41.34 – Mary, Agnes and Elizabeth Wilson

The three Wilson children in this grave are another example of children whose families moved on and never came back – and also a reminder that access to medicine or medical knowledge wasn’t enough to save you back then. It’s also a mystery all of its own for other reasons…

Matthew Wilson was born in 1793 in Dumfries, Scotland; his future wife Elizabeth Schofield was born the same year in Haslingden. Ne’er the twain shall meet? This twain did meet, somehow, and in 1817 they were married at the parish church in Haslingden with two other Wilsons, George and Elizabeth, as witnesses. Siblings? An in-law? Parents? Uncertain connections for sure.

The couple started a family with James Haworth Wilson, born around 1818, and continued to have children until they had seven in total, ending with Mary in 1834. Matthew was a draper and by 1829 the family had come to Todmorden to set up shop there. The Wilsons were non-conformists and held their links to Haslingden dear; in 1829 their second, third, fourth and fifth children were all baptised at Dearden Gate Chapel in Haslingden despite the move to Todmorden already having taken place. Those children were Agnes, William, Ellen and Jane. Elizabeth, their sixth child, was born the following year.

After a time Matthew left the draper’s trade and became a grocer, setting up shop at Sutcliffe Buildings (which once stood where Waterside Lodge stands now). His sons meanwhile became first druggists’ apprentices and later druggists themselves. Did this give their mother a sense of safety, that there were medical men in the household? Maybe it did…but it was unwarranted. Back then knowledge was incomplete and child mortality, as anyone who looks at any grave here knows, was high. 1837 and 1838 were painful years for the Wilsons for just that reason. First Mary, the baby of the family, died in January 1837. We don’t know her cause of death as it predates the GRO. The following year though both Agnes (aged 17) and Elizabeth (aged 8) died, within the space of a month from each other. Agnes died from consumption and Elizabeth from “inflammation of the brain”. Agnes was the only one to receive a mention anywhere, in several Leeds-area newspapers, and the pain of her parents in placing the notice is clear.

All three daughters had been buried here in quick succession and Matthew and Elizabeth must have prayed very hard for no more children to join them. The Wilsons stayed in Todmorden for a time but when James Haworth went off to Cambridge in 1844 – yes, Cambridge! Queen’s College! We told you he was clever! – the family decided to leave Todmorden behind and head to Horsecroft at Whitworth to supply groceries there instead. Maybe they thought Whitworth was a healthier place to live. If so, they were wrong. In 1846 Ellen died from consumption, and in 1849 James Haworth died. Again, he received a newspaper mention.

Poor James Haworth died of chronic dysentery and follicular enteritis. In short, he developed inflammation due to either a chronic untreated food allergy or as a complication of long-term fever, more likely the former. A truly avoidable death especially today, and ironic given he went to Cambridge in 1844 to study pharmaceuticals further. Elizabeth’s heart was well and truly broken now at her continued losses and in 1852 she died herself after a year of battling bronchitis. But this wasn’t the end – then druggist William died in 1859 after a three year fight with consumption. It was only Matthew and Jane, who had become a schoolmistress, left standing from this once large and promising family.

With no sons or sons in law left to take on any business, Matthew sold his business to a young chap from Rochdale named Thomas Fielden and became a bookkeeper for a cotton firm. He lodged with the Fieldens for a time but in 1869 he died after a brief bout of pneumonia and was laid to rest.

…laid to rest where? You’d presume elsewhere, given just three names on this stone, but here’s where this grave STOPS being yet another grave full of children whose families have moved on. Because once you start to peruse the registers, you realise that all the Wilson children (bar James Haworth and Jane) are buried here, as are Elizabeth and Matthew. Every one. The Wilsons weren’t poor, so why didn’t they continue to update this stone? Was it just too much? Matthew was well enough off to own enough property to object to the poor rates levelled on him in 1840 alongside the Fieldens, Crossleys, and Ormerods to name but a few; the money to update the stone wasn’t lacking at any point. Mary Stansfield Wilson was not a poor woman – more on her story another day – so there was even support possible from her end for paying for more engraving, maybe out of pity for her less fortunate in-laws. But it didn’t happen, did it? Nothing at all happened from any direction at any point, it seems. Sadly this is a mystery that will probably always remain mysterious.