A large family in 19th century Harrogate

I like this story of Jane Stubbs' family because it's a reminder – at a time when everything to do with bringing up children seems so particularly fraught with anxiety – that the idea we make for ourselves of childcare of the past may not be quite accurate … …

Jane Stubbs was born at the Bridge Foot at seven o'clock on the morning of 5 July 1826, and was twelve years older than John.  She makes only rare appearances in his early diaries – a teenage boy would hardly notice the activities of a sister who was a young unmarried woman of twenty-seven.

By early 1856, Jane is more frequently noticed in his diary entries and always in connection with a young solicitor in their uncle Hirst's office, Henry Hawkesley Capes.  He was a year younger than Jane, and came from Whitgift in Yorkshire, the son of solicitor Thomas Hawkesley Capes and his wife Ann.  He and Jane were now to be found walking together and playing chess.

At some point the marriage must have been announced, but John does not record it.  We might guess that Jane must have been making preparations for her wedding when she went to stay in York in May and came back with a black undress Coat for her younger brother.   With quantities of clothes and underwear to make or buy and the new home to get ready, it is not surprising to find her going to York again in early August, this time with her mother.

York was also the natural place to find a wedding present, and John entrusts this task to his eldest brother Joe who, with the help of his fiancée Sarah Sedgwick of York, buys something suitable:

 “gave Jane a butter dish and silver knife with pearl handle for a wedding present   it cost 11/6”. 

On Wednesday 10 September 1856 Jane and Capes were married.

A Boroughbridge Boyhood: Epilogue

What happened to John's family in later years?

Aunt Ann Pick died in 1860 at the age of fifty and her husband William in 1872.  Aunt Bell, the active spinster aunt, died in 1880 at the home of her niece Jane Capes.

Uncle William Henlock died in 1866.  In his Will he left the sum of £200, the interest of which was to

William Henlock of Great Ouseburn

be distributed to the poor of the parish by the Vicar and Churchwardens.  His wife Ellen died in 1885.  They are both commemorated in a memorial on the wall of the church of St Mary the Virgin at Great Ouseburn, where there is also a plaque recording Mr Henlock's legacy.

Uncle William Hirst died in 1879 at the age of eighty-one.

He had outlived his daughter Dorothy, who died the year before.  John recorded her funeral on 28 November 1878:   

went to poor Dora Hirst’s funeral at 3 o clock.  She was buried at BB Church.  Tremendous funeral.  All the Shops closed.  Grannie [his mother] and Alice went and so did all from Uncles except Uncle who is still very poorly.  It is indeed a sad day at BB. 

She was fifty-one years old and is commemorated by a stained glass window in the church to which she had been devoted through her life.  Her unmarried sister Mary Barker Hirst lived alone in Boroughbridge after the death of Dora and her father.

Their sister Sophy Hirst married William Thompson, a London auctioneer with family in Bridlington.  They lived in Russell Square in some style – they were holidaying in Nice in 1880.  After Sophy's death in 1900 and William's retirement, he and his unmarried daughter Edith Wharton Thompson moved north to Harrogate.

John's cousin Mary Redmayne, wife of his friend James Sedgwick, the Boroughbridge doctor, was a  sociable, kind and active neighbour often mentioned in letters by John's mother.  She died “of apoplexy” on the night of Whit Sunday 1892 “very suddenly at Victoria Station London”.  She was fifty years old.  James and his unmarried son and daughter left Ladywell House and the practice to Dr Daggett and moved to Wimbledon, perhaps to be near his son Hubert Redmayne Sedgwick and his family; Hubert was a surgeon at St Thomas's.

Ledgers of the Stubbs business in Boroughbridge, 1790-1830

The Stubbs family business has already appeared in this blog in the account of the Five Guinea Note from the Boroughbridge Bank.

Ledgers of the Stubbs business for the years between 1790 and 1830 are held at the North Yorkshire County Record Office [NYCRO ZGB].  What follows are the notes I made for NYCRO in 2008, when the ledgers returned from conservation:-

These ledgers relate to the business established by Thomas Stubbs (1761-1838) at the house and premises known as the Bridge Foot, Boroughbridge. 

Thomas Stubbs was the grandfather of Bishop William Stubbs of Oxford, the eminent historian.   Stubbs “recommended the following up of local and personal history as leading to a connexion with the greater streams and lines of social and political history that is full of direct interest, which a man can have all to himself” [1].  He used his own family history as an example:

“... My grandfather’s house stood on the ground on which Earl Thomas of Lancaster was taken prisoner by Edward II, on the very site of the battle of Boroughbridge; he, too, was churchwarden of the chapel in which the earl was captured....” [2]

The Bridge Foot was a house the Bishop knew well.

Thomas Stubbs  was born in Ripley, the son of Thomas Stubbs (born in Hampsthwaite, 1735-1805) and Elizabeth Walls of Milby (1743-99) [3].  His father had chosen to leave Nidderdale, where the family had lived and farmed for many generations, to become a grocer in Ripley. 

In his turn, Thomas junior left Ripley for the thriving town of Boroughbridge, where he set himself up as a grocer, tea dealer and wine and spirit merchant living and working at the Bridge Foot.