Boughey, Mrs Josephus, Seedley Road, Pendleton, Manchester. A heavily pregnant young wife from Manchester. 

Mary Fernie McMichael was born in Manchester in about 1843, In 1861 she was living with her widowed mother at 55 Upper Brook Street, Chorlton on Medlock.  ( In 1866 two neighbours from Upper Brook Street signed the petition, Sarah Steinthal an Unitarian Minister’s wife and Mrs Elizabeth Hope Grundy, whose husband was a professor of Music.)  . Mrs McMIchael had two middle aged boarders (a calico printer and a Drysalter) and a servant . She remarried the next year and Mary married Josephus Boughey in Cheshire in 1863.   Her daughter Mary Fernie Boughey was born on 7^th July 1866 , just a few weeks after Mary had signed the Womens’ Suffrage Petition.  In the 1871 census her husband was a  Bolter Down in a forge (A bolter (belter) down was the first man to receive the hot billet from the furnace he would then shove it into a pair of steel rolls with his hand tongs  .When it went through the rolls it was made smaller in diameter by stretching, i.e. a hot 3" bar going into a cold 2/12" square hole stretched it and reduced the diameter. When it went through the rolls a man at the back(cog backer) would catch it with his tongs and shove it through a smaller hole in the rolls. Each time the billet would get smaller in diameter and longer in length until the required size was reached then the long bar would then be passed to the next set of rolls until the require size was reached.)

 On 24 Sept 1872 the business partnership of Josephus Boughey in Boughey Burgess and Co was dissolved.  In 1879 Josephus Boughey appears in Slaters Directory of Manchester and Salford on page 42 as a householder at Victoria Terrace 201 West High Street, Cross Lane Pendleton. In 1881 the couple had moved back to Cheshire and he was an Agent for Gas Apparatus.  When Mary died in Altricham in 1917 she left £135..9s

http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/23901/pages/4469/page.pdf

1861 census Mary McMichael Registration District: Chorlton Sub-registration District: Chorlton upon Medlock ED, institution, or vessel: 18 Household Schedule Number: 30 Piece: 2880 Folio: 6 Page Number: 6

 

1871 census Registration District: Warrington Sub-registration District: Warrington ED, institution, or vessel: 28 Household Schedule Number: 127 Piece: 3907 Folio: 107 Page Number:28

Another Manchester radical, Mrs Hannah Boswell was born Hannah Blakeley in about 1816 at Prestwich, Lancashire.  Her father was a Book Keeper.  She married in 1849.  Her husband was George Boswell an Omnibus proprietor with 2 live in omnibus coachmen.  In 1861 their address was Omnibus Office Clarence Terrace, Rusholme.  George Boswell died in 1863 leaving £800.  In 1866 she was probably running the coach business as her children were still quite young  On the Rushholme and Victoria Park Archive  http://rusholmearchive.org/a-tour-of-wilmslow-road  there is a photograph (taken by Helmut Petschler 1860-70) of a horse-drawn omnibus of the City Omnibus company that travelled through Rusholme on its way to Didsbury.  The omnibus seen in front of the Didsbury Hotel is presumably awaiting passengers for the return trip.  In the 1871 census she describes herself as a Coach Proprietress and in 1881 she still owns the business with her son George as manager, as she does in 1891.  When she died in 1900 Hannah left £1,450..6s..3d

1861 census Registration District: Chorlton Sub-registration District: Ardwick ED, institution, or vessel: 35 Household Schedule Number: 23 Piece: 2874 Folio: 92 Page Number: 5

A Hard Life

Sarah Ann Bebbington signed the petition from 31 White Cross Bank, Salford.  When she signed she was 35 years of age. At the time she was a widowed cotton spinner in a cotton mill.   

Sarah Ann Brogden was apparently born in Salford in about 1831.  Her much younger 'brother' William Henry Brogden is living with her in 1861.  this 'brother ' was born in 1847, born to John and Hannah Brogden, a young couple. 

Sarah Ann apparently  married John Bebbington a tailor whose father was a farm labourer in Cheshire..   They had son Samuel John in spring 1856 and her husband died in April 1856.   Samuel appears to have been brought up in Spurstow Cheshire by John’s parents Samuel and Kitty Bebbington.  He works as an agricultural labourer like his grandfather and lives with them for more than 20 years.  In 1861 Sarah Ann working as a cotton winder and is living with younger brother William Henry Brogden born 1847.. Alone in 1871 she is again a cotton winder in cotton mill. 

 

She married again in 1875.  Her husband was William Gill.   He was a railway guard with a young son John.  She works as a dressmaker.  In 1891 she is again a widow.  Her son Samuel John Bebbington and her nieces,(William Henry Brogden’s daughters) Sarah Ann and Hannah Moreton (with her new husband Charlie) living with her. She died in April 1792 and her son Samuel, farm labourer, was executor of her will- she left just £14.10.00.

