This story is dedicated to those who adopt or foster, and to those who work hard to make sure that one generation’s sins don’t carry on to the next.
If you’ve read our other stories about the Lord family – John and Sam’s story in particular – then you’ve already heard a little about Sarah (Lord) Ford. Sarah was born in 1840 and was the only daughter of Abraham and Emm (Andrew) Lord of Stackhills. As we’ve already learned, Abraham was not one of the pioneering brothers of Lord Bros. Canal Street Works and his children, like those of his brothers, were encouraged to work for their livings. If Sarah ever benefitted from any inheritance it would have come from her brother John’s pockets as probate was ultimately granted to him. John was unreliable, and so Sarah’s life was not much different than that of most working class people of Todmorden.
Emm Lord died when Sarah was six years old and so for a large piece of her childhood she was raised by her father and first stepmother, Sarah Firth Lord. Eventually she would have a little half-sister, Martha, born in 1853, but that was the only sister and last sibling she enjoyed. The 1860s arrived, Sarah grew up, and she met a charming young man who lived over on Dalton Street by the Calder – Arthur Ford.
Arthur was a mechanic from Skipton, originally Northampton, who was a few years younger than Sarah. The couple married at the end of March 1866 and by the end of the year Sarah had given birth to their first son, Abraham. Two years later the couple had another son, Harry. And by 1871 the couple was no longer a couple. The census shows Sarah, Abraham and Harry living at the house on Dalton Street and Sarah’s occupation given as “no occupation”. Her father was still alive at this point and was no doubt helping, but Sarah’s life was now swiftly turning into a nightmare. At the end of that year her son Abraham died. He was only five years old. He was buried here in a family plot. May 1872 saw her father Abraham dying, and with him, the hope of consistent support while she waited for Arthur, who had run off to Aston, to get his act together. She must have seen the difficulties her sister in law Mary Elizabeth was having with her brother John, though, and in 1873 she took the step of getting a protection order against Arthur. These orders weren’t like today’s restraining or no-contact orders; this was a protection of her finances against her husband. She must have had a little money from her father in the end and been worried about Arthur returning and exerting control over her by draining her bank account. 1873 finished itself out by having little Harry accidentally pull a pan of boiling water over himself, but apart from some scarring from burns he seems to have been fine.
With her finances protected, Sarah got herself together and started taking in lodgers to ensure that she could continue to be self-sufficient given that a divorce and remarriage was unlikely to be on the cards (assuming she would even want to risk it again). This is how the mystery man whose name is at the bottom of this grave joins our story.
Benjamin Elwell was born in Fulstone near Huddersfield in 1858, the second of five sons who would be born to Joseph and Ann (Deans) Elwell. The Elwells had migrated north from Tipton in Staffordshire for work, Joseph being a bricklayer, and they would eventually make their way from Fulstone to Wooldale, where they lived in 1861, and then to Todmorden in 1862 for the birth of their fourth son Joseph Jr. As always though there was trouble brewing ahead. In 1865 both Joseph Jr. and Ann died, and were buried at Cross Stone, and Joseph in a panic left the area and his four living sons behind. The Elwell children weren’t removed back to their birth parishes, possibly because it would have meant all four boys being separated. Instead they stayed in Todmorden and became that shameful thing, people who were “chargeable on the ratepayers”. There are few mentions of the boys for a few years until Samuel, the eldest, was sent to Manchester for an eye operation in 1870, paid for by the Board of Guardians. Then, from 1876 through 1879, we start to see Benjamin appear in relation to his studies.
It’s not hard to draw the lines between the Elwell boys needing homes and Sarah Ford’s boarding house. Benjamin was intelligent and showed an aptitude for maths and engineering. The first time he took the theoretical mechanics exam, along with five other boys, all five failed. The second time he got the second-highest possible mark. After finishing his studies in 1879 he found work as a blacksmith and, if he wasn’t already living with the Fords, took up residence there.
