46.54 – James, Rachel and Emmanuel Hudson Pickles

There are many people named Pickles in the yard but these Pickles here hailed from Bradford – and one is actually buried there!

James Pickles was born in April 1816 in Haworth, near Bradford, home of course of the Brontës. They weren’t there yet (they were still in Thornton, not too far away) but even once they were, they’d have known the Pickles family as parishioners only. His father Richard was a woolcomber and they wouldn’t have been the most well off. Meanwhile, two years later, Rachel Hudson was born in Haworth. Her father, also Richard, was an overlooker at a woollen mill – a slightly more well-paid role, but again, they would have been just about comfortable rather than comfortably situated. There’s a difference.

James became a general labourer who eventually settled on stonemasonry, and in 1845 he married Mary Ann Spence at St. Peter’s in Bradford. He was 28 and she was 21, and a weaver. They started a family relatively quickly, with their first child Annie arriving in 1846. Next came Richard (of course) in 1850, and Sarah Ellen in 1854. But tragedy struck for them in June 1856 when Mary Ann died after contracting phthsis and going off to an infirmary in Leeds for treatment. She was laid to rest at St. Michael’s – Charlotte’s widower Arthur Bell Nicholls took the service – and James was left with three young children. He mourned for six months and then remarried, as was more or less necessary for a 40 year old working man with apparently little family assistance. In January 1857 he and Rachel Hudson, who was now 39, married at St. Peter’s.

Rachel meanwhile had also been growing up in Haworth, staying home with her sister Sarah and her parents Richard and Jane, all working to support the household. There’s not much to tell because the family led a quiet life. Probably because they were all working hard on staying alive, which isn’t an exaggeration. Haworth was infamously a difficult place to grow up in, with contaminated water supplies contributing to an average life expectancy of just under 26 by the 1850s, and with a childhood mortality rate of 41%! If you think there are a lot of young children buried at Christ Church then go visit St. Michael’s and have a walk round. Or perhaps don’t! It’s a sad sight.

Brontë was in part responsible for getting improvements made but it may have been one of the reasons the Pickles family left Haworth in the end. James went off first in search of work and on the 1861 Census was lodging with an older widow and her daughter and granddaughter at Wadsworth Mill in Shade. Rachel was back in Haworth with the children – now five, with new additions being Emmanuel Hudson and Mary Jane Pickles, aged two years and three weeks old respectively. Once Rachel and the children joined him they settled first at Bar Street and later at 56 Wellfield Terrace, part of the row of back-to-backs between Longfield Road and Bank Street that has since been pulled down.

Again, the Pickleses were leading quiet lives, and so we know little apart from what’s in public records. We can guess that Emmanuel was a clever boy, because he became a pupil teacher at “a National school” (which one is unknown…perhaps this one?). We know this from his death registration. He died young, as young as if the family had stayed in Haworth, but not necessarily from a communicable disease. His principal cause of death is listed as diabetes, diagnosed a year and a half prior, and with pneumonia and collapse as contributing causes. He was only 16 years old.

If you scroll back up and look at the gravestone here again, it really is a beautiful one, an ornate lancet with many carvings and granite pillars on the sides. Even on a stonemason’s salary James was apparently able to obtain not just an exclusive right of burial here but also a stone that seems above his expected means. Emmanuel’s half siblings may have helped, or more likely James called in some favours with Stephenson’s or another monumental mason.

Two years later James died, and for reasons unclear was buried at St. Michael’s in Haworth alongside Mary Ann. You’re led to wonder how much of a marriage of convenience his and Rachel’s really was. Was this last wish known to her before his death? Was she angry on their son’s behalf? Understanding? Was the grand stone for Emmanuel an apology or peace offering because he knew he wasn’t going to be joining him there one day? It’s an interesting question. Many husbands and wives are buried with their first lost partner even when they’ve remarried but very often there’s also children in those graves who have predeceased them, or the second marriage came later in life and had no children within it, or no dead children anyway. It’s something a good creative writer could construct something around, but if we speculate too much here we’ll never finish the story, so we won’t. His name is in two places and his body is in one, that’s the long and short of it.

Rachel and Mary Jane went to live with Sarah Ellen and her husband and family down on Industrial Street. Sarah Ellen had married James Scholfield in 1879 and Mary Jane had acted as one of their witnesses, so there was clearly a good affection between them. By 1881 she and James had a child of their own so Rachel’s assistance was probably very much appreciated even though Sarah Ellen was also staying at home. Rachel’s occupation on the 1881 Census reads “formerly a contractor’s wife”. When she died in 1884 she was living at Gledhill Street, possibly on her own or as a boarder, as the Scholfields were still at Industrial Street and Mary Jane (who became a Crossley in 1882) was living near Hallroyd. At last, Emmanuel was no longer alone.