In this week of International Women’s Day, I thought it would be appropriate to celebrate women who have taken a stand.
When my maternal great grandfather, John Cownley, completed the Census in Bermondsey, Dockhead in 1911, he noted that three of his six children worked in factories locally.
All of those were his daughters. One of those daughters was my grandmother, Hannah.
My grandmother was just 14 and working as a “Factory Hand – Labeller, Drugist”, her older sisters Mary Ann, 17 and Lizzie, 16 were working as a “Tin Worker” and a “Book Folder” respectively.
Descriptions of factory working give us a fascinating insight into early 20th century life in Bermondsey.
At that time, Bermondsey was famous for manufacturing trades that were based there. Jacobs Cream Crackers, Cross and Blackwell, Hartley’s Jam (employing 1,500 people), Pinks Jam, Courage Beer, Spiller’s dog biscuits, Sarsons Vinegar, Shuttleworths Chocolate, Liptons Tea, Pearce Duff Custard Powder and Confectionery and Peak Frean Biscuits (probably the biggest employer in the area at 2,500 workers) were among the Bermondsey factories of which there were over 23 in 1911.
Also, the manufacture of metal boxes – like tins for holding baked beans and biscuits for example – was also carried out in Bermondsey. My great Aunt, Mary Ann mentioned above probably worked for a company called Wyatt & Co., one of the biggest tin manufacturers in Bermondsey at that time. The factory was in Tanner Street, SE1 so not far from where the Cownleys were living in 1911 and the building was not demolished until the 1950s.
Staggeringly, there is still a wooden sign in place today that belonged to Wyatt & Co despite the immense redevelopment that has taken place in the area over the last 50 or 60 years.
Wyatt & Co., Tin Manufacturer
Work in all the factories was hard, dangerous, poorly paid and mostly done by women (supervised by men who – it was ever thus – earned more than them). Most men, though, worked in heavier industry in the Docks or digging the roads. In the tin factory, women often lost fingers on unguarded machinery and cheap glass was used in the jam factories causing it to explode sometimes when the hot jam was poured in causing injury and sometimes blindness to the women on the production line.
The factories were not always small and cramped though. The Hartleys Jam Factory site, for example (which I mentioned in my last Blog at Christmas) was huge but not very mechanised. Instead it relied on thousands of cheap, mostly female, workers to do endlessly repetitive tasks to produce their jars of jam.
Hartley’s Jam Factory, Bermondsey
Most women earned less than six shillings a week and those under 16 earned as little as three shillings. My Grandmother, at 14, would have been one of the lower paid workers.
There had been no history of factory workforce unionisation however, unlike in the Docks where over 100,000 workers had gone on strike in 1889 winning recognition for and unionisation of casual labour.
But that Summer of 1911, all that changed. The Summer was a hot one. With no means of keeping food cool it went off quickly meaning families had less to eat than ever and child mortality had risen sharply over the Summer months.
The Docks and Railway workers had been on strike for weeks nationally, including London, over working conditions and Troops had been brought in, leading to two young pickets being shot dead in Liverpool in the ever increasing strain of the Summer conditions.
Into this hotbed of tension stepped two female trade unionists, Ada Salter and Eveline Lowe (until very recently (2003) there was a school in Southwark called after Eveline Lowe), who formed and convinced hundreds of women to join, the National Federation of Women Workers (the NFWW).
The NFWW called a rally in Southwark Park at which Emeline Pankhurst, the leader of the quest for female suffrage, spoke as well as Ben Tillett, the leader of the Dockworkers’ Union. Quite out of the blue and to everyone’s surprise, on 15 August 1911 at 11 am, over 20,000 women downed tools in the factories and went on strike. Factories ground to a halt. The manager of the Peak Freans’ biscuit factory was quoted as saying “I don’t know of a single business that is working in the district… It is a reign of terror”.
