A regular couple who were surrounded by losses, some their own and some that through chance fell into their laps…
Thomas Hardman was born in 1849 at Pexwood, the youngest son and youngest child of David and Sally (Crabtree). David was a steam engine tenter and Thomas grew up familiar with machinery and mechanics, and became a core moulder as he grew up. Meanwhile Mally Crabtree – possibly no relation…? – was growing up not so far away at Clinton Farm at Sourhall. Her parents were Thomas and Mary (Ratcliffe) and she was the youngest girl, not by any means the youngest, of a much larger family than the Hardmans. The other primary tenants of Clinton were her mother’s family, parents and siblings, so her father must have felt a bit like the odd one out.
Thomas and Mally met somehow and fell in love, but their feelings got away from them and when they married at the registry office in Feburary 1870 Mally was seven months pregnant. Their one and only child, Frank, was born in April. He died when only two weeks old, from unknown causes, and that was the end of the couple’s hopes for children. Later on the 1911 Census would reveal that he was their only child born alive.
The Hardmans buried their son here and reserved the plot for the future.
Life continued on for Thomas and Mally with little drama to rock it. The couple were at Mellings when Frank was born and died but left the hillsides to come down to Shade. They settled at High Street and Thomas found work at Dancroft Mill for Ashworth and Pilling, cotton spinners. By 1881 they had moved to Doghouse and Thomas was working for Astin and Barker’s foundry. By 1891 they had moved back up the hillside to Dyke Farm and had taken in Mally’s nephew Lewis Crabtree.
The Hardmans appear in the newspapers almost solely as witnesses to crimes or at inquests, apart from one instance in which Mally was attacked by neighbour Eliza Highley over a dispute as to whether or not Mally had called Eliza “Irish” and “a shame to be known, both before and since her marriage.”
The apparently quiet and shy Mally was acquitted, but maybe this is why the Hardmans moved out of Shade! But as we say, they kept appearing, mainly because Thomas had an unfortunate habit of finding people either dying or already dead. Anthony Chaffer in his home on Longfield Road, Barnes Sutcliffe on Doghouse Lane…it can’t have been fun!
By 1901 the Hardmans had quit Todmorden altogether and were living at Smith Street in Burnley. The street still stands to the west of Burnley College but the side of the road they lived on has been torn down. Despite being childless they had still suffered through WW1 as both nephew Lewis and another nephew, William Crabtree, had died within five days of each other in October 1916. Thomas would end his days in Burnley, dying in December 1920 at the age of 71. He returned to Todmorden to be buried with Frank and Mally returned to live with her brother James (Lewis’s father) and sister in law Mary, and nephew Wilfred, at Churchill Street in Lydgate.
Thomas had left Mally about £400 and this set Mally up with some security, but as time went on and her family diminished her savings grew. When she died in 1931 she had an estate worth over £800. She was 80 years old then, still living with Mary, and her death attracted a coroner’s inquest due to its suddenness. No mystery here though, just bronchitis and heart failure.
Not our most exciting story, but everyone’s story here matters, so here we are; if you know more about the Hardmans then let us know. Perhaps there’s a secret story we haven’t uncovered?
One last thouht: if a family member ever wants to correct an accidental insult to Mally then please feel free to arrange it. Malley had the gravestone that’s there now placed after Thomas died and her instructions were clearly to make sure that Thomas and Frank’s names were highlighted with gold leaf inside the lettering. Her name, however, isn’t gilded. What a shame – but it can be fixed.