Robert Myers and Jemima Baxter

In Memoriam
ROBERT MYERS
of Hulme
born October 28th 1804
died January 8th 1876
Also JEMIMA, wife of the above,
born May 7th 1819
died November 12th 1878
Also of ELIZABETH, the
beloved wife of
EDWARD HARDLEY
and eldest daughter of the above,
who died October 5th 1901
aged 64 years.
"Thy will be done"
Also JAMES MYERS their son,
born December 1st 1845,
died November 4th 1908.

ANNIE PARRY
who died July 27th 1935

Robert Myers Pawnbroker of 320 Deansgate, Manchester,1804- 1876 and Jemima Baxter 1819 -1878.

Robert Myers, my great-great-great-grandfather, was a Pawnbroker in Deansgate, Manchester. He was born 28 October 1804 in Manchester. He had several children with Jemima Baxter before marrying her in 1853. Jemima was probably his housekeeper, she first appears on the 1841 census, aged 20 (changed from 22) living with Robert on Liverpool Road, Manchester along with two children, Elizabeth and Robert, listed as son and daughter of Robert Myers aged 35.

The 1841 census rounded ages to the nearest five years and the ages of Robert and Jemima and their children on subsequent census forms are not at all accurate.

When Robert died in 1876 he left a will conveniently explaining that Elizabeth was his natural daughter with a Mary Davis or David (deceased) and he listed the children born before and after his marriage to Jemima. There were 11 children in total, Elizabeth, Robert, Sarah, James, Mary, Henry, William and Fanny were born before marriage and Thomas Edward, Frederick Lawton and Annie were born after their marriage. Sarah Myers Baxter was my great-great grandmother, she married James Charles Armstrong who died young and she later married Henry Hind Beanland.

 The 1841 census was the first real census, it shows very little information; it was only four years into Victoria’s reign. There was no running water, not much gas light and cooking was done over an open fire in the kitchen.

 Engels, in his book ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England’  describes Deansgate, Manchester as ‘lined first with mills and warehouses, then with second-rate shops and alehouses; further south, when it leaves the commercial district, with less inviting shops, which grow dirtier and more interrupted by beer houses and gin palaces the farther one goes, until at the southern end the appearance of the shops leaves no doubt that workers and workers only are their customers.’

The business was run as Worthington and Myers, there was an Isaac Worthington trading at 258 Deansgate in 1834. Pawnbrokers were common on the streets of working class districts in the industrial cities. Manchester at this time was one of the richest and fastest growing cities in the country. People were moving in from the countryside and from Ireland to work in the mills and factories. They were in regular but poorly paid employment and were living from hand to mouth in overcrowded housing. It seems the main function of the pawnbroker was to provide a way of making ends meet. The pawnbroker was commonly known as ‘Uncle’. Pawning was a regular practise; people often used their Sunday best clothing as capital on which to obtain cash. Items pawned were known as pledges, and clothing was pledged on a Monday and redeemed on a Saturday after being paid. They wore their best clothing to church on Sunday and pawned it again the next day.

My great-aunt Bertha wrote a short piece for a parish magazine describing how her father had told her his memories of playing hopflag on Deansgate outside his grandfather’s shop in the 1870s with gold watches when he was ‘aged only six’. Bertha thought the shop was a lock-up shop as her father had told her that his grandfather used to sleep under the counter, having only had an apple for dinner, as he was afraid of burglars. Bertha had a lot of things wrong though. She was under the impression that Jemima was a daughter of the Worthingtons of Worthington’s Brewery. It seems the name Baxter had been quietly dropped in the family tree. Bertha cites her mother Sarah as the eldest daughter and we now know that his eldest daughter was Elizabeth, this on the family grave in Brooklands cemetery.

Bertha describes the tale of the painting left by an old seaman who didn’t reclaim it at the end of the year and so became the property of the pawnbroker. They thought it was a portrait of the poet Shelley and Bertha says it was given to her mother, Sarah, his eldest daughter, on her marriage. I remember the tale of a valuable painting that Bertha had inherited and its fate when she died was much discussed, I don’t remember the details but it inevitably turned out to be worthless.

