Family Hero
Lorraine Tomlinson has been astonished to discover the tragedies that her great great grandmother had to endure. Gail Dixon shares her story
Lorraine Tomlinson’s amazing great great grandmother
Maria Watson’s life began in the workhouse, and she was forced to return there many times in order to survive. Her story reads like a Dickensian tragedy, set in the Liverpool slums where poverty and high infant mortality devastated families. Somehow, Maria found the courage to live on and, in later life, free herself from the grim workhouse walls.
Her story resonates with experiences that many of our urban female ancestors would have shared. Her great great granddaughter is Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine reader Lorraine Tomlinson.
“Maria was born in Liverpool’s Brownlow Hill Workhouse in 1853,” Lorraine explains. “I was shocked to discover that she was forced to enter the workhouse 157 times over the course of her life.”
Maria had a tough start, growing up in the city’s dockside slums. Her parents, Alexander Watson and Ann Newcome, were Irish immigrants and Alexander worked as a dock labourer.
“I was stunned to discover Maria appearing aged nine in criminal registers on ancestry. co.uk. She was charged with pickpocketing.” Newspaper archives revealed that Maria and her mother Ann had gone to St James’ Market with just a halfpenny to buy vegetables; but the stallholder refused to sell them such a small amount, and turned them away.
“It seems that Maria then found the stallholder’s purse, and upon returning it was accused of theft. Both mother and daughter were taken to the police station. Maria was acquitted, but Ann was sentenced to 14 days in prison.”
Maria later met Joseph Smith, a dock labourer, and they had three children, all of whom were born
157 ‘Maria entered the workhouse life’ times over the course of her
in the workhouse. The Brownlow records at Liverpool Central Library revealed that when Maria was admitted she said she had “no friends” to turn to.
“I don’t think she was using the workhouse as a hospital, because she was there so often in life. I felt frustration at Joseph. Why didn’t he support Maria, and prevent her from enduring the shame of the workhouse?”
Her first child, Joseph, was born in 1876, and grew up to become Lorraine’s great grandfather. However, his siblings fared less well. “Maria’s second son, Edward, died aged one of bronchitis, and his baby brother Alexander died of malnutrition.”
Joseph Senior died in 1881, leaving Maria alone with their son. Her luck appeared to change when she married William Greaves in 1882. “It seems she found security with William, because during their marriage she stayed out of the workhouse.”
Appalling tragedies were to come, however, with the birth of William and Maria’s four children. Their daughter Maria suffered from mental illness, and spent her life in an asylum. Jane, born in 1884, died when she was four weeks old of hereditary syphilis. A year later her sister, Florence, died at the same age.
“I found a coroner’s report into Florence’s death in the newspaper archives. William had been drinking, and rolled over onto the baby while asleep, suffocating her.” Two years later, their son Albert died aged 18 months, of inflammation of the lungs.
William passed away in 1891, which deprived Maria of her stability again. “I found her going back into the workhouse many times over the next two decades.”
Happily, Maria’s life improved in her later years. After 1911 she avoided the workhouse and lived in lodging houses or with her married sister Jane Taufall.
Maria lived to the age of 70, dying in 1923 from senility and arterial sclerosis. “Researching her, I sensed her despair, but also her immense strength and bravery,” Lorraine says. “Maria proves the adage that you never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have left.”