A final Davis family post – William was another of Fred and Rachel’s sons – and one yet again featuring a tragic, sudden death.
William Davis was their third son, born in 1867, and was one of the ones who deviated from the family trade. Where the other Davis boys became plumbers or gas fitters, William chose smithing for his trade. In some other ways he was the same though – he was a member of the Lancashire Fusiliers 2nd Battalion Volunteers, he was a fireman (specifically an engineer), and there were a few other similarities we’ll touch on later.
William got married somewhat late in life compared to others in his family. It was July 1902 when, at the age of 35, he got married to Betsy Marshall (who was herself no spring chicken at 37). So why the long wait, and who was Betsy? The wait we can’t answer for, but we can tell you a little about Betsy. She was the fifth child of seven born to Zachariah and Emma (Shackleton) Marshall, who were both originally from Halifax but seem to have moved around a great deal – Halifax to Cragg Vale to Heptonstall to Todmorden. Once in Todmorden the Marshalls settled at Horsfall Buildings (behind the railway arches at Lobb Mill) and spread themselves into a few of the properties there. The sons didn’t go far from the parents and it seems to have been harmonious. Betsy became a cotton weaver like most of her siblings. Her mother died in 1885 and her father in 1888, and the siblings began to disperse. Betsy and her sister Grace stayed together and took a house at King Street, now gone but once near where Castle Hill School is today. In 1894 Grace got married and Betsy had to find herself a new home, which she did by becoming a boarder with the widowed Martha Marland and her daughters on Der Street.
Make note of the witnesses to her and William’s marriage…one is his brother Fred, and one is her friend and housemate Betsy Marland, Martha’s oldest daughter.
William and Betsy didn’t have an easy time starting a family – or perhaps they were just careful – either way, they had a single child, Fred who was born in 1906. Remember his brother Thomas had lost a son named Fred in 1901. And think of what a shock it must have been, and the sense of a near-miss, when William’s Fred nearly drowned in the canal when he was two years old…
This little Fred survived though. But two years later Betsy had another shock; William fell over in the street one night and didn’t get back up. He had been suffering from Bright’s Disease, aka nephritis or kidney failure, and one of the complications of this can be heart failure.
All the poor man wanted was to go see a movie after having been unwell for a few weeks…but then this yard is full of people who went before they were ready or before anyone thought they would. Betsy was left a widow with a four year old son. What would she do?
What she did at first was stay at their home on Russell Street and go back to cotton weaving. She must have had help from her neighbours with keeping Fred out of trouble while she was at work as he was still too young for school. She also may have had help from her brother in law Thomas and his own Betsy Ann, because in 1921 they had moved to Fylde but their son Frank Herbert was living with Betsy and Fred. He was five years older than Fred and already at work for the Co-operative Society at Dale Street in their furnishings department. Fred meanwhile was working as a warehouseman, bringing in a wage to help support Betsy, who by 1921 was still working but might have been starting to slow down a little.
That’s all that’s left that we know about Betsy; she died in 1933 in Wardle, at Birch Road, and was buried here.