Yesterday, I went to Who Do You Think You Are? Live at London Olympia, described as the world's largest family history fair. While the fee-charging websites boast enormous stands peppered with grinning salespeople, I prefer the slightly less slick (and much more interested/interesting) volunteers from all the Family History Societies. From Glamorgan to Norfolk, Yorkshire to East Sussex there is hardly a part of the country that isn't represented at the event (apart from Northamptonshire...).
On my last foray, I found a great publication from Lincolnshire Family History Society: Minutes from the Holbeach Union Workhouse. This is the institution that my great x 3 grandfather John Walker (see previous posts) spent some of his childhood.
This year, I bought two more Minute book summaries. Each covers a period of about ten years and includes every reference to 'paupers' that the Society researchers have found in the Minute Books.
Last week, I was surprised to locate my widowed great x 4 grandmother living in Gedney with one of her daughters in 1851 - while her other five children languished in the Holbeach Union Workhouse at nearby Fleet.
On 20 October 1851, the Minutes reveal: "Ordered that the mother of the children named Walker now in the workhouse and chargeable to the parish of Gedney be apprehended for not maintaining her children unless she choose to come to the workhosue with them."
So Mrs Walker (she who may or may not have been born in Ireland and was formerly a lace maker) was being called to account. Poor, widowed and with many mouths to feed, she seems to have done what many families in those days did: put her children in the workhouse and remain outside, to work. Giving her the benefit of the doubt (I don't accept a role as judge and jury to be part of my family tree research remit), perhaps she fell on even harder times? Lost her employment? Was ill?
No further mention is made in the Minutes of Mrs Walker and her children. I think I will need to check the Admissions register to establish whether she did join her family at Fleet.
Of course, what it does prove is that the Mary Walker I located in Gedney in 1851 IS my ancestor - so now I have to find what happened to her. More questions!
And as for Mary's daughter Matilda...let's summarise the Minutes somewhat and merely mention: assault; bastardy; child abandonment; destitution; imprisonment on two occasions. Yes, she was what the Guardians of the Union Workhouse refer to as a "refractory pauper" - refractory meaning 'impossible to manage', 'stubbornly disobedient', 'resisitent to authority'. Her case was reported in the Lincolnshire Chronicle (thanks to British Newspaper Archives for that one) wherein she is referred to as an "old offender". Quite a different woman to the benevolent old 'aunt Matilda' I had imagined living next door to my gran as a small girl in Whaplode!
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