This grave holds a father and son, and moreover, a father who was part of this church and graveyard’s history – unlike other clerical graves, it might escape your notice entirely if you were idly walking through, as on the face of it it’s just another flat lancet. Even when it was upright only the large cross might have given something away.
Robert Boyle Davies was part of a dynasty – an Irish Anglican dynasty. His father Boyle Davies was an Anglican priest in Cork, where Robert was born in 1812, and Robert wasn’t the only son who went into orders. Robert was fated to be a perpetual curate in rather a different sense than the term means now. Bouncing around Ireland for a spell, in late 1839 he was appointed to the curacy in Accrington, and he took the opportunity to marry fellow Irish girl Elizabeth Cecilia, aka Bessy, Morris in January 1840 shortly before heading over. His four years in Accrington and then Blackburn was a roaring success. Two children were born, Boyle Townsend in 1841 and Sarah Margaret in 1843. On his appointment to a curacy in Hulme he and Bessy were presented with many gifts and the Sunday School children wept openly at the prospect of his departure. At least that’s what the papers said! He was either a wonderful cleric or the newspaper was a big bunch of liars.
The Davieses would stay in Hulme for six more years before coming to Todmorden. The move to Tod might have been partly due to the loss of their daughter, Sarah Margaret, in 1849. Confusingly she died and was buried at St. Nicholas’s in Keyingham, in East Yorkshire; were they there for her health’s sake? Or some other reason?
Sometime-FOCCer David Jackson, formerly a sexton at St. Mary’s, took up the “why was she buried so far away challenge” as he knew people in the area. He not only sourced an excellent photo of Sarah Margaret’s grave, but also has his own theory about why they were so far away. After researching who else was there, ruling out friends or family connections, he suggests a third explanation: that their presence there was because Robert was scoping out somewhere new to go, and Sarah Margaret became ill just before or while they were travelling. Her death registration states that she died due to bronchitis which she had been suffering from for seven days, and the newspaper notice states that she died at the parsonage there. It also explains why she was buried inside the church, something reserved for VIPs. Maybe someone at Keyingham felt responsible…
Unsurprisingly, the place where their only daughter died did not appeal as a new parish for Robert and Bessie. But Manchester might not have suited the Davies’s either, and certainly industrial air pollution wouldn’t have been ideal for anyone with a chest complaint or sensitivity. Todmorden was hardly a rural idyll in 1850 – industrialisation was swiftly moving along – but compared to Stretford it was probably rural enough. A stipendary curacy here was accepted, the family settled at Stansfield Cottage at Meadow Bottom with their Irish servant, and Robert prepared to become an intimate part of Todmorden life.
What must it have been like, being an Irish family moving to Todmorden at a time, and in a place, where the Irish were almost exclusively labourers or Catholic or both? There were anti-Irish riots and demonstrations in many places across the UK during this time, mostly based on anti-Catholic prejudice but also with layers of Irish independence or perceptions of being overwhelmed by Famine-related immigration and the driving down of wages. Sound familiar? The educated, Protestant Davies family would have been a world away from navvies and farm workers, but would their class and culture be enough to overcome their accents? What was their experience of life in Todmorden like? It was likely a positive one actually, and based on two facts. Firstly, Todmorden had already experienced an Irish curate, William Morgan. He came to Todmorden around 1840 and according to C. G. Ramshaw was a “a favourite right away to the extremities of the parish” because he travelled to the outskirts to hold services. Irish workers might have been given the side-eye, but not clergy. Secondly, the vicar, John Edwards, had a speech impediment that made services painful (again according to Ramshaw) and was causing attendance to fall away. If Robert had a silver tongue then it would be appreciated by Edwards and the parishioners alike!
Having said all this, Davies is conspicuously absent from Ramshaw – not a single mention of him in the entire book – so one still has to wonder.
Robert’s first baptism in 1850 was Sarah Ann Wrigley, later Sarah Ann Lee, on June 29th, and his first burial was Eliza Stansfield on May 20th at E7.3. A parish worker’s tenure can be measured in signatures in books and Robert’s would be a short one. His last baptism was Peggy Earnshaw on September 14th 1851 and his last burial was Abraham Farrow on January 1st 1852. He died in May 1852, only 40 years old. His cause of death was a new one for us here: “excision of fungoid disease of right testicle”, with chronic hepatitis – somehow! – a secondary cause of death. In modern language Robert had at least a skin lymphoma if not cancer in his liver as well.
Whatever effect Manchester might have had on Sarah’s health, Bessy missed it, and after she buried her husband she took Boyle with her back to Hulme. If it was the problem then it was the worst decision she could make. Twelve year old Boyle died in June 1854 from tuberculosis on the brain, having suffered for “some weeks”, and Bessy made the trip back to Todmorden to bury him with his father. John Edwards, who would have known them both well, buried them both; the burden of many clerics and curates before and after him.
Whether the choice was from grief or from practicality – she received a widow’s stipend, after all – Bessy never remarried. She lived out her remaining days in Stretford with faithful also-widowed servant Ann Young and, curiously, when she died in 1878 she was buried there and not here, or in Keyingham. Perhaps there was no one left who remembered where her family were.