The Manchester Guardian carried a report of the action the next day (16 August 1911). The reporter noted,
“At the [Bermondsey] jam works, work really is work. The women frequently have to carry three gallon jars of hot pulp long distances around the factory”. And in the same article, “There are more women workers in Bermondsey than in any other part of London”.
Ada and Eveline appear to have been so successful by making the women aware that if they came out on strike they would not be without assistance. Ada set up food depots and kitchens all along the river right from London Bridge down to Woolwich to help the Dockers and the women while they were on strike. In addition, the NFWW launched an appeal for funds to help the women. It raised over £500 in one week plus six barrels of Herrings (perhaps pickled at Pickle Herring Street where Elizabeth Regan had lived) (see my blog of 25 August 2020)
Then, towards the end of the Summer, Dockers in London began to be offered settlements by the Port of London Authority (increased wages mostly) if they went back to work. But they wouldn’t. Not until the women’s grievances were dealt with satisfactorily too. So, for the first time ever, men and women stood together as equals for fair working conditions.
It worked. After several weeks of the factories’ strike, the women were offered and accepted increased pay at nearly all the Bermondsey factories. Of the 21 factories on strike, 19 won substantial wage increases and in most, an end to piece work whereby workers were paid only by the number of finished products they produced. At Pinks the jam factory, which was the last to settle, the weekly wage rate rose from nine shillings to eleven shillings. A massive victory. Most factories resumed normal working by 8 September 1911
I had never heard of this strike, which became known as “The Bermondsey Women’s Uprising”. I find it thrilling that my Grandmother and my great Aunts are very likely to have been part of this event and may even be in the photograph below …
Striking Workers, Pinks Jam Factory, 1911
Up the women eh?
ps. sorry I’ve been a bit quiet. I’ve been rearranging my 20+ years of Genealogy research into a new filing system. It’s taken longer than I thought …
During the 18th and 19th Centuries, it was not unusual for weddings to take place on Christmas Day.
In fact, churches held special events to enable weddings to take place and young couples flocked to get married at Christmas. However, this was not for some desire to capture Christmas romance. The real reason was entirely practical.
With so many people working “in service” (as servants) usually Christmas Day and Boxing Day were the only days off they were likely to get off in the whole year (most people worked six days a week and did not get paid for the one day they didn’t work) and if they wanted to get married, the opportunity to do so on Christmas or Boxing Day would have been very welcome .
Christmas Day is a traditional holiday and is not, and never has been a bank holiday in England, Wales or Ireland. Sir John Lubbock first introduced bank holidays. He was a banker and politician who loved his cricket and couldn’t stand the idea of competitors gaining an advantage by trading on days he and his staff went to support or play in their local village matches. He introduced the Bank Holidays Act 1871 which recognised four official bank holidays – Easter Monday, Whit Monday, the first Monday in August and Boxing Day. The same act did make Christmas Day a bank holiday in Scotland.
On my Mother’s side of my family, I have so far found eight Christmas Day weddings including my own maternal Grandmother, Hannah Cownley, who married Frederick Mason on 25 December 1919.
At the time of their wedding, Hannah and Fred were both living in Bermondsey. Hannah was working as a “Factory Hand at a Jam Factory” and Fred was a “Farrier Journeyman” (so someone who looked after horses’ hooves – can’t imagine needing one of those in Bermondsey now can you?)
Hannah was likely to have worked at Hartley’s Jam Factory which employed about 1,500 people in Bermondsey at the beginning of the 20th Century.
Hartley’s Jam Factory Bermondsey, 1920s
Neither Hannah nor Fred will have had much time off and I imagine a Christmas Day wedding would have been appealing to them (the other added incentive would doubtless have been that Hannah was about 7 months pregnant with their eldest daughter, also called Hannah and born on 4 March 1920).
I don’t have any family wedding photos older than the 1950s. But here’s one of my Mum (Hannah and Fred’s youngest daughter) and Dad who got married in late March 1952. In the snow funnily enough …
Marie Mason and Stanley Charles Ball, The Church of Our lady of Seven Dolours, Peckham, South London 29 March 1952
In case you were wondering, there’s no legal reason why you can’t get married on Christmas Day nowadays. But no one really wants to because they don’t have to I suppose and most Churches are likely to tell you they are too busy (Register offices are not open so no Registrars available for other venues).
