A stonemason, a woman with two names, and young losses, one (hopefully) redeemed by some grandparental love.
First, the mysterious aforementioned woman. Not that she’s mysterious really, but for reasons we’ve never gotten to the bottom of, she had two names. Betty Crossley, as she was christened, was born in June 1850 in Midgley near Halifax. Her parents Samuel and Hannah (Hargreaves) were cotton twisters and weavers who originally came from Heptonstall and Betty was the baby, the youngest of three children. The Crossleys moved around the area and by 1861 had moved to one of the cottages at Jowler in Luddenden. That’s where we see Betty’s alter ego for the first time – not Betty Crossley on the census, but Barbara Crossley, factory girl.
Barbara might have been a nickname, or a middle name, but which name was given depended on who was giving the answers to the enumerator. And even that wasn’t consistent. Betty or Barbara was a good daughter though and continued on at home even after her siblings went and her mother died, helping support Samuel. But in 1872 that came to an end when she followed her heart and married a stonemason less than a month older than her, William Henry Atkinson of Halifax.
Now William was a catch – his father Henry was also a mason and had his own company, Henry Atkinson and son. William, of course, was the son! But this is in 1872, and only a recent development (possibly due to the marriage). William had been born in Skircoat but the Atkinsons moved all around the area, going from Skircoat to Leeds to Skipton to Thornton and back to Halifax in the space of ten years. Betty was the baby in her family but William was the eldest in his. This didn’t mean a guaranteed place alongside his father though and in 1871 William was actually lodging in Silsden and working for someone else as a stonemason. Maybe this was to give him a wide range of experiences, or maybe he was still proving himself, or maybe there had been a temporary falling out in the family…all sorts of possible reasons! But harmony was restored after the marriage at least.
And one thing was different – William preferred to stay more or less in Halifax. He and Betty had five children before 1881 and all but Mary, who was six weeks old at the time of the 1881 Census, were born in Warley or Halifax. But 1878 saw Henry, and by extension William, take their families and futures down Todmorden way. The first mention of them in the newspaper is 1878 when they won the contract to be the stonemasons for the Fielden Coffee Tavern and Temperance Hotel at Pavement, now more casually known as the Conservative Club at the base of Longfield Road and Shoebroad Lane.
That snippet above reads like a Christ Church menu; Jesse Horsfall, James Booth, Anthony Bowden…so it would be only appropriate for William to be involved more closely in the church here. As would all these men. The Fielden Tavern was funded by John Fielden Jr., and so when his wife Ellen decided that Christ Church was to be grander, the same contractors stepped forward, and in 1885 the chancel extension was built and decorated by their hands.
Not that the 1880s were the happiest time for William and Betty. Their third child, Sam, had died in 1880 at the age of four, and in 1886 William’s father Henry died. Henry Atkinson and Son became simply William Henry Atkinson, alone. But then he did have a few sons still – Harry, born in 1874, and Fred, born in 1879 – and as the 1890s rolled around Harry became a stonemason’s apprentice and we assume worked alongside his father.
Unfortunately Harry joined his brother Sam here in 1896, at the age of 22. A combination of enteritis and pneumonia left him too weak to fight off both infections. Stone dust in the nose and lungs won’t have helped. We don’t order every death registration – we can’t afford it! – but sometimes when someone isn’t a baby, isn’t old, and doesn’t have an inquest, you can’t help but feel like you need to know. In his case it was just bad luck and poor health all arriving at once.
By this time the Atkinsons were living in a house on Adelaide Street, which represented a modest amount of success. No more of the cramped back to backs of Boardman Street, where they’d started out when moving to Todmorden. There were still six children left, including Fred, but Fred’s talents lay in baking rather than stonework, and so William became a foreman mason under local general contractor Benjamin Lumb. The dream of a stonemason’s dynasty was over. But baking wasn’t so bad, and Fred found work with King and Crossley’s (no relation to Betty so far as we know). All the other children were girls and all bar the youngest became cotton weavers. This includes their second to youngest, Lily, born in 1884. We haven’t talked about Lily much yet because she hadn’t had much of a life yet. Sadly, she wouldn’t.
Lily in 1901 was a weaver and the whole family was now at 28 Adelaide Street, where they would stay. Whether she had any outside interests or hobbies we don’t know, although it’s possible she was of a musical bent. That’s because in April 1906 she married local cornet player and generally well regarded musician Albert Bramley. He also worked in a cotton mill though so maybe they met through work. What we do know is that Lily was already pregnant, though only a few months along. Seven months later their daughter Lily was born, on November 9th 1906.
The birth must have been difficult because while she managed to struggle on for a few more weeks Lily – mother Lily – died on November 30th from acute peritonitis, with the secondary cause given as “puerperium”. This term refers to a period of six weeks postpartum where a woman’s reproductive organs return to their previous condition, so perhaps it was used in a slightly different way then?
The irony being that Lily was the same age as Harry had been at his death, 22 years old. Albert remarried two years later and little Lily seems to have never lived with him again. She had epilepsy which left her incapacitated as she grew older and would spend her later life living with her aunts Louisa and Clara, and died in 1940 at the age of 33 (and is buried at Mankinholes). In 1911 she’s there with William, Betty, Fred, Louisa and Clara on Adelaide Street, as a granddaughter and not as a visitor.
In 1919 William died at the age of 68, which wasn’t bad at all, and Betty was left to carry on with the support of her children still at home, Fred and Clara (and Lily). The 1921 Census brings a surprise of sorts, and clarification of the mystery we talked about at the beginning of this story. Now Betty was on her own, and in charge of her own story and filling in the census returns herself rather than having William do it, she was no longer Betty. She was Barbara. We even have it in her own straggling hand.
Notice how she started off one way, crossed it out, and began again? Legally a Betty, but a Barbara at heart…
Betty, Barbara, whichever name she preferred, died in 1926 and when she was buried here a stone was put up with everyone named on it. We can guess that it was done at the very end due to the way the names are listed on it mostly in reverse order of death. William came first though, and in death as in life he had the final say…because the next name on the stone is Betty, not Barbara. Her in memoriams a year later tell a tale as well.
If you’re wondering about Fred, he’s buried at 36.2 with his grandparents and an uncle.