Oyez, oyez, oyez! Gather round and hear the tale of the OG Tod Town Crier – or what we know of it anyway.
Thomas Greenlees was born in 1783 and while his early life is a mystery, we know that he started out as a cotton spinner who made a career for himself working for Henry Ramsbottom of 38.32. He married Hannah Bentley at Heptonstall in 1803 and quickly had two children, Betty in 1804 and John in 1805. You might know Betty as Betty Butterworth, the wife of Jakeh the Chartist sympathiser. They would later have some more children – Ann in 1817, Andrew in 1820, and Adam in 1822. Those three were baptised at Bethel (Lineholme Baptist) Chapel in Lydgate, so perhaps the gap is more to do with the Greenlees family having their children baptised and registered in places that we don’t have access to the records for. There might be many many more! Poor Hannah was 46 when Adam was born though, so she was probably ready to call time on childbearing.
Thomas became a member of the Oddfellows in 1819 and was the founder of the Todmorden District’s lodge. He was also a founding member of the Working Men’s Association in March 1838, which was specifically set up to challenge any attempts to introduce the 1834 Poor Law Act to the area. He wasn’t involved in the riots…well, he wasn’t charged with involvement at least – if he was involved then he was very careful!
So much of what we know is down to small snatches in the newspapers – someone was sent to jail for six months for stealing Thomas’s watch in 1837, can you believe it? – so bear with us if this seems a bit disjointed.
By 1841 Thomas had quit spinning, as well as having committed himself to abstinence (the beverage related kind) in 1837, although one of his daughters would later describe him as an innkeeper when she got married; maybe it was a family in-joke! He was living with Robert and Alice (Holden) Mills and their family at Brook Street. The Mills seem to have been no relation so perhaps he was lodging there. We’ll tell their story when we get to their grave at 39.29. His occupation on the census is actually given as “town crier” which was something we weren’t expecting to see. These days it’s a side hustle…in those days it was a full time job. Thomas wasn’t really doing it as a full time job though, he was also working as a part-time postman. Maybe he was beginning to feel his age and had to “vary his portfolio” as we say nowadays. Curiously, we thought at first that he must have been widowed by this point, but no – Hannah was still alive and living at New Gate Bottom (near Newton Grove) with their sons Andrew and Adam. Some sort of marital breakdown had definitely taken place.
The 1840s ended up being a difficult one for Thomas. First, in 1842, his (estranged?) wife Hannah died. In 1845 his daughter Ann had to move back in with him at his new home of Newell’s Buildings not long after getting married, and she died there from a “lingering illness” shortly after. In 1846 his granddaughter Jane Butterworth (Jakeh and Betty’s daughter) died, and her death notice in the newspapers described her as his granddaughter, no reference to her parents at all! Clearly he placed the notice and clearly she was dear to him. His youngest son Adam also died in 1846. And then, in 1847, Thomas died. His cause of death was hydrothorax, aka fluid buildup in the chest cavity, usually associated with congestive heart failure.
His obituary is incredible, and is where the majority of what we know about his life comes from, with the rest thanks to two mentions of him in John Fielden’s Todmorden by Linda Croft.
What sort of man was Thomas, really? He was active, he cared about his fellow working men, he knew solidarity and brotherhood were important things…but his wife wasn’t living with him near the end, isn’t even buried in the same place as him (she was buried at Lineholme), and he was somehow an innkeeper while being part of the abstinence movement…his sons chose their mother when the couple apparently parted ways, but his daughter went home to him when she was on her deathbed and not her brothers. A man of contradictions? Or in other words just a regular guy with a regular, sometimes messy life, like ours.