45.60 – Alice Maria Jackson

This plot marker has the initials AMJ on the front, and GG on the back. We don’t know who GG is, but we can work out who AMJ was.

Alice Maria Blakey was born on December 23rd 1854, an early Christmas present for Thomas and Sarah (Marshall) Blakey of Charles Street, Shade. Thomas was a power loom weaver and Alice was his second child and second daughter. The Blakeys had children spaced precisely two years apart from each other; in 1861 they had children aged 8, 6, 4, 2, and 6 months old. Not bad in the days before reliable contraception! 1871 found the Blakeys at 14 Holme Street in Shade, with even more children, still spaced two years apart. Interestingly, the only child who appears to have died young was their single son, John. In 1871 that left Thomas the only man in a house of nine women! Alice in 1871 was working as a cotton weaver, like the rest of her sisters who were of an age to be working.

In 1874 she married Zachariah Jackson of Thornsgreese. Zachariah was a coal miner and was one of a large extended family of Jacksons who lived at that part of Walsden, next to the United Methodist Chapel there. Their marriage was short and they had no children. It means Alice’s story here is short too, unfortunately. Three years later she died from typhoid mixed with bronchitis, and as her death registration says, “gradual exhaustion”. She was only 23.

Zachariah’s movements are hard to track down but it appears he married again in 1879 to Mary Ann Jackson of Nicklety (presumably no relation). She’s gone by the 1881 Census but it isn’t clear whether she left or died. Zachariah very helpfully only gives his status as “single” on the census from there on in. He seems to have tired of marriage though, because he stays at Thornsgreese with his unmarried sister Sarah until the end of their lives, which came for both in 1910. They’re buried at Walsden St. Peter’s with their parents Zachariah and Martha. Alice’s parents Thomas and Sarah are buried here at 41.61, only a few rows away and nearly in a straight line with her.