On the 1851 census they are living at 12, Collier Street, Manchester, just around the corner from the Pawnshop which was on the corner of Deansgate and Todman Street, so at the insalubrious end of Deansgate if we listen to Engels.

On 23rd December 1853 Robert married Jemima Baxter at St.Mary’s Church in Manchester : age 49, bachelor, Pawnbroker, 394 Deansgate, father, James Myers, shoemaker. Jemima Baxter is 35, spinster, 6 Egerton Street, father Joshua Preston, packer.

In1861 they lived at 15 Egerton St, Hulme.

In1871 they lived at 15 Egerton St, Hulme, Robert aged 66,

 Robert died on 8th January 1876. Jemima died on 12^th November 1878.

Robert Myers left a will with a legacy to his sister's living children of £50 - her name looks to be Eliza Atkinson and a legacy to his eldest daughter Elizabeth who was his daughter to a Mary David

 Then he left Jemima a regular income of £60.00 per year to be paid quarterly until her death and he confirms his children Robert, Sarah, James, Mary, Henry, William and Fanny were his and Jemima's children out of wedlock. But Thomas Edward, Frederick Lawton and Annie were his and Jemima's children during their marriage!

 The rest of the will is how his estate should be divided up after Jemima’s death with guidance to his son, William Myers, and the 2 other trustees on how the estate should be administered to make sure that any grandchildren should be looked after if their parents die before they reach 21 years old.

That is where the facts end and the speculation begins. I wonder if the Myers were originally from Germany as it is a German name and if so, were they originally Jewish? Robert Myers was trading with Isaac Worthington and this name appears on Jewish registers in Manchester. There is a Jacob Myers trading as a pawnbroker in 1852 at 114 London Road.

Jemima is even more of an enigma. On the marriage certificate she gives her father’s name as Joshua Preston. Why was Jemima Baxter’s father called Preston? Or was his name Joshua Preston Baxter?

There is a family legend about somebody being an illegitimate daughter of Lord Ribblesdale of the Lister family of Gisburn, Lancashire. The same legend has a daughter of the Lister family running off with a gamekeeper and so being disinherited.

322 Deansgate

Todman Street

Collier Street

My cousin Alan

My cousin Alan (grandson of Ethel Armstrong) who is an expert on this family history stuff and to whom I owe a lot for his generous sharing of information about the family, has contributed this to the comments on Ancoats;
- small world and all that - the Hampsons made the same move from "Ancoats" to Salford at around the same time. The "mystery" man (whose name, on an 1876 grave paper, we didn't recognize, and therefore started my family history trail back in 1991) turned out to be Robert Hampson, brother of my g-g-grandfather, John. Born in 1812, from 1838 to his death in 1876, Robert ran a beerhouse at 4 Cornwall St, later known as the Three Pigeons. John lived at Primrose St, which originally ran from Cornwall St to Bengal St (one end of it still exists, but with no property on it now) - most of it was obliterated when they built Victoria Square, Sanitary St and the "model" cottages on George Leigh St. He also lived at Wigby's Court and Blossom St for a while before moving to Chorlton-on-Medlock. Meanwhile, my mum's g-grandad, William Payne, came north from Newbury in the 1870s and setlled first at 72 George Leigh St, then later at Gun St (partly still there), Jersey St then Fawcett St, off Great Ancoats St. He was a chair-maker with a workshop in Jersey Mill (still standing, now offices) and then Brownsfield Mill (also still standing). So they could all have bumped into each other, for all we know!
Coming to more recent times, when I worked for the Gas Board in the mid-1970s, quite a lot of the old industry in the area was still going and I remember a small metal foundry called Pressbar Products who had a ramshackle works in a courtyard on Portugal St - this street, which was originally a continuation of Primrose St, also still exists, but just looks like a back-alley behind the few remaining old shops on Oldham Road, nowadays. One old street sign still exists on Butler Lane. People pass these without a second glance, but the rear walls of these shops pre-date Engels, being 18th century, but much rebuilt.
If you have ever seen the film "A Taste of Honey" (Rita Tushingham, Dora Byran, etc), the higgledy-piggledy flat where Jo (Rita T) lives, towards the end of the film, was filmed in this area, and I'm convinced the courtyard is the Pressbar Products one (the firm is still going, but off Ducie St, Piccadilly, now). The canal scenes are also in Ancoats (plus one in Salford) and parts of Oldham and Manchester also appear. As you've no doubt seen, they are putting a lot of effort into modernising what is being promoted as "Ancoats" but, being a pedantic Mancunian (!) this area is NOT Ancoats, it was always called the Oldham Road district. Ancoats proper was a separate town at the far end of Great Ancoats St, which LEADS to Ancoats, hence the name. The border would be about Redhill St and, for convenience, the boundary was generally regarded as the canal.

