This is mainly a story about some Stephensons of Hanging Ditch and the routes they took in life – however far they travelled they always came back, and now they aren’t about to travel anywhere anytime soon…
At two ends of the age spectrum are a pair of siblings, Sarah (aka Sally) and James. Sarah was the second eldest child of John and Hannah Stephenson of Hanging Ditch and was baptised at Cross Stone in February 1811.
At the other end was James, baptised in 1830 at the same church and the final child to be born. Both became weavers because that’s just what you tended to do back then, and by 1841 the family was in two. Sarah lived with her older sister Mary and younger sister Grace at Butcher Hill, and the others at Hanging Ditch. Here’s where the stories diverge further…
Sarah headed off to Bury before long to find work, and in 1850 she married up-and-coming police constable Benjamin Bottomley. He was from Gargrave near Skipton and had travelled to Lancashire in search of agricultural work before deciding to join the police force. Neither of them were young, with Benjamin being 37 and Sarah 39. Even more surprising was that it was the first marriage for both. Choosy perhaps about their life partners, and waited for the right one to come along no matter how long it took? Tired of waiting for perfection? A hundred other explanations in between?
The Bottomleys stayed in Tottington for a while and it was there that their one and only child, Mary, was born in 1852. Police officers moved around back then and often were working on fixed term contracts, and if that was the case for Benjamin then he was committed to the role for a good while. We’ve seen 12 year terms in the West Riding but Benjamin, who had joined the Lancashire Constabulary in 1843 initially, seems to have kept to his role for at least 18 years. By 1861 the three of them were at Walton le Dale in Preston living at the police station there, and this would be Benjamin’s last official posting before his retirement and the family’s return to Todmorden.
This return had its own issues. It must have occurred before 1869 because in April of that year Mary died at the age of 17. Their only daughter was laid to rest here at Christ Church; and what did they do after that? Benjamin must have had connections, or good character commendations, because he and Sarah moved to York Street and took in a certain William Goucke – a young policeman – as their lodger. Benjamin’s occupation was pensioner. He’d held on a long time but 57 is too old to be chasing bad guys around, at least for him. He joined Mary here in 1876 and Sarah carried on for a few more years before her death in 1880, at Hanging Ditch once more. At her baptism she was christened Sally, and despite what the Census and the gravestone might say, that name stuck; she’s also Sally on the burial register.
What about young James then, so much her junior? He isn’t the James named at the top of this blog post; that’s his son, also James. James the elder also moved away from Todmorden initially, heading to Calderbrook and then Rochdale where he married Tod lass Alice Milton in 1853. They didn’t stay away for long and by 1861 were back in Todmorden living at Brook Street. Just in time for the Cotton Famine! But Todmorden didn’t fare as poorly as some Lancashire towns during this time so they might have been lucky to be here rather than Rochdale. The main effect this time had on their family was in their offspring. They had five sons, with two born in 1856 and 1857, one born in 1862, and the last two safely on the other side in 1866 and 1867. Just like Sarah and James Sr., the two nephews buried here were also bookends.
Wright, the 1856 baby, went into weaving like his parents and their parents before them. In 1872 James Sr. died from heart disease, which he had been suffering for some time and which was so advanced that it was actually mentioned on the 1871 Census as a disability. At this point all five sons were still living at home so Alice was able to rely on her boys. She remarried in 1878 and Wright left her in the case of his brothers and her new husband and set about courting. He fell in love with Sarah Ann Elsworth, the daughter of a stonemason named Henry (who is buried in the private area along with her mother Sally) who was himself relatively recently widowed. She and Wright were married in 1880 and they moved in with Henry and her two older brothers at Union Street.
Wright and Sarah Ann had no children, and Wright’s income must have been small. They lived at small back-to-backs on Wellfield Terrace and Well Street, sometimes with a family member in tow. On the 1901 Census Sarah Ann had picked up work as a “refreshment house keeper” with “coffee house” added to her entry in a larger hand. Was she managing the Fielden Coffee House at the bottom of Longfield Road? Somewhere else? Frustratingly there is no reference to her in relation to any such place in the newspapers that we can find. She might have been helping her brother in law Young, who for a time was landlord of the Lord Nelson at Cheapside, but given that he was prone to chasing his wife with a hatchet and threatening to murder her this seems less likely…(more about him another time, since he’s buried in an unmarked grave at 5.41)
By 1911 the couple were living alone at 80 Rochdale Road, just about where Waterside Lodge stands now. That year Wright died, and Sarah Ann had to find a way to support herself without children to help out. She went back to the confectionary business, made enough money to keep herself and not require lodgers or other family support in the home, and died in 1931 with money still in the bank. Not bad.
And what about James Jr.? He and his other three brothers stayed with Alice and her new husband George Nuttall, and soon he was no longer the youngest. Alice and George had a single child together, Frank. After George’s death the sons only left home as they married and James didn’t marry, instead continuing to work as first a throstle doffer and then a tinner. His only journey outwards seems to have come around 1901, when we can find him not in Todmorden but in Sculcoates, working for an iron and tin place manufacturer. When he died in November 1909 he was back here, though, living at 39 Longfield Road with his mother and brothers (minus Wright). He was only 42; was it heart disease like his father, or some other reason?
He never made the newspapers so, unlike his brother Young, we know little to nothing about his character (except that he stayed out of trouble, or away from the police…)