Anyway, Happy Christmas to anyone reading this. I shall be back with more stories in 2021.
The Kalaher orphans, all six of them, are my 1st cousins twice removed. They have fascinating stories and I have worked out that my maternal Grandmother, Hannah, who was their cousin, must have known at least some of them. I find that extraordinary. As the actress Olivia Coleman said in her episode of Who Do You think You Are, “we have touched hands through time”.
My Great great Aunt, Johanna Taylor (1856 – 1887) who was my Great grandmother’s sister, married a Bartholemew Kalaher at the Roman Catholic Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Dockhead (named since this area was literally the Head of the then vibrant London Docks) in Bermondsey in June 1873. Bartholemew was a Labourer and he and Johanna were living just a few doors away from each other near the Thames in Bermondsey when they were married.
The Church of the Most Holy Trinity, Dockhead, Bermondsey
Like most poor people in Bermondsey at that time, Bartholemew and Johanna moved around a lot but never far from where they had grown up and where they were living when they got married.
Johanna and Bartholemew had seven children,
Mary Ann born 1874,
John born 1875
Thomas born 1877 (died in 1886 aged just 9 from Heart Disease)
Ellen born 1879
Catherine born 1883
James born 1885 and
Albert born 1886
In December of 1887, when her youngest child was just over a year old, Johnna developed Bronchitis and died aged just 31. Her husband, Bartholemew registered her death and was left with six children to look after. But there was more tragedy to follow when in the following May, aged just 34, Bartholemew himself died from Broncho-Pneumonia. Bartholemew’s death was registered by Johanna’s sister Julia Taylor, my great grandmother who was to play a rôle in some of her nieces’ and nephews’ lives in the coming years.
So, what happened to the Kalaher orphans?
Well. Mary Ann, James and John went to live with their Grandmother, Hannah Lyons (my great great Grandmother). Ellen and Catherine went to a Roman Catholic Orphanage and poor little Albert Kalaher ended up in the Horsleydown Workhouse where he died in January 1889 aged just 2 from TB, Ricketts and Diarrhoea.
Albert’s Death Certificate is the saddest thing I have seen in all my time researching family history.
Albert Kalaher 1886 – 1889
Albert was actually just turned 2 when he died, although his Death Certificate says 18 months. It seems that no-one knows who his parents were with the Certificate merely noting “Parents names and occupations unknown. Both parents deceased”. I wonder whether any of Albert’s family knew that he had died? I wonder where he was buried? Did he have a funeral? So sad. Poor little thing.
Ellen Kalaher and Catherine Kalaher were sent to The Convent of the Faithful Virgin, Boarding School and Orphanage, Central Hill, Upper Norwood in South East London. They were aged 9 and 5 respectively in 1888 when they were orphaned.
This must have seemed like going to the other side of the world for these girls who were unlikely ever to have left Bermondsey where all their family still lived. I imagine the only solace for them must have been that they had each other.
Well, only until 1894 when Catherine, the younger sister, died at the Orphanage aged 11 of Heart Disease and Exhaustion. Ellen was now alone.
But she survived and in 1900 when she was 21, she married a Stephen Mitchell at the Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Dockhead where her parents had married 27 years before, so she had come back home. Ellen’s family must have stayed in touch with her throughout her years at the orphanage though because her sister Mary Ann had by this time got married and her husband is a witness. Also, Ellen gives the same address as her Aunt Julia Taylor and Uncle John Cownley (my great Grandparents) give on the 1901 Census so I assume she was living with them when she got married.
Ellen and Stephen went on to have seven children. Ellen was widowed in 1922 and is on the 1939 Register with four of her grown up children, by now in their thirties.
So, that is three of the six orphans but what about the three who went to live with their Grandmother?