But then in November 1880 at the age of 22, he died at Halifax Infirmary. The cause of death is a strange one – “abscess of back” and “exhaustion”. His brother Samuel sat with him at the end, and then for reasons that can only be put down to Sarah having a fondness for the boy, brought his body to Todmorden to be buried not at Cross Stone near his mother and baby brother, but with Sarah’s son Abraham at Christ Church.
Sarah and Harry continued on at 2 Dalton Street, with more lodgers coming through their doors. Harry was growing up to be a nice young lad – not like his father and certainly not like his uncle John – and also went into the smithing trade. In 1891 he was a labourer at an iron works and there was one lodger staying with them, Frederick Senior. Fred was originally from Spalding in Lincolnshire and was working as a domestic coachman. Something about this must have sparked Harry’s interest because he soon made a swift change of occupation and became a coachman himself. Maybe he thought it would look good to the girls, or better than being filthy and covered in soot all the time. Maybe it worked? In 1894 he married Hannah Kidger, and here’s where we start to get to our second half-orphaned and abandoned child.
Hannah Kidger was born in Attercliffe-cum-Darnall in 1872. Her father was George Kidger and her mother had been born Mary Ann Champion. Mary Ann had a brother, Alfred, who was a coal miner and who remarried rather late in life to Mary Ann Hickman White, herself also a widow. Was Alfred the trouble, or was it his new wife, or was it both of them? The couple had three children together – Hannah in 1894, Tom in 1896, and William in 1899. William died in 1900, Tom in 1903, and Alfred in 1905. Mary Ann and Hannah Champion are missing entirely from the 1901 Census which makes us think they were probably in a workhouse or other such place.
Meanwhile, Sarah Ford was still in Todmorden, now boarding brother John and niece Minnie, and Harry and Hannah Ford were settled in Whitworth with their daughter Annie Mary. Harry and Hannah would only have her, and no other children of their own, for unknown reasons. When Hannah Ford’s little cousin Hannah Champion’s situation reached her ears, and given Harry’s own experiences, it must have been a no-brainer for the Fords to say “send the girl here”. And so Hannah Champion arrived in Rochdale. Sarah decided to retire from boarding and Todmorden around the same time, so in 1911 the Ford household was pretty full!
We know even less of Hannah’s exploits than we do of Benjamin’s, with her only living newspaper entry being when she got to be a bridesmaid at a friend’s wedding.
Poor Hannah had parallels with Benjamin. Both lost a parent young, both were abandoned by the other parent, both found a home with relative strangers…and both died at the age of 22 in hospital. Hannah’s death was even more tragic though. At the end of June 1916 she began to suffer stomach pains and was rushed to Rochdale Infirmary where she was discovered to have appendicitis. An operation was needed. And it went well, or well enough, but an unexpected complication arose: she was given too much chloroform.
Possible medical negligence, or a tragic accident? It doesn’t matter really. Hannah went into a coma and died on July 1st, with her cousin Hannah at her side. She was laid to rest here with her predecessor Benjamin and her young uncle Abraham. Harry, Hannah, Annie and probably Sarah too grieved her greatly. The following year an in memoriam was placed in the Rochdale Observer by Hannah’s “dear friend” Polly Royds, and in 1918 the Fords placed one where she wasn’t just described as Hannah’s cousin, but as her and Harry’s “adopted daughter”.
Sarah’s name is missing from this in memoriam because she had already left, permanently. She had died in January 1918 and so by the time this was placed there were four in the grave. Room was left for more – that’s obvious from Benjamin’s name being placed so far down the stone – but the Fords would stay in Rochdale and be laid to rest there instead. You can tell from looking at the top inscription that an error was made at some point and the stone needed re-carving – Sarah and Hannah’s information is in the same font, so it will have been after 1918
We said that Sarah must have resolved to raise her son right, and it seems she did. Think of her experience as a wife, and the experience she saw her sister-in-law Mary Elizabeth have; and look at what her son’s wife wrote for him two years after his death. If Sarah accomplished only a single thing in her life, it was to ensure that she raised a steady responsible man who would be mourned by his wife, and she was no doubt proud of this right to the end.
