41.61 – Thomas and Sarah Blakey

A weaver and his wife, with somewhat unremarkable lives. Still lives, though, and it goes without saying that as a group we are very unhappy about the big fencepost that’s been driven through their bodies…

But who were this unfortunate couple?

Thomas Blakey was born in Habergham Eaves in 1830. The Blakeys were all cotton weavers and his father John was a twister-in who decided to move his family to Todmorden to live at Shade and work at (possibly) Wadsworth Mill. Or maybe Gauxholme, or maybe Waterside, or maybe any other number of smaller places. In 1841 cotton was king in Todmorden and there were jobs aplenty, even if they were hard bloody work. The 1841 Census shows the Blakeys at Little Holme Street in Shade; John, his wife Betty, and sons Ezekiah and Thomas. John had been married before and Ezekiah was one of his children with his late wife Ann. His other sons were also Ann’s, Elihu and Josiah – good solid Old Testament names! – and they had also moved to Todmorden but lived independently. Our Thomas here was Betty’s only child, and the baby of the family. John’s father Bernard also lived with them.

Thomas became a weaver and kept his head down. This might have been because Elihu was busy getting his name in the newspapers for having a few drinks and then beating his wife publicly. Whether this was something the boys were raised to think was acceptable is unknown; Josiah also never seems to appear in the papers, and Ezekiah would be describe on the 1851 Census as “idiotic”. If Thomas had some bad opinions they were only known to him and his family.

In 1852 he married Sarah Marshall of Stoodley. Sarah was three years younger than him and had been baptised at Myrtle Grove Congregational. Perhaps the solid Old Testament naming wasn’t just Ann Blakey’s idea and Thomas was also raised as a nonconformist, who knows. But by 1851 the Marshalls had moved to Wadsworth Mill and were all working as power loom weavers. They were only a few streets over from the Blakey household, which now also included Betty Blakey’s widowed sister Maria Hartley and her five children. If you live on Little Holme Street now, imagine having nine people living in your household, one of whom is a grown man with special needs. It’s difficult to imagine. But people did what they had to do back then. Thomas was probably ready to get the heck out of there though, so when he and Sarah married they move out, and wasted no time in creating an overcrowded little household of their own.

We aren’t joking either – Thomas and Sarah had a total of ten children, five of whom were born between 1852 and 1861. They were average people with average achievements and average losses – two children, John (their only son) and Ann, died within a few weeks of each other and were both buried at Walsden St. Peter’s in June and July 1864. Interestingly, painfully so, the couple had their other children baptised at St. Peter’s the same day as Ann’s funeral. Burial insurance of a sort? But they were luckier than some buried here in that most of their children lived and their lives continued. The older children grew up and married and left home, one of them being Alice Maria Jackson at 45.60. The Blakeys moved to Myrtle Street in the town centre and eventually by 1881 it was just Thomas, Sarah, and their five youngest.

Thomas died in 1885 and it was a quiet affair with only a short line in the paper to mark his passing. Sarah meanwhile had to make some decisions: where would she go? Even though some of her married daughters were still in Todmorden, enough were still unmarried that moving in wasn’t an option. Lilian would move in with Sarah and her husband Herbert Barker (who is buried alone at 5.35) but Sarah would, curiously, go to Newchurch with Mary Ellen, Ada, and Frank Law, Betty’s son (Betty had died in 1876). Why there, where she had no roots at all? Maybe some of Thomas’s family were nearby and maybe Mary Ellen and Ada were able to find better paid weaving work there than in Todmorden for some reason. Ada’s occupation was given as “dressmaker” so that’s also a possible narrative thread (no pun intended) (well, maybe a little pun) to pick up.

But Mary Ellen and Ada both got married, and by 1901 Sarah was back in Tod lodging with widower Stansfield Marshall at 2 Churchill Street in Lydgate, who seems to not have been a relation of Sarah’s although there’s a chance they were cousins. Stansfield’s wife Sarah (Holt) had died in 1894 and is buried at 35.24 with her sister Maria. Sarah Blakey didn’t work while they lived together but he was still weaving at the age of 61 – she was 67 – so it was probably a nice setup for the two of them, her keeping house while he went out to work. You hope that they had a nice sort of companionship of one sort of another. How long it lasted for we don’t know, but in 1902 Sarah died and joined her husband here in this grave.

We’re doing our best to make sure that even if their rest hasn’t been easy that it’s respected going forward.