First, the eldest, Mary Ann Kalaher. After she was orphaned in 1888, Mary Ann went to live with her Grandmother, Hannah Lyons, and is on the Census with Hannah in 1891. The family lived in Queen Elizabeth Street right on the South bank of the Thames by Tower Bridge.
Also living there are Mary Ann’s two brothers John and James and Hannah’s two grown up children John and Julia (my great Grandmother). Hannah was a widow by this time. Mary Ann was a witness at her Aunt, Julia Taylor’s, wedding to John Cownley in 1893 and was only 7 years younger than her Aunt so presumably the two of them became friends.
Mary Ann married a John Henry Gover Shaw in 1896 again at the Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Dockhead, Bermondsey. John Shaw lived in Grays Inn Road and his Father was a Methodist Minister. This is a bit unusual for this family. Mostly they married Dockers or Labourers and from a very small area around Dockhead. Grays Inn Road is quite a stretch for a girl from Bermondsey in those days. John Shaw worked in the Print and was ten years older than Mary Ann.
Mary Ann and John Shaw went on to have three children
Mary Isabella born 1897
John Bartholomew born 1895 and
Stephen Martin Michael born 1905
When their first child was born, Mary Ann and John Shaw are living in Beckenham. This is really the first time I have found members of this family leaving Bermondsey. But by the time their second child was born, they are back in Camberwell, where they stayed certainly until the 1901 census. But by 1905, when their third child was born, Mary Ann and John Shaw have moved to St Albans in Hertfordshire where they still lived when the 1911 Census was taken.
In 1911, both their elder children are at Roman Catholic Boarding Schools. This is an interesting portent for the lives of the two boys.
Firstly, John Bartholomew Shaw served as a Pilot Officer (2nd Lieutenant) in the RAF during WW1. He started on 23 April 1918 and was a “Handley Page” pilot which seems to mean he tested the new super bomber designed by a company called Handley Page (but made too late to be effective in the war). John ceased flying on 26 November 1918 and was “Dispersed” at Purfleet early in 1919.
It seems that John had already started to train for the Priesthood prior to his Military Service and he returned to his studies after 1919. John was ordained at Westminster Cathedral in 1923, appointed a Canon of the Westminster Chapter in 1955 and served continuously as a Parish Priest around London until his retirement in 1967. He went back to his Parish in Fulham, where he had been Parish Priest from 1953 to 1967, to live out his retirement until he died in December 1981 aged 82.
The Vicar General of the Westminster Diocese, Monsignor Martin Hayes, told me that Canon John’s Requiem Mass was held in Latin and celebrated with “great solemnity” at St Thomas’s Church, Fulham, where John served, and Canon John’s soul is prayed for every year at Westminster Cathedral on the anniversary of his death, 19 December.
John Bartholemew Shaw 1899 – 1981 taken from a very grainy photo in a Parish Magazine in about 1970
Then John Shaw’s brother, Stephen Martin Michael Shaw, also became a Priest. Having completed his training for the Priesthood, Stephen was ordained in 1928 aged 23.
Stephen also served as a Parish Priest around London until he was appointed as the National Director of the Pontifical Aid Society in 1947, a post which he held until 1970 when he was made “Protonory Apostolic” (ProtAp) and travelled frequently to Rome for consultations and discussions with the Pope and members of the Vatican Council. ProtAp means that Stephen was an honorary Prelate (a senior member of the Clergy) upon whom the Pope has conferred this title and its special privileges, including the title “Monsignor”.
Stephen retired to Killarney in Ireland due to ill health and died there on 13 May 1998 aged 92, following a Stroke. Stephen’s funeral was at Killarney Cathedral on 15 May 1998 and he is buried in a cemetery nearby. Monsignor Stephen missed out on his 70th Ordination anniversary by only about a week and at the time of his death was the longest serving Westminster Priest. He was also a published author of at least four Religious books.
