Well, most of her children. Susanna had ten children all told, and four of them are here with her, but the three children of her husband and his second wife are also buried here. It’s a sad grave and the ledger which has been laid flat is easy to miss.
Susanna Marshall was born in either 1840 or 1844 in Todmorden. Her father Abraham was an overlooker at a mill somewhere around the Roomfield area, as the family started out living at Roomfield Lane (another name for the stretch of Halifax Road between Key Sike Lane and Stackhills) and then moved to School Lane (now gone) and finally Omega Street (barely still there). Money was a little tight as the family at first lived with mother Maria’s mother Dinah and brother Crossley Dewhirst, but eventually had a house of their own. Susanna was a cotton weaver, rather unsurprisingly.
In 1866 she married printer and newspaperman John Barker. Together the pair had ten children, and one of them you might already know the story of – John Albert Barker at 16.15, whose own story was a sad one. Susanna and John’s story wasn’t much better. Ten children, yes, but they lost four. We know three names as they’re on this stone: Maria, Susy, and Herbert William, all of whom died under the age of three. Susanna and John had been having children together for eighteen years when Herbert William died, and Susanna was heading towards the years where childbirth becomes more difficult. That’s true even today, so just imagine back then. And that’s why she died, in the end, and why when we say four of her children are here we’re referring to more than just those named on this stone.
Their unnamed baby is presumably also here; it would have been stillborn as neither its birth or death is registered. And “accidental haemorrhage collapse” is one of the more viscerally chilling cause of death we’ve seen so far.
John remarried a year and a half later and you can’t blame him; he had six children and yes the eldest was 17, but the youngest was three! He had three children with his second wife, Mary Smith (If it seems as though we’re skipping over their lives, it’s because they’re buried at 12.18 and their story will be more fully told later). Two of those children also died young – Charles Joseph at five months and Betsy at five years. The third, Jane, was a little luckier.
Jane was the middle child, born in 1889, and she lived on Wellington Road for her entire life. She was known to friends and family as Jennie and in her own short life seems to have been busy. She might be the Jane Barker who was taken on as a pupil teacher in training for National School; she was definitely the Jennie Barker who performed in various operettas and performances at National and in front of the Women’s Co-operative Guild. Instead of becoming a weaver like so many other young women, she got a job as a telephonist at the National Telephone Office where Rise Lane is now. Perhaps she didn’t fancy becoming a teacher. Or perhaps the work suited her better. Because Jennie wasn’t terribly well.
Jennie died in August 1911 at the age of 22. She outlived many of her siblings and half-siblings but still was taken too early by anyone’s standards. Her cause of death was a combination of endo- and pericarditis, in short quite a major issue of heart inflammation and failure. These illnesses were often caused by untreated infections earlier in life like strep or scarlet fever. She isn’t the only daughter of a family who died of heart failure at this age at Christ Church. In Jennie’s case though there was also another culprit, phthsis. She had been unwell for two years overall and perhaps the telephone office offered a job that wasn’t too physical but also required a sharp mind, and a former student teacher would certainly have had one of those.
Life went on for the Barkers afterwards but that part of the story is, well, another story.