Beyond the Names: What Happened to Alexander Peden and Mary Anne Emily Holtum?

Alexander Peden was born in 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He is my second great-grandfather. Like many on my father’s side, he had a humble working-class life. Eventually he worked his way up to a career as a brewer, but his journey there was anything but easy.

Victorian England, in addition to being known for the Industrial Revolution, was a nation of children: one out of every three citizens was a child under fifteen. This meant that children were a very important part of the labour force, whether in the city factories or on rural farms.

Families thought little of giving away their children to other family members or even to other families to raise as labourers or apprentices. On the farm, children as young as six worked hard. Boys would guard livestock, shoo away birds, sow and harvest. They worked in markets, and did labour around the house. As they matured, their work would increase to more difficult physical labour. Even farmers with larger holdings lived a meagre existence.

Such a life appears to have been the destiny for young Alexander Peden.

Alexander

Eshiel's farm

Alexander’s parents were Thomas Peden and Rachel Binnie. They were married in 1846 in Edinburgh where they lived. Alexander was their first-born, but before he was 5 years old, he had already been shipped off to his grand-father Alexander Binnie’s farm in Peeblesshire County. The farm was 500 acres and employed 16 labourers. Grand-father Alexander was 72 and married to Jannet, 22 years his junior, and his second wife. Alexander was in name a Peden, but John Binnie, Rachel's brother, was listed as Alexander's father in the census.

Alexander would have worked on the farm, and not seen much of his mother and father and their growing family. As a child in Victorian England working on a farm for his uncle, we can imagine that Alexander's life was anything but spoilt. Like many children living at the time, he worked, ate and worked again. There was no indication that he was attending school.

Address of the Peden grocery store
in Peebles

By 1861, Alexander, now 15, had left the Binnie farm and was working for his father Thomas at his grocery store in nearby Peebles. The Pedens had two more sons, John (13) and James (1). Alexander also had a sister (8). They were all living on the main street of Peebles, likely above the store, in a relatively large space with at least eight rooms. Jeanie, the daughter, was the only child attending school, while John and Alexander were working in the grocery store with their father.

Alexander had grown up on the farm, likely working hard to earn his keep, and then moved on to the grocery business. By 14 he had been working either on the farm or in the store for a decade. He didn't have much of a childhood by today's standards.

Mary Anne Emily

In 1846 in England, John and Elizabeth Holtum baptized their daughter Mary Ann Emily in Walmer, Kent. Walmer is a seaside town that has been around since the Roman era. The Walmer Castle is the most imposing site in the town. In 1861, the Holtum family lived nearby the castle and John worked as a builder employing six men and boys in his small business. In addition to their eldest daughter, Mary Anne Emily, the Holtums had three other daughters, the youngest being seven years old. They were firmly of the middle class, employing a servant named Mary who came from the nearby town of Deal.

By 1871, however, the Holtum's luck had changed. John had died in the intervening period, leaving his widow and daughters to fend for themselves. They continued to live on Castle Street, and took in a boarder, 23 year-old businessman James Cooke, to make ends meet. At 24, Mary Anne Emily did her best to help her mother, who, at 52, was still relatively young.

Alexander and Mary Anne Emily Start a Family

That same year, Mary Anne Emily met Alexander Peden. Perhaps Alexander was on a buying trip for his father’s grocery business. They married in Kent and within ten years had six children and moved 200 miles north to Castle Gresley where Alexander worked as a brewer. The brewery there took advantage of natural spring waters that were also reportedly haunted by a woman in white (hence called "White Lady Springs").

Ten years later, things for the Peden family had become troubled. Two children had been added to the family, the youngest now six years old. Alexander had a live-in nurse, Betsy Henderson. Mary Anne Emily, mother to all eight children, had left the family home and moved north to Edinburgh, Scotland. There she rented a room in a large home owned by bank messenger Thomas Lewis at 38 West Register Street. His wife and four grown children lived there with him. They were relatively well off, with more servants (eight) than family members, and a home large enough to accommodate the family, servants and 13 lodgers. Mary Anne Emily was the only woman among the lodgers, and the men were all there as students or on business. I imagine that Mary Anne Emily would have had to be quite self-possessed to be living as a boarder in a large house in a city far to the north of the quiet seaside town of Walmer where she was born.

There is no way to tell from the records why Mary Anne Emily left her family behind in England. She kept the name Peden, and, as there were no available divorce papers, Mary Anne Emily and Alexander seem to have stayed married.

Home of Mary Anne Emily in 1901
5 Springvalley Gardens, Edinburgh

Alexander died before the next census came around in 1901. By that time, Mary Anne Emily was living on her own in an apartment in Edinburgh. Four of her children had moved in together in the same city, with Isobel Mary Peden (my great-grandmother) listed as the head of the family and working as a book-keeper. Their apartment was a short three minute walk, literally around the corner, to their mother’s. There seems to have been no hard feelings between the children and their mother, as the children moved from their home in England north to Scotland to be near their mother.

We can imagine any number of scenarios that divided the Peden family in the late 1800s. Perhaps Betsy was more than a nurse to Alexander. Perhaps Mary Anne Emily had had enough of caring for eight children and needed her own adventure. Perhaps Alexander was an unpleasant sort, or maybe it was Mary Anne Emily who was uncooperative. No matter the reason, it was unusual for a mother to leave the family in the latter part of the 19^th century. This alone means that things had gone very wrong in the Peden household. The fact that four of the children left their family home when they were grown to live closer to their independent mother perhaps meant that it was Alexander that they blamed for the family break-up.

Mary Anne Emily died at the age of 73 back in Kent, where she was born.

My grand-mother tells plenty of stories of her adventurous Peden uncles, some of whom perished in the Great War. There must have been a streak of independence and resilience in Mary Anne Emily, which was passed down to her children. Three of the boys never married, perhaps having seen the darker side of that institution.

Interestingly, while her daughter Isobel Mary seems to have had a relatively stable relationship with her husband, George Maxwell, their daughter, also named Isobel and with a similarly courageous streak, had a marriage that did not endure… Perhaps a story for another day.