The Denhams were an unlucky lot, all with early deaths – even by the standards of the day. They’re possibly the most unlucky family in this graveyard, even those who aren’t buried here. The fact that their stone was roughly laid flat by shattering the base only underlines the point.
Olive Webster was a year older than her future husband, so we’ll start with her first. Olive’s birth was a mixed affair; doomed from the start, almost. Her parents William and Susey (Stevenson) were weavers who lived at Houghstones and had married in 1817 and who had seven children between then and 1834. After six sons Olive, the only girl, finally came along. But we weren’t joking about it being a mixed affair. Olive was born on April 23rd 1834…and William was buried at Cross Stone on April 29th 1834. Susey finally got a daughter but lost her husband within days. She never remarried, and all her children, Olive included once she was old enough, became power loom cotton weavers to make ends meet. Eventually the Websters moved down to Queen Street and in 1847 Olive was baptised at Cross Stone, and became a dressmaker rather than a weaver since that was apparently more where her talents lay.
Meanwhile John Denham was born in 1835 in much less sad circumstances. He was the first child of his parents, William and Hannah (Howorth), and they would have a tidy two boys and two girls. William Denham was a stonemason but John gravitated towards wood and became a joiner. William travelled where the work was and wasn’t always home so the Denhams stuck close to each other, but this was as much by choice as necessity. William was doing very well for himself, you see, and by 1851 was a contractor employing 37 men. And where did the Denhams live? Queen Street, of course. Where on Queen Street?
Right next door to the Websters. It isn’t always that you get to see exactly how a couple met, but here you go!
It would be another eight years before John and Olive married but they did marry in 1859. They moved to Prince Street, not far from John’s brother Howorth and Olive’s mother and brothers who were all still on Queen Street, and in 1861 their first daughter Sarah appears on the census with them. Soon afterwards they moved to Harley Bank. Their next two sons, Sam and Tom, were born there in 1862 and 1865. Sam died in 1863 and Tom in 1866. Both are buried here but neither are likely to be buried in this grave. We don’t know if John was busy chasing work or if the family simply needed a change of scenery after their losses, but when their son Frank was born in 1866 they were no longer in Todmorden. Frank was born in Ashton-under-Lyne and their final child, Annie, would be born in Bacup in 1868.
To be fair, John had clearly also had enough of joinery, and by 1871 it wasn’t just new home but also new job, that of bookkeeper for the Bacup Co-operative Store Ltd. Death followed them though and in 1873 Sarah died. She was brought back to Christ Church to be buried with her brothers, although again, we don’t really know where that could be. No other Websters or Denhams are here, and Stephensons/Stevensons are too numerous to begin to guess at.
At some point after this, John decided to go back into the wood business and set himself up as a timber merchant, even though he seemed to have a good career with the Co-operative Store. Maybe that was just a financial stepping stool to a business of his own.
In 1880 the bad luck, and bad health, of this family finally caught up with one of the parents. Olive was probably unwell for some time, and it’s telling that the couple had no more children after 1868 even though she was still well within her childbearing years. Were they unable to have more, or did they choose to be as careful as they could? In 1880 Olive died from what the Bacup coroner called, rather fancily, “morbus cardis” – otherwise known as heart disease. The family was in disarray and no one, not John, or Frank, or Annie, can be traced in 1881. But things got worse for the remaining children because in 1882 John died from meningitis.
John died with a little money, £167, and probate was duly settled with his sister Hannah (now Hannah Riley of Barkisland) taking control of the money to be spent on behalf of Frank and Annie. The probate entry sadly refers to them as “spinster minors, the children and only next of kin”. They must have been devastated. And spare a thought for Frank most of all; in 1884 he became the only next of kin, when his little sister Annie died from phthsis and exhaustion. She was 15 years old.
One last thing: we cannot think of Frank as the lucky one necessarily. Frank was a gifted musician and popular, performing at various functions, and he married Mary Priestley of Rawtenstall in 1889 and had himself a nice little family of five. His youngest, a daughter, was named Olive Ann, after his mother and the sister he knew best. He found work as a music teacher, became the secretary of the Bacup Liberal Club and organist at Bacup Congregational Church, and things seemed to be going well…
…but Frank decided to go about something that was surprisingly common even as late as the 1950s, which was having all his teeth extracted so that he could wear dentures. It was an expensive thing to do and as we will see, rather risky. In June 1906 he went to his dentist and had 24 – 24!!! – teeth removed. A few days later the doctor called round to see how he was doing and found Frank in agony. He had developed an infection that spread throughout his mouth and gangrene had set in. He died shortly after. It turned out that the man doing the extraction wasn’t even a properly qualified dentist. The story made it into dozens of national newspapers.
His poor widow and five children were left with only £77 in his estate. Three years later his son Frank died at the age of 14 due to contracting typhoid fever while at his work in a mill.
We weren’t joking about this family being cursed…