Eureka Moment
Pauline Stanley couldn’t understand why her Burrows family was impossible to trace, until a meeting with a newfound 90-year-old cousin revealed a tragic tale of murder, as Gail Dixon discovers
Pauline Stanley of Chelmsford explains how she broke through a brick wall and uncovered a terrible secret
The taint of scandal can follow a family through the generations, and many people go to great lengths to escape it. Moving hundreds of miles away from home or starting afresh under a new identity were commonplace for our ancestors following a particularly heinous offence like murder.
This can pose challenges for family historians like Pauline Stanley, who was keen to trace her Burrows family but met with brick walls wherever she turned. The answer lay in the awful tale of a young wife and a violent husband, as Pauline reveals.
My Brick Wall
I had discovered that my paternal great grandfather, named William Seymour, lived in West Ham, East London, and was married to an Emily Frances Burrows. I spent years searching genealogy websites for Emily Burrows and her birth family, all to no avail. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t appear on census returns or birth, marriage and death records. It was all very confusing.
My Eureka Moment
In 1900, William and Emily had a daughter called Emily Louisa Seymour, who was my great aunt. This was one of the few clues that I had to go on.
Tracing Emily Louisa forward, I discovered that she married Albert Edwards in 1925. Their daughter Winnie was born in 1929, and I wondered if she might still be alive. This year, I did some sleuthing on 192.com and was delighted to discover that Winnie was indeed still alive, and living in Ely, Cambridgeshire.
I wrote to her asking if we were related, and she telephoned me to say “Yes”. So I travelled to Ely to meet my newfound cousin, who celebrated her 90th birthday last year. As we chatted, the story of the Burrows family unravelled. It was an astonishing tale.
My Breakthrough
Winnie explained that Emily Burrows, her grandmother and my great grandmother, was actually born Emily Burrett. Her parents were James and Sarah
‘I spent years searching genealogy family’ sites for Emily and her birth
Burrett, and she had a brother called William who was born in 1864. They also lived in East London, in Bow.
William married a young woman called Ada Gubb Place, who worked as a prostitute. In 1900, the couple had a terrible row and he stabbed Ada several times. She died a day later. Seeking to avoid the disgrace of having a convicted murderer in the family, the Burrett family changed their name to Burrows, and some of them fled.
I was both shocked and saddened when
I heard this.
Ada was just 22 when she died, and in such terrible circumstances too.
I was determined to find out more about the couple’s story.
As we all know, murders tend to attract a great deal of press attention, and there were gruesome details about Ada’s case in historical newspaper articles I found on findmypast.co.uk. I also tracked down an account of the trial at oldbaileyonline.org. It made for chilling reading.
William Burrett met Ada Place when she was 14 years old and he was 30. Ada was born in Wandsworth in 1878, and had spent time in a Tower Hamlets workhouse. The couple married in 1900, but Ada continued to work the streets because William preferred to be her pimp instead of getting a job.
The couple found rooms in Alexandra Street, Plaistow, where Ada conducted her business while William sat in the back room. In the early hours of 26 August 1900, Ada told William that she had had enough and gave him an ultimatum. Either he went out to work, or she would leave. William flew into a rage, and stabbed her 14 times with a carving knife. He fled while Ada managed to stagger downstairs and called for help. She was rushed to hospital where she gave the police a statement before dying of her injuries. A manhunt began. The police found William in an upstairs room at his sister Emily Frances’ house, who knew nothing about his crime. William was taken to jail, where he wrote Ada a letter begging for forgiveness. But she died before the letter arrived.
The court case was held at the Old Bailey on 11 September, and the jury quickly found William Burrett guilty of murder. He was sent to Chelmsford Prison, and hanged on 8 October at 8am.
His father James fled, and was last heard of in Manchester. The rest of the family changed their name to Burrows to avoid being associated with the murder.
Now that I know about the change of name, I have been able to trace most of the Burrett family. Meeting Winnie and breaking down the brick wall has enabled me to complete the mystery branch of my tree.