Did you know about this stone? Even if you walked the path to and from the school every day you might not always see it, due to it being laid flat in a natural dip which means all rain and leaf fall covers it with mud and muck and renders it invisible very quickly. Putting it right will take some time, not least because someone asphalting the pathway decided to extend the asphalt over the base of this stone…the less we say about that the better, probably. There might even be one more name on this stone that no one can see!
This stone’s story starts with Mary Ann Helliwell’s birth in 1853. Mary Ann grew up at Fair View, now Longfield, and found work as a factory operative along with her many siblings. Five years after her birth James Stansfield was born on the opposite side of the Rochdale Road valley. His family was equally poor – all agricultural labourers – but they had a link to fame that few others had. James’s aunt Ruth Stansfield was the Ruth Stansfield…otherwise known was Ruth Fielden, wife of John Fielden the younger, who 11 years after James’s birth would move into Dobroyd Castle and end up supposedly drinking herself into an early grave from misery. Her story is a sad one.
Unfortunately this story is also a sad one.
James and Mary Ann were married in 1880 and in 1881 were living near Dobroyd where James was – you guessed it! – an farm labourer. Speaking of sad stories, the couple had bad luck with their children. Sarah Alice, their first child, was born on September 19th 1882 but died a few days later. Her burial isn’t recorded in the burial registers, but she is the “also an infant daughter” mentioned on the stone. Next came Willie in 1884. He got to the age of 3 before he died in 1887, and became the first person into this grave. Row 34 is the 1887 row. This means Sarah Alice is elsewhere entirely.
Emily was born next, in 1886, and luckily now the Stansfields had a child who would live. Her health wasn’t a positive omen though. Mary Ann had one final child, Joseph Henry (named for James’s father and her own respectively) in 1891, and he also died in the space of a few days. HIs burial is recorded in the registers, but it’s a mystery why he isn’t named on this stone. Perhaps the person who paid to have it set didn’t know about him, or had forgotten about him? He isn’t named anywhere else in the yard.
Deciding to move on, the family upped sticks and left Todmorden for Nelson. In 1899 James found work as a coachman for Amos Nelson at the freshly built Gwen Lodge, off Barker House Road (now the Great Marsden Residential Home for the Elderly). James was having a hard time though. His health had been poor and people were beginning to worry about him.
One morning in July James woke up, had some tea, and went to his work. He had not slept well because of a cough he had developed. Mary Ann got the fire one and made breakfast and waited for him to come back. He didn’t, and she went to look for him. He was dead, having hung himself on the stairs. The corner ruled that he had been of unsound mind due to ill health.
If Todmorden had felt like a place where death was too close, what about Nelson now? Interestingly Mary Ann stayed put. This was her and Emily’s home now. In 1904 Mary Ann found love again, this time with a quarryman named Benjamin Leaver who was himself also a widower with a single child, Walter, who at this point had moved out of the house and started his own family…but he still understood. Mary Ann and Benjamin married in 1904. And Emily? Three years later, she got married too. Enter Ira Ratcliffe!
Ira was a lad from Stanbury near Bradford, originally, who had moved to Nelson as a young lad probably because of his mother Susannah’s links to the Wycollar area. He also lived along Barker House Road, so he and Emily would have crossed paths from time to time. They immediately started a family – their first son James William, again named for their two fathers, came along just a little under nine months later. In 1913 a second child came – named Ben, for the third father in their lives – but sadly little Ben had the same fate as his mother’s siblings and died thirteen days later. Ira and Emily would have no more children.
Mary Ann lived with Ira and Emily, possibly because Benjamin’s job in the quarries at Catlow meant she was uncomfortable there (or he was uncomfortable with her there). It’s hard to know; In 1911 Benjamin lived at Catlow Row while Mary Ann and the Ratcliffes were at Bamford Street in Nelson In 1914 she found herself a widow for the second time after pneumonia brought Benjamin down. Her residence with the Ratcliffes was now a permanent one.
The Ratcliffes were firmly working class and both Ira and Emily worked, with Mary Ann looking after James William until he was old enough to go to work himself. This new family unit was a strong one, though, and more importantly a healthy one. Ira continued weaving until the 1930s when he found work on a poultry farm. Emily and James William moved on from cotton to silk weaving. Mary Ann kept house.
Age and death comes to us all and for Mary Ann it came in 1944. Mary Ann had outlived two husbands, three children, and one grandchild. She was tired. She was 90 years old. Her death wasn’t a dignified one, and again reminds us that there has rarely been dignity in death when the newspapers had access to the details.
She WAS 90 years old, though, and Emily and Ira also lived long lives. Emily died in 1962 aged 76 and is probably the last person into the grave here…but we don’t know for sure. James William died in 1970 and Ira died in 1972, and maybe, just maybe, they’re in here too, although the burial registers are spotty for this time and don’t show either of them. It will be interesting to get that asphalt chipped off of the base of the stone and see whether another name appears or not won’t it? Maybe one day soon.
