This is a short story, since these two people were brief interludes in the life of someone else who is part of a large double vault grave – the Ratcliffs at V11.8 and V11.9. If it weren’t for Betty here though some of those people would never be born, so even though her entry is brief, don’t think it isn’t important.
Betty Farrow was born in 1821 in Todmorden. Her father James was a labourer and he, his wife Susan, and Betty and her sister Susannah lived at Mellings Clough on Bacup Road. Whether they were at the cottages along the road or at Mellings Farm itself is unclear, but it may well have been the farm because of what happened next. Betty was a power loom weaver but Mellings Farm, which lay just off of Loggerhead Lane, was not so far away from a few other farms like Moor Hey and Woodfield. And Woodfield was where the Ratcliff family lived, including Peter Thomas Ratcliff, a young carter. They took a shine to each other and in 1843 their daughter Caroline was born.
Peter had ambitions and after he and Betty married in 1845 he set to work bettering himself, and would find work at Todmorden railway station. First a porter, then an inspector, and later…but his story is for another time. For now, he and Betty were married, and they moved down towards the station and settled at Mount Pleasant. Caroline was joined by John, then Sarah Jane, and finally Hannah. Sarah Jane is buried here as you can see and sadly her life was a short little one; one year and one month. The Ratcliffs were late with baptising their children – ideological reasons or others? – and so when the other three were baptised it was all as “adults” on Easter Sunday 1862.
By 1855 Peter was the railway inspector and the family were living at the station itself so he could be called upon at any hour of the day or night. It was a position of great responsibility and Betty would have been able to benefit from the esteem it held, although she may have been worried over his constant tangles with drunks and pickpockets. In 1864, sadly, Betty died. She was buried here with her daughter and her family were left to grieve.
It would be seven years before Peter remarried, and in the end he, Caroline, and John are resting in the vaults along with his second wife and some of her family and some of his grandchildren. This stone here had become completely covered in grass after decades of dirt and leaves drifting overtop it. It’s exposed again now, though, and so anyone wishing to pay their respects to Peter can also come and say hello to the woman who helped him along for the first twenty years of his railway career.