There are lots of Arthur Marshalls in this graveyard, and this is one of them – this Arthur was a fairly unremarkable man, but not everyone in here has a grand story. Some stories are fairly straightforward ones. We were glad to be able to verify this inscription before the stone finishes delaminating and becomes unreadable, which seems likely to happen within the next 5-10 years.
Firstly, Thomas and Sarah Ann Greenwood. Thomas was born in 1812 and baptised at St. Mary’s, not long after his parents John Greenwood and Grace Thomas were married, and a full nine years before his next sibling who survived to adulthood. He became a woodworker via timber sawing and the Greenwoods lived at Cockpit, behind the Golden Lion. In 1857 he married Sarah Ann Stansfield, a cotton worker from Knowlwood. She was 14 years younger than Thomas but he would later become a little creative with his birthdate and the gap wouldn’t look as stark…regardless of that, though, she was a little old for entering the marriage market, surely? The answer lies in her birth order. As the oldest girl, she was expected to help at home. We’ve seen many eldest daughters end up being the last to marry.
They did not have any children of their own. As the gravestone indicated, Thomas served Christ Church for a great deal of his life – “for 40 years grave digger of this church”, around and on top of his day job. He died in 1885 and Sarah Ann followed in 1895.
Arthur was born in 1873 in Rochdale – at least, according to the 1911 Census, he was. In June 1893 he married Ellen Gibson from Burnley at Heptonstall St Thomas, and the two settled at 7 Myrtle Street – you might know it now as the little road that leads into the Methodist and outdoor market carpark, there are no houses left along that little stretch anymore. On the marriage certificate, Arthur did not give his father’s name, although a Clara Marshall was one of the witnesses.
Clara helped us track Arthur a little further backwards – she was his sister, and after more research it seems reasonable to believe that both Clara and Arthur (and several other siblings) were illegitimate. Their mother Ellen was Sarah Ann’s younger sister, born Ellen Stansfield and who married George Marshall in 1861. She would only be married for five short years before George died in 1866 of an unspecified heart disease, and his death came two months after the death of their only child together, little Walter, who was only 10 months old when he died in January 1866. No remarriage was on the cards and Ellen listed herself as a widow as early as 1871, which was three years after Clara was born but two before Arthur and three before the next child, Sarah Ellen (who died as an infant), came along. Ellen and the children were living in 1871 and 1881 with Thomas and Sarah Ann at Myrtle Street, Ellen being labelled as Thomas’s sister-in-law. For Ellen, either the marriage experience was such a painful one that she had no reason to repeat it, or something sadder was afoot; we don’t know, really. But Arthur’s birth was never registered, and Clara and Betsy’s birth registrations have blank spaces where a father’s name would go, so Ellen’s life clearly had some chaos in it.
Ellen died in 1881 aged 44. She is buried here at Christ Church but we don’t know where. Thomas the grave digger here would know where she is but he didn’t leave us any clue. George Marshall is also here with a marked stone in the private area, along with (inexplicably) Clara and her son Norman. Clara’s presence only makes sense if Ellen is there, but her name’s absence from the stone makes us wonder if her husband William Towers know her mother was there to have her name added. All speculation…
Scandal followed Arthur Marshall, the next time through his wife Ellen’s sister Alice Gibson, who drowned herself in 1900 after her young man ditched her for another girl, and the inquest and lengthy interviewing of Ellen (and judgmental verdict that accused her of not having done more to stop Alice from killing herself) was in the newspapers. It seems like things happened around Arthur but not involving Arthur.
Anyway, back to Arthur. In 1911 his little family had moved over to 81 Cambridge Street and had five children living with them (a sixth was born and died between the two census returns). Arthur was still a weaver, and the eldest two children worked in the weaving and leather industries. Come WW1 and the family were now at 21 Osborne Place. Willie, one of his and Ellen’s sons, went off to fight…but sadly did not come home. He was presumed to have died in 1916 aged 19 (he went missing and his body was never found, and his death was formally announced a year later) and his name is on the memorial at Thiepval.
Arthur himself lived, as we said, an unremarkable life, and his only appearance in the local news seems to have been at his death in 1928, because of the circumstances. The inquest reads as follows:
Arthur’s epilepsy, which had developed in adulthood, led him to have a fatal fit.
Ellen’s name and date of death was previously unmarked, although present on this stone – on the plinth at the base, where many inscriptions have escaped prior notice. She survived him and died in 1950 aged 75.