Another infant gets their name back; Mary Kay, who died in April 1878 only two weeks old.
First, though, her parents. James Kay was born in Rochdale, Hopwood in fact, in 1835. His father John was a tailor and his mother Catherine was a silk hand loom weaver, and he grew up with seven siblings – including the excellently named Kay Kay – and took after his father in the tailoring business. by 1861 he had made his way to Todmorden, lodging and working with James Lord (also a tailor) on Myrtle Street. That’s where he met his future wife, Tod lass Elizabeth Brady. Or Bradley. Or Pickles.
Elizabeth is, in fact, the first example we’ve seen of a person who looks to be illegitimate, but wasn’t actually. Let’s back up again though. Hannah Crossley was born in 1804, and first she married a man named Pickles. Or perhaps she didn’t. She had a daughter, Mary Ann Pickles, in 1828. A son, Crossley Pickles, in 1837. And in 1840 she remarried as a widow, this time to Peter Bradley of Langfield.
In 1841 daughter Elizabeth Bradley was born. She appears as a 10-week-old baby on the 1841 Census. Peter doesn’t though. Hannah is working as a greengrocer and that’s the end of that.
Except it isn’t, because by the time Elizabeth married James, in April 1862, she gave her name on the marriage certificate as Elizabeth Pickles. But her father’s name as Peter Brady. So…was she actually Peter’s daughter? Why take the surname of her mother’s former, definitely dead, husband? Why bother doing both things? If only the dead could speaketh a little louder.
But we’re going well off the track here. James and Elizabeth married, and they had eight children between 1862 and 1878. Their last child was a daughter, Mary, in April 1878. Poor Mary lived for only two weeks and was buried here, within the “grid”, and is undoubtedly the infant mentioned on this stone. Like we’ve said many times, those unnamed infants always make us pause and start to dig deep in case we can figure them out.
As you can see, the Kays were settled on Calder Street by then, and James was established as a tailor. They had started out at Brook Street with Elizabeth’s mother, then gone to Calder Street, and eventually on to 58 Industrial Street. He doesn’t appear to have been working for himself, or at least nothing appears in the newspapers like an advertisement of his services. The only time he appears apart from his marriage is for the time he was caught travelling between Todmorden and Walsden train stations without a ticket. Whom amongst us? etc. etc.
James died in September 1881 and joined Mary here. The remaining Kays moved over to 66 Industrial Street. John, a joiner’s apprentice in 1881, had quite the life for a relatively short one. He stayed out of the papers so the little we know, we know from his obituary. He served in the army after finishing his apprenticeship. He was a prison warden. He was a bellringer at Christ Church. This last thing is exciting because when we went to go look and see if he was doing so around the time that Hannah Howorth’s bells were delivered it turns out that yes, he was – and was part of their inaugural peal in June 1897. John rang bell number 5, whose rim was inscribed with “be honour, praise”. and was tuned at A flat.
Is he in the above photo? One of the unidentified men?
As we said though, his life was relatively short, and he died in 1901 at the age of 37. We hope this apparently gifted and entertaining storyteller is happy enough with his story as told here. If only he could speaketh too!
Interestingly his obituary doesn’t mention his wife, Rose Smith Kay, who he had married in August 1900 – not that long before his death. Rose hailed from Lincolnshire and was nine years his junior. She disappears entirely from the record after this – possibly marrying in Burnley in 1902, possibly not – and we’re none the wiser.
His sister Ellen’s story is shorter, and her life shorter too. She actually predeceased him and was buried here with her sister and father in 1890 at the age of 16. Her cause of death was enteritis, inflammation of the small intestine. We can see that she was working as a cotton weaver, but all other details of her life are sadly now mysteries.
The only other clue we have to Ellen’s life is an article from 1910 about choirmaster and organist William Alfred Wrigley’s retirement. At one point he talks about the eleven church workers who have died since he arrived in 1885, and reads out a list of their names. Amongst those names are John Kay’s, and also, the name Ellen Kay. The same Ellen Kay? Well that we don’t know. But perhaps she was of a musical bent too.
Elizabeth was not left alone by any stretch – she still had five children left, all still local – but those losses still would have weighed heavily on her. She died on Christmas Day 1908 at Canal Street, one of the now-demolished houses next to Albion Mill, now B&M, and was buried here.
Of the five remaining Kay children, four are buried at 11.42.