 

I have not been able to trace her parents, or her marriage date.  Her life seems to have been one where she was responsible for dependents, needing to work, and separated from her son for many years.  She was one of 63 women who signed the petition in Salford, including a Chief Constable's wife , but also several widows, shopkeepers etc.

Mary Ann Barton, pioneering Kindergarten teacher, who signed the petition from her home and school premises at 11 Lime Grove, Chorlton on Medlock, Manchester, was born in Manchester in 1831.  Her mother died before she was twenty and in the 1851 census she is living with her father and two siblings.  Her father had a very chequered business career, which meant that by 1861 she was the breadwinner with a Kindergarten in the family home.  John Wrigley Barton was at times a cotton spinner and cotton waste dealer.  With his brother Horatio he went in and out of various partnerships.  One was dissolved in 1830, another in 1837.  In March 1840 he was declared bankrupt, and in 1852 having been allowed to trade again, was declared insolvent (Insolvent no 74,8720)  Only months before Marianne signed the petition, her father had died, leaving an inheritance of under £20.

Around 1856, however, Marianne had been trained in the Froebel system of education by Madame Ronge, at the Home and Colonial Training School in Grays Inn Road..  Presumably her father must have paid for this course, which shows more evidence of foresight than his own career reveals.  She set up one of the earliest Kindergartens in Manchester in 1857 at 15 Cecil Street Greenhays.   Mr and Mrs Ronge came to Manchester to lecture on Frobel’s methods in 1857 and as a result a Manchester Committee for the Extension of the Kindergarten System was formed.  It would be interesting to find the list of members of this committee.  I imagine that Marianne must have been involved.  Mme Ronge set up a training school at Whalley Grange shortly afterwards. (see Lawrence, Evelyn (ed.)  Friedrich Froebel and English Education RKP 1952 p41 )  By 1861 Marianne had a 15 year old assistant, Minnette Walker, and was running the nursery from her father’s home at 11 Lime Grove.  In 1867 she joined Manchester Board of Schoolmistresses.  The 1871 census shows that she had expanded her staff and had three assistant teachers living in, including Minnette and Anna Snell from Dresden.  Several Froebel teachers came over to Manchester to help spread the Kindergarten methods, and Anna may have been one of them.  Minette Walker went on to run her own school in Halifax for many years.   By 1881 Marianne had one teacher boarding with her and 2 servants and had moved to 171 High Street Chorlton on Medlock  It appears that by 1891,  like many unmarried  teachers, she had retired to a modest boarding house – in her case in Penzance- and was living ‘on her own means’

 

As a single woman, with a modest business, it was particularly admirable that she felt confident enough in 1868 to subscribe to the local suffrage society  The Manchester Society for Women's Suffrage, whilst continuing her pioneering teaching career.   Several hundred teachers signed the petition, but only a few went on, like Marianne, to publicly support the Suffrage Societies formed following the petition.  I suspect that they had not imagined the opposition that the proposition would provoke when they signed.   Fired by the success of the printing of the petition for University Local Examinations in 1865, it must have seemed an excellent strategy to distribute the list to the press and MP’s.  But for many of the women, running schools, shops and businesses, the publicity must have been problematic and threatening to their livelihood. However the publicity does not appear to have affected Marianne’s career.

Three Spinsters in Margate

At Burleigh House ,13 Cecil Street, Margate, there was a girl's school run by two sisters, Josephine Theakston Waude and Helen Waude. With their older step sister Isabella Theakston they signed the petition. In 1866 they were 36 and 32 years old. They had 24 boarders in 1861. They were interested in improving the standard of the education they could offer their pupils, because in 1864 Josephine had signed the petition to the Syndics of Cambridge University asking that girls should also be permitted to take the University Local Examinations. This petition was successful and by 1867 girls from across the country were taking the exams. However by 1871the sisters were on the move and their step-sister Isabella Theakston ( Who dwelt with them , but lived off her own means) had moved to stay with her elder sister Martha Sprunt .

These are single women who were in the fortunate position of being well provided for. They were able to start a school, but were not dependent on it for a livelyhood. Their mother Sarah had married twice, both times to coach builders in the [Old?] Kent Road, Southwark. By her first husband John Theakston she had Martha and Isabella and a boy John who had only lived 7 weeks. Martha was the only sister to marry- her husband was publican of the Coach and Horses in Greenwich Market , then worked as a clerk for a gas company before becoming a Licenced Victualler.
John Waude's two daughters were born in Southwark and their father died in 1850. He appears to have been a very successful coach maker, working in fine materials (there is an Old Baily trial where he gives evidence when his stock was stolen) The girls moved to Rose Hill, Ash near Canterbury and in 1851n census are described as Independent Proprietors of houses. By 1881 Helen, Josephine and Isabella moved to Westmoreland.

