We usually cover family graves separately from each other, but this is an exception – the Davis family unit here is very important to our group for a number of reasons. Fred and Rachel’s grave reads “Dead, Yet Speaketh” at its base, and what else are we doing here if we aren’t giving the dead their voices back as much as we can? And what else are we doing here if we aren’t trying to preserve those voices before nature returns to take her course and destroy their monuments?
Behold the roughly reconstructed grave of Fred and Rachel (it has since been resined back into something resembling a plinth), and read the story of two parents and two children.
Frederick, or Fred, Davis was born at the beginning of 1839 in Bolton-le-Moors, Turton, near Darwen. His father Arthur was a glazier and later plumber and Fred took after him, although his work ethic could also be laid at the door of his mother Jane Crompton Davis. Arthur died in 1860 and on the 1861 Census Jane is described not as a widow who carried out general household duties while her older children (Fred included) worked, but as a “butcher and plumber and glazier”. Jane! None of her children had become butchers; this was something she was doing on top of assisting Fred, who had become a “plumber, glazier and gas fitter”. It’s certainly unusual for a widow in this time to have this many words in her occupation and we can only marvel at it.
Right at the end of December 1861 Fred married Rachel Green at Christ Church in Walsmley, just on the edge of Bolton. Rachel was a few years younger than him, born in 1843 in Turton to John and Rachael (Holt) Green. Rachael the mother and Rachel the daughter had interchangeable spellings of their names, by the way, but since the stone at V7.8 says “Rachel” we’re sticking with that. John Green was a cotton goods dyer and Rachel was the only daughter in the family. It’s hard to tell whether they had money or not because Fred was already doing very well for himself and the couple would continue to lead a fairly comfortable life after marriage. Comfortable enough to have nine children with no appreciable financial burden!
The first two, Arthur John and George, were born in Turton. By 1867 though the Davises had come to Todmorden as the next son, William, was born here. Fred had taken on the plumbing business of Joshua Fielden (not that one) as he had come highly recommended from his work in Turton and later Oldham as a journeyman plumber. He and Rachel settled into a home at George Street and then came Thomas, Walter and Fred, then Rachel Ellen and Eva. Eva was their first and only loss and is buried at 47.60; only six months old. She’s buried at the back of the yard on the non-conformist slope due to Fred’s involvement with Bridge Street Methodist Chapel which we’ll touch on more later.
People often ask “why is this child alone?” and especially when the family are elsewhere in the yard. Plenty are alone because people moved away, but this is a little more unusual. Unfortunately we don’t have an answer for this that isn’t money related. Not the lack of, but otherwise…
Fred and Rachel had one more child, son Harold, in 1880. This seems to have finished off their family. Meanwhile Fred had been establishing himself as a popular, respected, and successful businessman. Carrying out work for the Town Board, fitting gas pipes and appliances in homes, and even firing the pottery grave edgings that you can still see so many of in the graveyard today…Fred got everywhere and his mark has been left behind. He was also a member of Prudence Lodge.
His sons followed in the family business as apprentices, including George, who we haven’t forgotten. George’s story really starts in the 1890s, but before then, he worked alongside his father and brothers quite happily. In 1890 he married Agnes Dunn and the pair settled at Queen Street, Cobden and started their own little family – three girls and a boy between 1891 and 1895. The only difference for George was that rather than gas fitting he did steam fitting – probably for larger clients than Fred, to ensure not so much overlapping maybe.
Fred meanwhile also became a fireman, and soon the fire superintendent, adding to his large plate of obligations. He seems to have happily obliged though. His sons and daughters were growing up and marrying and starting families of their own, and he and Rachel were happy at their home on George Street. As time went on though George’s situation began to deteriorate. He liked a drink a little too much. There was always work thanks to his father and brothers’ connections and own businesses, but having his own setup was out of reach, and married life might not have suited him so much either.
Fred died in 1898 in highly upsetting circumstances. Bridge Street’s Sunday School was having their anniversary service and Fred sat near the front, but suddenly started to have difficulty holding his papers. People tried to help, but he was clearly in a bad way, and then appeared to have an epileptic fit. In a moment of bleak comedy, some near him began to also show symptoms of a fit in some sort of mass hysteria incident…but for Fred it was the real thing, and perhaps not a fit but a stroke. He had a bleed on the brain and died soon afterwards.
Fred was described in his obituary as a modest, energetic, and above all conscientious man who found it hard to say no and hard to step back. His health had been suffering for some time and he was apparently having anxiety dreams about there being “a fire in every district” all at once. He had also been involved in getting Bridge Street fitted out with gas lamps, and the obituary even posits that all the lights coming on at once had been enough to impress him so much that his brain broke under the strain! Well, it is a newspaper, and they do have poetic license we suppose…interestingly also, it says that his family were strong supporters of Christ Church, but it was Fred who occasionally sat in on the Methodist services, and it’s clear he found some sort of satisfaction in both denominations. What an interesting person he must have been.