John and Stephen’s elder sister, Mary Isabella Shaw, married a William Sait in 1926. The ceremony was carried out by her brother, John. Mary continued to live in the Hertfordshire area before her death in 1996 aged 99 in Exeter near to where her son, Michael Sait lived. Michael registered both his Uncle John’s and his Mother’s deaths.
The next Kalaher orphan is John Kalaher. John was about 12 when he was orphaned. In 1891, he was living with his Grandmother, Hannah Lyons and in 1892 he joins the Army aged just 16 and served in 4th Battalion East Surrey Volunteer Regiment. After that, I can find nothing for John. Not a marriage, a family, an entry on the 1939 Register or a death.
Lastly James Kalaher. James was only 3 when he was orphaned in 1888. He too went to live with his Grandmother, Hannah Lyons, along with his brother, James, and his sister, Mary Ann. James is with his Grandmother, her two youngest children (who are his Aunt and Uncle) and his brother and sister in 1891 when he is five.
I cannot find James on the 1901 Census but in 1902, he joins the Army aged nearly 18 and gives the address my great Grandmother (Julia Taylor) and great Grandfather (John Cownley) give on their 1901 Census return so he was presumably, living with them. James joins the same volunteer Battalion in which his brother John served.
In 1911, James is working as a Blacksmith’s Mate and is still living with his Aunt and Uncle, Julia and John and their family including my grandmother, Hannah Cownley, who was 14 by then so presumably Hannah knew James, although he was much older than her.
On 2 June 1915. James married an Alice Markham, again, in the Church of the Most Holy Trinity, Dockhead and ten days later (hold that moment …) their first child, Alice Victoria Kalaher, is born.
In 1916, James is discharged from the Army. By this time, he is serving in a different Regiment, the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. He has a different Army Number from when he joined the Volunteer Regiment in 1902 and I suspect this may have been a Regular Battalion but I am not sure. The Attestation states that he joined the Army from the Reserve which makes sense. Given WW1 was on, though, it seems strange to release a man from the Army when others were being called up.
However, James and Alice continued to live in Bermondsey, have five children, and James gives his occupation as an Iron foundry Labourer. There was a huge Iron foundry in Bermondsey, owned by the General Iron Foundry Company that provided work for hundreds of men during the 1920s and 1930s and this was presumably where James worked.
But things took an unfortunate turn for James and Alice in the late 1920s when their children were still very young (aged between 13 and 5). On 11 December 1928, James was admitted to Banstead Mental Hospital which was in Sutton in Surrey. The Admissions register reveals that James was diagnosed as suffering from “Melancholia” which in those days was considered to be on the “Lunatic” spectrum. Nowadays, I understand the diagnosis would be Severe Depression. It occurs to me that this may have been a legacy of James’s service in WW1 and perhaps, the reason for his discharge in 1916 when the War was at its height.
Banstead Asylum [Mental Hospital]
Sadly, poor James was never discharged from this Mental Hospital and he died there on 13 June 1944. The Death Certificate gives “Myocardial Degeneration, Emphysema and Bronchitis” as the cause of his death but the hospital records reveal that James was considered, at the time of his death, to be suffering from “Chronic Melancholia” which would seem to be a worse kind of what they then thought was Lunacy. I suppose that if he had been in a mental hospital for sixteen years and was still suffering from Depression (and why wouldn’t he?) that it was now considered to be a “Chronic” case. James was buried in the graveyard of the Hospital.
Alice, James’s wife, continued to live in Bermondsey with their children and on the 1939 Register is living with just their youngest child who by this time was aged 24.Alice died in Leicestershire in 1959 aged 66. Hers and James’ eldest daughter had married in 1936 and Alice’s Death is registered by this daughter in her married name living at the same address at which Alice had died. I presume Alice had gone to Leicestershire in later life to live with her daughter and her daughter’s husband.
So that’s the Kalaher orphans. Different times and hard experiences. But at least three if not four of them had good lives given the times they were living in. I only wish I had known about them when my grandmother, Hannah, was still alive and I could have asked her what they were really like …
Linda Swinburne Family History Blog 