Snowy. Tim Harris
to the Union Workhouse, which has been keeping them. The wording is similar and full of the majesty of the Law:
. . . by two justices of the peace acting for the said division (and having jurisdiction for the said Union) ~~~~~~ was adjudged to be the putative father of a bastard child, born of the body of ~~~~~~~, a single woman, was brought before us to show why the same should not be paid, that no sufficient distress can be laid upon his goods and chattels ....... Convey the said ~~~~~~~ to the common goal there to remain without bail or mainprise for the term of ~~~~~ unless such sum and costs, together with the costs and charges of attending the commitment and conveying of the said ~~~~~~ to the common goal, and of the persons employed to convey him thither, amounting to the further sum of ~~~~~ to be paid and satisfied.
In 1849, George Batchelor was ordered to pay Depwade Union 2/9d a week for seven years to support his daughter, plus arrears of £1 4s 6d.
Lots of women were simply deserted – the men just skipped town and were untraceable.
Fred wrote:
The days went on till the time come for her confinement, wen to my great sorrow she died. Young as I was then it was the hardest blow I have ever had to bear in all my life, the more so because it came so sudden, and there was no reason I knew it should all end like that, and no warning. She did not want to go and I had lost a dear pall as well as a loven wife, and she left me with a new born baby – for the child, a boy, lived.
For those who have read I Walked by Night and so enjoyed the romance Fred describes between himself and Anna, it will come as a revelation that Anna did not die in childbirth or have a boy.
Fred talks with such love and warmth of their courtship and marriage. Here is a little of what he wrote:
After about three years things fell out so that it became Imperitive that we got married . . . I have no need to tell why. She was one of the best pals that a man ever had, and the best wife any man could want. Do not think dear Reader that I am telling a love story, but it is true that I loved her more than anything else on this earth and she loved me the same. It was not only me that loved her neither, for it always seam she had a way with her with all live things, and pets and birds.
Edith Ann was born on 25 May 1883 in Marham. It is unclear whether Anna went home to her family to have the baby or whether she and Fred were living in Marham at the time. Fred was working as an agricultural worker, so it fell to Anna to stop Doctor Steele from Downham Market to proudly register her baby daughter. At the time, the doctor was also the local Registrar and he carried the registers with him in a leather satchel as he rode about visiting the sick, so that people in the remote villages were spared the ten-mile journey to Downham Market to register their child, as had been compulsory since 1837.
Lord Chancellor Thomas Cromwell introduced the first formal system of registering the population in the reign of Henry VIII. Every clergyman in 1538 was ordered to keep a book in which to record details of all baptisms, marriages and burials at which they officiated. In 1597, in the reign of Elizabeth I, each parish was ordered to purchase a special book in which to record details and from this to make an annual transcript to be lodged with the diocesan registrar. This led to improvements, but records were still incomplete.
The Burial Act (1768) decreed all corpses must be buried in a wool shroud to aid the coffers of the government as there was a tax levied on wool. After each burial an oath had to be taken to confirm the Act had been obeyed.
Eventually, in 1837 two Acts came into being: The Registration Act and the Marriage Act. The General Registrar was appointed to administer, at local level, the civil registration of births (not baptisms), marriages and deaths, and to allow a system for civil marriages. Medical statistician William Farr pressed for the cause of death to be included on certificates so that records could be kept to follow medical patterns.
There is no record to be found that Edith was christened, something that might have helped reconcile Fred with his father. He went on seeing his mother, so she may have seen the baby, but Anna would have been denied the chance to defiantly show off her new husband and baby before the villagers, cutting a dash in a flattering outfit, including a new hat.
Fred was listed again as a labourer on Edith’s death certificate when he registered the child’s death aged 8 months, on 16 January 1883. He is recorded as being with Edith when she died, it would seem they were living in Pentney at the time.
Edith’s death certificate records her cause of death as marasmus. The Collins Dictionary definition is wasting of the body, with most cases due to inadequate calorific intake. Clinically there is a failure to gain weight, followed by weight loss and emaciation. The medical description goes on to describe symptoms similar to those seen on television film footage of harrowing scenes from famine areas of Africa. Poor little thing, she just starved to death.
In the 1860s mills had come into use that ground corn into refined white flour, removing the valuable wheat germ. It was much the same health issue as today: brown wholemeal bread versus refined white. By the 1870s, this was available in the remotest of shops and most likely Anna, like all the forward thinking girls of her time, thought it modern and labour saving, so the bread she baked would not be very nutritious. This she would have fed crumbled into milk to her child, a form of baby food known as ‘pap’.
Along with the rest of the labourers’ families in the village, almost certainly the only milk Anna would have been able to buy would be the skimmed version from the local farm. Skimmed, because the cream would be removed to chum into butter; it was known as ‘blue milk’ because of its colour. Probably after Anna stopped feeding Edith herself, she weaned her on to pap, which had insufficient nourishment and so her daughter slowly faded away.
In Henry Rider Haggard’s book A Farmers Year, which he wrote after turning to farming and good works, he recounts:
Never shall I forget my early experiences of Heckingham Workhouse. Having been elected a guardian I attended the Board in due course, and, as is so often my fortune, at the very first meeting fell into controversy. At that date all the children in the house, including infants, were fed upon skimmed milk. Owing to some illness, however, the Doctor ordered them a ration of fresh milk, which ration the master had neglected to discontinue when the sickness passed. Consequently there arose trouble, and with the Doctor he was brought up before the board to be reprimanded.
Thereon, with the courage of inexperience, I rose and announced boldly that I considered new milk to be a necessity to infants and that, if I could find a seconder, I would propose that the allowance should be continued to them until they reached the age of nine years. Somewhat to my astonishment a worthy clergyman, now long dead, seconded the motion, and there followed a great debate. Soon we found it would be absolutely hopeless to carry the innovation in its original form, and were obliged to reduce the age limit from nine to five years.
The argument of the opposition was that the children were not fed upon new milk in their own homes, to which I replied that even if they starved at home, it was no reason why they should be starved when in the public charge. Ultimately the Board divided, and to my surprise I carried the motion by a majority of one vote, so that henceforth the infants at Heckingham were rationed with fresh milk instead of ‘blue skim.
Within eight months, Anna had become a wife and mother, and she now stood beside a tiny grave grieving for her child, the weather as bitter and raw as her emotions must have been. Fred described his wife as a woman fond of animals and wildlife, and it would seem the death of her child was from ignorance rather than neglect. In I Walked by Night, Fred recalls that she cared for Fred’s working dogs, and one of her own, Tip, with much care and affection:
My wife thought the world of Tip, and I often used to say to her in fun, you think more of the dog than you do of me. She looked after them all, but he was always the first to have a hot drink and a rub down wen we came in from a night’s work. He would lie at her feet and look at her, and she would talk to him as she would have talked to a child, and I beleve he knew what she said as well as I did. Perhaps her feeling the way she did for that dog had something to do with what hapened after.