Rachel was left with eight children, all grown or grown enough for those days, and this must have been comfort in some ways. But more heartbreak was coming. We’ll tell her son Thomas’s story another time, but in March 1901 a very painful event occurred for the Davis family. Not only did Thomas’s son Fred drown in a dam near Gauxholme, but a few nights before George had threatened to drown himself in the canal by the Golden Lion. He was drunk. George had been travelling around working and drinking his wages away, and whenever he came home would get himself into trouble and have to go off again. This time he escaped jail because one of his brothers vouched for him, but this was the start of a terrible time for Rachel in particular. Having lost her husband, she had to watch her son slowly disappearing into an addiction.
George appears again and again in the papers for offenses related to drunkenness or vagrancy. Occasionally a reference is made to him being from a respectable family but the town knew who he was, and knew who Rachel was. She must have had a hard time of it. She was still at George Street with four of her children living with her so at least she wasn’t alone, but anyone who has had a family member with a substance abuse issue knows the pressures that the family member can put them under. Whether asking for work or money, the Davis family had to wrangle with love for their brother and the urge (or need) for tough love. And we can’t forget Agnes and the children either; she worked as a charwoman cleaning an office and lived a few doors down from Rachel and her siblings in law, which will have helped a bit with the need for childcare while she worked.
Rachel died in 1908 and got a mention in the newspaper because of her death being relatively unexpected, even though it was our old friend bronchitis. You can see again the connection with Christ Church made clear due to her involvement with the Parish Church Mothers group. Another interesting facet of the Davises and their dual loyalties to two churches. Rachel was more clearly in the Anglican camp.
George continued to struggle. Finally though, in 1910, we think (at least) that George finally hit rock bottom. He was found sleeping in a boiler room – ON a boiler – and had a lucky escape indeed…
This appearance before the magistrates was the most strongly worded one yet, and George was told in no uncertain terms that he was a disgrace. But in a kind way, as kind as they could be with a repeat offender; and he seems to have taken it to heart. Because after this he stops appearing in the newspapers.
The empty words of a habitual drunkard, or genuine remorse? He didn’t end up back with Agnes, but he didn’t end up in prison either (at least not from the Yorkshire end of things). The 1911 Census found him in a boarding house run by grocer Walter Langthorne (who is in an unmarked grave at 10.18) at Knotts Grove in Lydgate. By 1921 he was living at Lock Street in Lydgate all on his lonesome, and curiously giving his marital status as single. Meanwhile Agnes was at Queen Street with Rachel, Ellen and her husband and son, and a boarder. She was a caretaker for Eastwood, Sutcliffe, Sager and Gledhill solicitors at North Street (where Jane Brearley’s is now). And she was still married…
Eventually he ended up here, in this unmarked grave at 31.43, after having died in July 1924 at Stansfield View. Was he a pauper, or had his habits caught up with him and left him incapacitated, or was he merely unwell near the end and with no more family support? That last one seems pretty unlikely. In fact, we think he might have finally made something of an honest man of himself, or at least made peace with Agnes.
That’s because his address is given as 18 Queen Street. That’s where Agnes and Ellen, Rachel, Edith and Arthur Davis had been living in 1911. We know from his death certificate that the couple hadn’t reunited – he died while lodging at the Friendly Inn Lodging House, also in Lydgate – but she was the informant and present at his death. His presence at Stansfield View Hospital was due to his cause of death: bone cancer.
Enchondroma is a benign tumour found in the cartilage of the hand, but “sarcomatous” indicates a malign cancer, so it looks as though a slightly muddled cause of death here that boils down to general malignant cancer. It wasn’t the drink that got him after all.
One final note: if you look for George in our transcript you might get confused by the dates. It looks like plots 43 and 44 are late additions in the burials book, ie. those plots were filled in “outwards” towards the wall as required, and so there are no family members in that plot prior to 1924; furthermore the burials book has July 29th 1923 next to his name which we know is clearly wrong. Just goes to show that you have to research extensively in order to be sure of a person’s location or their true identity (believe me, we HAVE searched high and low, and there is no other George Davis of Queen Street or elsewhere who could be buried here). Is Agnes here? She died in 1965 and came to Christ Church to rest but we don’t know where. There’s a good chance she’s in this plot as well.
We can’t get the dead to speak their whole stories but what there is of this story is yet one more reminder of the real – and varied! – lives of those buried here. Real people whose stories might overlap with our own, a little or a lot. They do speak if you care to listen.