Incidentally, Cornwall St was renamed Cornell St in 1954, part of a move by Manchester Council and Royal Mail to clear up duplicated street names. There were two Cornwall Streets (one in Gorton, still extant) so one had to go! It was understandable, really, because there were TWELVE John Streets, for example, and before postcodes it led to a lot of misdelivered letters. I remember Sanitary St having a wooden name sign, from which the first and last letters had been chopped, so although it said " Anita St" the spacing was weird. I think the council just gave up (or didn't notice) and called it Anita St when they made new metal-plate signs in the 1970s.

Your comments about Engels are interesting, because I have read the Condition of the Working Classes myself and, although some of what he said was undoubtedly true, it must be remembered that he was making a political point and so picking all the worst features he could find. I don't know if you've read what might be regarded as the counter to this, "Manchester and the Textile Districts 1849" by Angus Bethune Reach - if not, try and borrow a copy, it's worth a read. He was commissioned to write a series of reports by the Morning Chronicle, who were anxious to allay people's fears after Engels' book, so you could say it is biased the opposite way, but then the truth may be somewhere in between. Don't go off internet quotes from this compilation, because they tend to extract snippets that sound exactly like Engels (he didn't disagree with him on everything). What makes it worth reading is that Reach, an early form of investigative reporter, actually went into people's homes, places of work, pubs, clubs, etc and noted down, not only details and impressions of the surroundings, but what people actually told him in interviews. A lot of it rings true, for instance, he describes one house in Ancoats as very sparse, one single room downstairs and one up, with bare flag floors and whitewashed walls - but - there is a square of matting near the door, home-made rug by the fireplace, a geranium or two in pots by the window and a couple of pictures above the mantelpiece. This sounds so like my grandad's house that I can easily believe that this is more typical - ordinary people, not having much, but making the most of what they do have. There are other snippets that were news to me, for instance, most people drank coffee, not tea, as the latter was five times the price! Barrows on street corners sold coffee and hot bacon sandwiches for mill workers who had to start early (origins of the bacon barm). People mostly ate potato hash during the week, with a piece of meat at weekends (Sunday joint). It's full of fascinating insights that are believable because, in modified form, many of the traditions are still with us. But, as I say, it also has its political agenda, so is perhaps painting a rosier picture than was actually the case.

Unfortunately, both Engels and Reach are uncomplimentary (putting it mildly) about the Irish - there was a lot of anti-Irish feeling, especially after the famine, which brought many to England seeking work. Having little choice, they tended to rent the cellars and ramshackle houses that others wouldn't touch and were then castigated for living a lowly life - the sort of petty bigotry that, regrettably, is still with us, except that it's generally the Muslims that are bearing the brunt of it nowadays. Then as now, though, not everyone was as narrow-minded as the press would have us believe, and I'm sure most ordinary people had a "live and let live" attitude. To assume all Victorians were racist is like assuming we all vote BNP now! Personally, I don't think people change that much over time, there are good guys and bastards now, always have been, and probably always will be.

Children of the Industrial Revolution 2

Before they all ended up in Salford it seems lots of our family lived in Ancoats, Manchester.

