43.61 – Ann and George Stansfield

These pillars of the parish suffered great losses and witnessed great things – they’re some of the few here who if their bones could talk would tell us so much about Christ Church and the graveyard.

George Stansfield was born in July 1815 in Todmorden, the son of warper John Stansfield and his wife Mary (Barker). We don’t know much about him prior to the start of the census apart from his marriage in 1837 to Prestwich lass Ann Booth. Ann was two years younger than George and from a family of weavers. She had four siblings we know of, two of whom also came to Todmorden at some point and are buried at 42.55. One day we’ll tell their story on this site…but for now Ann’s is enough. The Booth siblings didn’t come to Todmorden prior to Ann’s marriage which begs the question of how they met in the first place. They were married at Cross Stone, yes, but in 1841 the couple were living in Prestwich with Ann’s father William, her four siblings, and their first child – little Alice. William died in 1845 and this seems to have caused the family to begin to drift. George and Ann probably came back to Todmorden before this, though, as the first of the children mentioned on their grave – Luke – was born and died in 1842 and is buried at Cross Stone.

Looping back to the inscription at the end of this stone now;

Also of five infants. The above children were interred at Cross Stone.

Luke was one of the five infants, and one of only two we can identify as the children of George and Ann. The other, James, was born in 1851 and died in 1852. This means that George and Ann had eleven children altogether over the course of fifteen years, at least so far as we can be certain. That was how it was then, before easy access to contraception and with the command to go forth and multiply. George and Ann were religious people too. Once they were back in Todmorden and living at Blind Lane George began to get involved with the parish church. By 1861 he had become the parish clerk and was a fixture at Christ Church.

The 1860s would have been a tumultuous time for George because of the terrible upheaval at Christ Church on the murder of Rev. A. J. Plow and Jane Smith by his former housemaid’s beau, Miles Weatherill. The less said about Miles the better but you can read about this “tragic love story” (please note that those are sarcastic quotation marks) here. On that awful night in March 1868 George was about to go to bed when he was alerted by one of the other housemaids that a murder had taken place at the Vicarage. George went and found Miles in Mrs. Plow’s bedroom, where he had just shot at her and her newborn daughter Hilda and beaten her with a poker, and led him back down the stairs. It says a great deal about Miles’s delusions of grandeur that at the inquest, when George reported that Miles had said “I will go with thee quietly”, Miles interrupted to say that he had said “George, I’ll go with you quietly”. We wouldn’t want to think Miles was so common as to use dialect thee, thi and thous. Ahem.

We can snark about Miles Weatherill all day long but don’t let that take away from a truly traumatic experience for George. The vicar he respected and worked alongside, nearly dead on the floor of his home from axe wounds, his wife and baby injured, and the head housemaid also dead from a gunshot wound. He and the others saw things that night no one should have to see. The death of baby Hilda shortly after and Plow’s death almost two weeks after the assault will also have pained him. He stayed on at the church though which is impressive; one hopes it didn’t haunt him to go back to the Vicarage again over the years.

What of Ann? Poor Ann is lost to the record and we don’t know what her contributions to the parish were. She had plenty to do at home with the children who did live, though, and her time would have been precious. Especially given so many of her children died young. Apart from the five infants at Cross Stone, two more children are specifically named on the gravestone here even though they’re buried elsewhere. There’s Mary, who died aged four in 1857, and John, who died aged thirteen in 1859. Their deaths predate the newspapers but we checked their death registrations and it’s the usual litany of now-preventable illnesses. Mary died from measules and John from rheumatic fever, both with lung and heart complications arising from the initial illnesses. If you’re reading this then remember how much of a difference vaccines have made to your life…

The Stansfields eventually left Gandy Bridge and came to Ridge Street, nearer the centre, and their children who survived grew up and went on to have their own lives. Their youngest, Susan, married Sunday School teacher John Crowther – they’re buried under the school extension. George and Ann were eventually left alone, him with his parish duties and her to have some rest. But Ann’s health had been deteriorating for unknown reasons and by the 1881 Census her name and details have a notation all the way at the end: blind. Ann had lost her sight altogether. Her unmarried sister Martha moved in to help care for her while George was busy at work. In August 1883 whatever health problems Ann had caught up with her, and she was buried here.

George soldiered on at the church but retired from his role as parish clerk in 1886 as his own health began to deteriorate. The newspapers are full of stories about and mentions of George Stansfield of the Temperance Hotel, but this George Stansfield flew under the radar for the majority of his life. He was one of those quiet bit players in the history of Christ Church and Todmorden that many others buried here are also classed as…the only difference being his behind-the-scenes was thought highly enough of for him to get an obituary when he died in 1889.