|
|
|
|
Mary’s brother James and his family
James Mears married Mary Lovell on 14th January 1828 in St. Mary Redcliffe Church in Bristol. They had a total of ten children, the first of these being a daughter named Martha. She was born in Midsomer Norton in 1828 and died in 1868. She was married at Christchurch, Downside in 1852, to a man named Thomas Whittock who was born in Midsomer Norton in 1832. The next child of James and Mary was another daughter who was named Ann. She was born in Chilcompton in 1830 and died the following year at the age of 17 months. Next was Louisa who was born in 1832 and died in 1836. She was followed by Sarah Ann who was born in Midsomer Norton in 1833 and died in 1837. The fifth child of James and Mary was another daughter who was named Emily. She was born in 1835 and died in January the following year at the age of less than one year. After having five daughters, James and Mary then had a son they named Philip. He was born in 1837 in Midsomer Norton and unlike four of his sisters before him; he lived beyond infancy. In 1857 Philip married Harriet Norris at Christchurch, Downside. Philip was followed by Simeon; who was born in Chilcompton in 1838 and married in 1869 to Louisa Carpenter. The next child of James and Mary was a daughter named Louisa Matilda who was born in 1840 and married in 1860 to Simon Simmons. Louisa was followed by Thomas Henry who was born in 1842 and died in 1844 at the age of fifteen months. Finally James and Mary had a son they named Samuel Thomas. He was born in 1844 and married in 1865 at St. Elvans Church in Aberdare, South Wales to Elizabeth Ann Cottle of Merthyr Tydfil. Thomas and Elizabeth went to live in America where Elizabeth died in Frostburg, Maryland in 1880. Samuel then remarried in America to a woman named Annie Arnold, but she also died. Samuel married for a third time (again in Frostburg) in 1899 to Martha Reese. He died in 1920 in Cumberland, Maryland, aged 76.
The family of James and Mary Mears was typical of most of the working class families of the early to mid 19th century. It was a time when more than half of all British children died before they were five years old and the average life expectancy among the working and labouring classes was only seventeen years. Anyone who lived beyond the age of 45 was considered to be old. Life was extremely hard and most people were living on the poverty line. Some of these became so poor that (as a last resort) they were driven into the workhouse, even though they did all they could to avoid it. Today it is very hard to imagine the incredible hardship most of those people had to endure, both in their work and in their everyday lives. One of James and Mary’s children, Simeon Mears, was one of those unfortunate people who reached the very lowest state of life. He was married at the age of 31, but four years later his wife Louisa died when she was just 29 years of age. The 1881 census shows Simeon as a labourer living as a lodger in the house of coalminer Alfred Perkins. The next record of Simeon is in the burial register for Chilcompton dated 24th March 1886. The record states that Simeon died at the age of 48 and his abode was the Clutton Miron Workhouse.
The Clutton Miron Workhouse The workhouse was almost the worst possible place for a person to live for there the destitute were given work and shelter in conditions that were intentionally inferior to those of even the poorest labourers. Men and women were segregated and families were always broken up. Inmates slept in filthy dormitories, often on the floor and sometimes in coffin-like troughs. The workhouses were stinking infested places where the repulsive conditions spread diseases such as typhoid and cholera. Many of the inmates died from more common ailments such as malnutrition, pneumonia and tuberculosis. The depressingly boring work that had to done included turning cranks to mill corn, stone breaking and picking oakum – unravelling the fibres of old ropes. Meals were usually twice a day and were mainly of gruel. This had to be eaten in silence after saying prayers and praying was compulsory, even for those who were not religious. To the workhouse came destitute people of all kinds – those reduced to poverty by ill-health, the unemployed, alcoholics, the simple minded, pregnant single woman, widows, unmarried mothers who were unable to support their children, and wives who had been deserted by their husbands. The most pitiful of them all were the many children – orphans, foundlings abandoned in the streets, and children of loving but sick or starving parents who could not afford to support them. Sometimes a family with many children had to make the agonising decision to abandon one of their children to the workhouse to ease the burden on the rest of the family. This was the terrible plight that the very poor were always fighting so desperately hard to avoid. James’s sister Mary did rather better at raising her family, although her life was extremely hard and the conditions under which she was living seem to have been (in many ways) worse than they were for James. Nothing is known about Mary’s early life but she was born at a time of great trouble in England, and this would have affected her upbringing. Britain’s monarch was George III who was going through a period of madness and his son, the future George IV, was acting as regent. The Prime Minister was William Pitt the younger, the youngest Prime Minister this country has ever had and in America the first President, George Washington, had recently come to the end of his term of office. It was also a time when the British were fighting the Napoleonic Wars, which lasted from 1793 to 1815. |