What is truly amazing is how some of our ancestors lived so close to each other in the 1850s and 1860s yet it would take another 100 years before these families were joined together by the marriage of my mother and father who also met each other when they lived in adjoining streets although these streets were some miles and many decades distant from this district.

In 1851 Mary Callaghan, my great-great-great grandmother (she was Hannah Keogh, grandma Nally’s great-grandmother) was living in the area around New Islington, Pott Street, she was widowed by the age of 36 and left with five children to care for alone. She was Irish, born in 1815 , her eldest daughter Mary was born in Ireland in 1833 and the younger ones were born in Manchester. Her daughter Mary Callaghan married Laurence Nolan who was also born in Ireland. It seems they were born in Westmeath and must have emmigrated during the potato famine. They all lived in the same street ten years later. In the next decade they moved to Salford and their daughter Ellen Nolan married Matthew Keogh (whose father Daniel Keogh was born in Ireland) they brought Hannah Keogh into this world. Hannah Keogh (who married Arthur McNally) was the dearly beloved mother of my dearly beloved father who married his dearly beloved wife, my mother.

In 1851 my mother’s mother’s families were living not too many streets away in much the same conditions. George Clunie was living at 49 Portugal street, his son James Clunie’s future wife Martha Regan was living with her Irish born father, John Regan, a street sweeper and her capmaker mother, Sarah, not so far away on the other side of what was then St George’s road, now Rochdale Road.

By 1861 the Clunies had moved a few doors down Portugal Street to number 51. Martha’s father John and his family were nearby in Loom street. Martha and James would marry and give birth to Edward Clunie who married Laura Ann Ashman the parents of our beloved grandma Laura Armstrong (born Clunie).

Meanwhile, not too far away on the other side of the river Irk, Agnes Armstrong, born in Scotland and recently widowed was living at 64 Stocks Street with her two sons who had been born in Rochdale a few years earlier. Her younger son James Charles Armstrong would marrry Sarah Myers to produce Charles James Armstrong who married Annie Hodkinson to give birth to James Edward Armstrong, our grandad Jim, who married our dearly beloved grandmother Laura Clunie.

Sarah Myers was the daughter of Robert Myers and Jemima Baxter. Robert Myers marrried Jemima Baxter in 1853 but it seems they had already had a few children born before they married. Robert Myers was a pawnbroker at 294 Deansgate which is certainly in a pretty different category to the rest of the workers in this family.

Ancoats was the original ‘Cottonopolis’. The area described by Frederich Engels in his 1845 ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England’ the work of a 24-year-old German middle-class boy, who incredibly rejected all his bougeoise background to eventually team up with Karl Marx and start one of the most influential movements in history.

His impassioned descriptions of the slum living conditions of the workers in this area make for depressing reading. The exact areas he describes can be pinpointed on the map as dwelling places of our family. The most surprising thing about this work is the chapter on Irish immigration, which he begins by saying is an attempt to discover the causes and effects of this immigration. The analysis of causes is notable for its complete absence and the analysis of effects turns into a surprisingly rascist diatribe comparing the Irish to savages.Their southern facile character is used to living in filth, they only know potatoes and drunkeness. What does such a race need higher wages for he asks. They live with their pigs as Arabs live with their horses. They are specifically responsible for spreading the habit of going about with no shoes on their feet and generally responsible for bringing down the level of civilization of the English working class.

This is particularly upseting as Laurence Nolan is listed as an engine driver, which as I understand from other readings, was a job that was pretty much on a par with an airline pilot these days.

The most poignant irony is that much of these same living and working conditions can be seen today in 2010, in modern day China (and other cities of what we quaintly call the developing world). What we now call globalisation is pretty much the same as what one hundred and fifty years ago was called industrialisation and capitalism. Now it is carried out under the auspices of a system called communism which was sparked by this eager, young German boy, who, apalled at the conditons of the working class in Manchester, teamed up with a fellow German, Karl Marx, to create a movement that was meant to improve their condition.

In 1841 the life expectancy in Manchester was 26.6 years.