days could be for a set number of years, like an indenture almost, and John Henry advanced quickly and ended up serving for five years before resigning in 1901. Unlike so many of the men on both sides of his family John Henry seems to have led a fairly clean life (for which we’re sure Edith was grateful, and Ann too). Even while they were in Bradford he kept his ties with Todmorden, being involved from a distance with the Oddfellows. Shortly after 1901 the Leeks went to Salford with their two daughters, Annie and Laura, and somehow John Henry managed to even still be a part of Knowlwood Chapel’s operations!
The above newspaper notice comes shortly after a different sort of notice, but not one that made the paper. On December 5th 1913 Ann died aged 75 and she was buried here with her son. A few years later John Henry had a more unexpected shock when Edith died on September 8th 1916 aged 42. Curiously the gravestone only gives the date she was interred, not the date she died – it reads “who was interred here 11th September aged 42.” Edith is yet another of the many, probably hundreds, of women who died in their late 30s or early 40s who are buried here, all undoubtedly sooner than was necessary. John Henry remarried a year later to Eva Wray of Shipley and she joined him and the girls in Salford, and lived together until his death in October 1940.
This is probably the reason why Edith’s interment date is the date on the stone; while both Annie and Laura lived into adulthood (quite a ways into adulthood – 1983 and 1974 respectively), it was probably Eva who was responsible for having the stone placed. Not knowing the actual date of death for Edith, the burial registers had to be consulted, and the compromise was to carve the date she was buried. Thanks to the internet, though, we can fill in the blank.