The three women lived out the rest of their lives at Raven Bank, Staveley near Kendal. The house still exists and is a substantial stone house in leafy grounds, built in 1851. Isabella died first, then Josephine- each leaving several thousand pounds to their sisters. The last sister to die left over £17,000 to a Mr Thorp.

These unmarried sisters appear to have been unusual, in that they were well provided for. Their widowed mother had made a prudent second marriage, and Mr Waude, and possibly Mr Theakston also, had invested in property which provided an steady income for the girls. They had run a school for a number of years- was this in lean times when rents were low perhaps. But unlike many of the single women who signed the petition in 1866, their lives for the next five decades were comfortable and secure (Or did they shiver in their Lakeland home, huddling in one room, economising on everything, property rich but income poor???)

Elizabeth Wilmshurst French and other Kent women

I have been asked by a friend to give her a list of women who signed the petition in East Sussex and Kent. She belongs to a local W.I and will ask around among her friends there who will be interested. I started the job yesterday and at once got sidetracked by the women I bumped into on the way.

The hamlet of Collier Street near Maidstone was the first. The three women who signed there represent a cross section of those who would benefit from the Vote. Eleanor French was a farmer, a widow with young children who ran her hop farm of 40 acres employing 8 men and 4 boys in 1861. She was fortunate not to be a tenant farmer in an area where the landlord was also the MP relying on her for her vote. Farmer's widows would routinely loose their tenancies and living if this was the case. As it was she ran the farm for many years until her son took it over.
Mrs Elizabeth Worsley was the wife of the village grocer and wheelwright. In 1861 she had 6 children at home, as well as two boarders and one servant. Her eldest daughter aged 20 was working in the grocer's shop. Unmarried, Miss Wilmshurst French lived at Den Farm with her widowed father. I knew more about Miss French than many of the women, but that little knowledge is tantalising. Imagine a small collection of scattered cottages along a winding lane- a small church about half way along, in an agricultural landscape that in 1866 consisted of apple orchards and hopfields. The churchyard is overgrown, and Elizabeth's tombstone, (when I returned for a second visit to photograph it) had been turned on its face by vandals. She was born in 1832 and died on October 11th 1869. She published a book called "Pebbles and Shells" in 1858 (Now unavailable?) And she was one of the hundreds of forgotten women whose voice has survived... Buried in the Mill Taylor papers in the LSE are two letters from her to JSMill's stepdaughter Helen Taylor, and a draft of a reply .

On March 28th 1868 she responds to a request for signatures for a new petition by apologising for the fact that she has no friends to ask...." hetrodoxy of all sorts is so plainly written on my mere appearance that everyone is on his guard against me....My offence is in the fact that I wear trousers, a useful garment..." She has been wearing bloomers for many years. Helen Taylor in her draft reply says that 'fine dress is our armour' and apparently encouraged by a supportive response in the second letter Elizabeth advocates birth control as a way in which women can take control of their own well being. Elizabeth French had also sent a one woman petition to Parliament in 1867 asking for women to be included in the Franchise bill which John Stuart Mill had presented to the House. When writing to Helen Taylor she mentioned that she was unwell and her death followed shortly afterwards.

When writing of her unusual costume, she said "I have been a trouble to my father, a grief to my friends, ... an object of much looking and a little pelting wherever I wend my solitary way" so I was touched when I read the inscription that father had engraved on her tombstone. "In affectionate remembrance of a beloved daughter, Elizabeth Wilmshurst French who died October 11th 1869 aged 37 years Time is short, Eternity long"

Elizabeth French is someone who has haunted me throughout the years of my research- an extraordinary woman living out and attempting to share her radical beliefs in an isolated situation.
She saw that "the men have the Bible at their tongues end from Genesis to Paul's epistles and the women are cowed and silent. I doubt if I ever knew a woman who dared so much as sign a petition without the approbation of the men , husband or other, who determined the amount of cash she had in her purse and whose temper governed her. Whether women get enfranchisement or not, they need it."

Annette and Fanny Akroyd

These sisters were in their mid twenties when thay signed the petition. Annette went on to set up a school for girls in India. She and her sister had been students at Bedford College, and after they left, their teachers invited them to join the Kensington Society to keep up their studies. This was a discussion society- members (about 68, many of whom were teachers or students) got a list of questions to write upon. These short essays were circulated, so that even if members lived away from London, they could share their ideas. At one meeting Barbara Bodichon gave a paper suggesting votes for women, and with encoragement from J S Mill MP, the members collected a petition. Annette later became Mrs Beveridge, and her son's report in the next century led to the founding of the welfare state.