A short story for a plot marker for a journeyman painter and his son.
And that’s the bulk of what we know. James Rothwell was born in Haslingden in 1836, the same year his future wife Betsy Ormerod was born in Newchurch. James was a house painter and so good at it that he became a journeyman, a sort of travelling master of his trade. He married Betsy in Bury in 1857.
The Rothwells only had two children. Their first, a daughter named Mary Alice, was born in Bury in 1859. She was baptised there the following year. The Rothwells were slow about these things and didn’t even register Mary Alice’s birth officially. She died in Oswaldtwistle in 1862 and was buried at the parish church in Haslingden.
The next abode for the Rothwells would be Todmorden, where their son Walter would be born in 1866. Perhaps James had been hired in by John Gibson, who was in the process of building Dobroyd Castle around this time? If so then James’s pay wasn’t probably very good as the family were renting a house on George Street. That house would be James’s last home…and Walter’s only. Walter went first, on the 12th of January 1869. Poor little Walter died a death that seems impossible and…just wrong, somehow. He had an abscess at the back of his throat which was lanced after 7 days in an attempt to remove it; instead, something went wrong, and Walter suffocated as a result of the procedure.
James followed him on the 5th of February. The cause? Bronchitis. Just like with Walter, antibiotics would sort it nowadays, but money couldn’t buy a cure that didn’t exist.
His pay had been good enough, however, to afford exclusive right of burial in this grave plot. That’s why there’s a marker to help point us towards their identities.
Betsy was now triply bereaved, with her husband and both children in their graves. She was illiterate, unable even to sign her name, and so had to find work where she could. In some ways you could say she landed on her feet, finding work in service for a boot and shoemaker in Bury…but she didn’t outlive James by very long in the end. She died in Bury in 1876, at the age of 40, and was buried there.
Blink and you’d miss the Rothwells – or blink and you’d trip over the Rothwells – but this is why every stone needs examining and identifying if possible. It’s no longer a stone or a trip hazard now.
Sad story Sarah