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| Shoreditch in the 17th century with the walled city of London in the background |
James Philpot was born in 1767 to Philip
and Arabella. He was baptized in
Shoreditch, which was also at the time a place for crafthouses and small
agricultural production. James met Maria Boydell around 1780, and they
decided to marry and move to Bethnal Green to make a new life there. James seems to have been successful, whether
at farming or some craft. He leased land
and managed to pay taxes owed to the British landowner in the Tower Hamlets of
Bethnal Green. Bethnal Green at the end of the 18th century was its
own parish whose purpose seemed mainly to provide for the residents of the
ever-growing City of London.
Tower Hamlets in the 18th
century was a diverse community of Irish weavers, Ashkenazi Jews and folks from
the country. It was still a collection of small settlements surrounded by
farms, but this changed dramatically as the years progressed. It transformed through that century from
mainly agricultural interests to cottage industries, including weaving. James, though, with his wife Maria, made a
life for themselves and welcomed to the family at least two children, a son
John and a daughter Charlotte. Both born
in the latter part of the 18th century, they would have watched as
their sleepy hamlet of industrious weavers and farmers became ever more
crowded.
Charlotte grew up in this increasingly
chaotic life, as the boroughs started to be swallowed by the busy city next
door. The population density increased
dangerously. Poverty and cramped
quarters took over from sleepy hamlets and agricultural pursuits. Beside and around Charlotte was a growing
refugee and immigrant population. Ashkenazi
Jews were escaping pogroms and persecution from other parts of Europe and
settling here. The Irish brought their
weaving skills. More and more, Charlotte’s surroundings became like a city.
Charlotte’s father James, and later his son
John, continued to work the land, and rent from the local landowner. Bethnal Green, once the centre for
agricultural industry to feed the London populace, would become one of the
poorest slums in London. It became
infamous as the stomping grounds of the notorious Jack the Ripper, who found
the most vulnerable women as prey. Tower
Hamlets, a sleepy borough of Bethnal Green would be known as the East End of
London. While the East End is now
renowned for trendy restaurants and musical productions, in the 18th
century it attracted the poor and immigrants who were trying to make a go of it
in the big city, likely leaving the agrarian life of the countryside behind.
Charlotte’s life as an adult was
troubled. Who knows whether she fell for
a man, or somehow ended up on the streets of London alone and vulnerable. Regardless, she didn’t leave the Tower
Hamlets, and it was there, at the age of 20, and without a husband, that she
gave birth to a daughter: Sarah Davies. There is a family storyabout some Jewish parentage. Given the
neighbourhood was a refuge for fleeing Ashkenazi Jews, and the possible Jewish
roots of the name Davies, it is possible that Sarah’s father was Jewish. However recent DNA testing seems to refute
that theory.
Sarah would never know her father, and her
mother Charlotte had a difficult time making ends meet. Born into poverty, Sarah herself lived in and out of workhouses. Giving birth
to a child without a father would have made it difficult for Charlotte to get
work and care for Sarah. There is no doubt
that they struggled to make ends meet.
If you gave birth to an illegitimate child,
there was an expectation that you would make best efforts to find the father to
manage the care. Relief for the poor was
managed by parishes, and individual donations were what supported poverty
relief. There was very little government
care, so the poor were guaranteed a difficult burden, and poor unwed mothers
doubly so.
Workhouses were developed in the early
1700s as a way to shelter and feed the poor, and train the children of the poor
as labourers and servants. Some
workhouses were very large and accommodated hundreds of paupers. One such place
was St George in the East workhouse, which is where Charlotte Philpot found
herself as she neared her 50th year, having lived a life of poverty
in Tower Hamlets. It seems she never
married. She was ailing and unable to care for herself. You don’t need to read Dickens to imagine the
life she led. She would have been tired,
nearing another cold winter likely without work or proper shelter. She was
admitted on her own, and died there on September 2, 1834.
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| Notation beside Charlotte's name in this discharge record says "died". |
Charlotte left behind a daughter
Sarah. Just like her mother,
Sarah gave birth to a child at the age of 20.
She was not married, and this time her child took his mother’s surname:
Davies. Having eked out a living to that
point, Sarah’s only option to give birth was in the workhouse. On June 28, 1825, Sarah, likely scared and alone,
checked herself into the workhouse. Her
child’s first admission to a workhouse was the day of his birth, July 3, six
days later. Both were released August 15
with an allowance of 1 shilling 6 pence per week. Sarah understood the system, and she is what
was known as an “in and out”: someone who frequented the workhouse to get a dry
bed, a meal and a break from the depressive poverty of London.
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| Edward's first admission to a workhouse was on the day of his birth. |
In the 1830s, when Edward was still a
youngster, England was suffering an economic downturn. The numbers of poor flocking to London was
staggering, pushing expenditures on poor relief to 7 million pounds per year
(more than a three-fold increase from the end of the 18th
century). After a Royal Commission
studied poor relief in 1832, government moved to the creation of Poor Law
Unions which each had a workhouse. The
poor were to be housed, and not given any other type of relief. The only respite became admission to the
workhouse. It was in these institutions
that up to 6.5 per cent of the British population was housed at any given time.
Workhouses were walled-in
institutions. Inmates were classified as
infirm, poor, or mentally ill. There was
one entrance, and a bureaucracy to manage admissions and discharges. Workhouses became a bit of a business,
requiring bureaucratic oversight, and in some areas workhouses were a private
enterprise. Inmates, including children,
were set to work to offset the costs of running the institution and perhaps
even make a profit. Some workhouses
offered their inmates as apprentices and would even pay an employer to take on
an apprentice, ridding themselves of the burden.
Genders were separated, regardless of
family relationship (infants under 2 years of age could stay with their
mothers). Boys (under 14) were separated
from men and girls from women.
Everything was taken from you as you entered, to be returned from
storage after discharge. There was a
uniform of sorts. Everything about the
workhouse resembled jail. Conditions
were kept in a poor state in order to discourage poverty. The food was decent, though, and you can
imagine that the thought of a good meal and a bed, in whatever conditions, was
enough to ensure that Edward and Sarah would return frequently.
In 1841, Edward was considered a prisoner
of St Margaret’s workhouse and worked as a labourer. Imagine that the workhouse could house 420
inmates and had been operating for 100 years by the time Edward was a
resident/prisoner. Growing up in a
workhouse, which seems to have been Edward’s lot, meant learning to read and
working at general labour, such as spinning wool. This was not a happy place for a youngster,
but it seems that well over half of the inmates in this workhouse were
children. For a poor illegitimate child, it's possible the workhouse offered the most comfortable housing with the only possibility of learning a trade.
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| Boys at a workhouse around the time Edward would have been an inmate |
Sarah meanwhile was trying to make a life
for herself as a hawker. In 1852, Sarah
and Edward’s circumstances seemed to have changed for the better. They were living with a roommate. Edward was learning his trade as a French
polisher, while Sarah appears to have picked up a job as a servant, like their
roommate. Things were looking up for the
Davies family. This was the last time,
though that we can find a happy circumstance for Sarah.
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| Census record showing Sarah and Edward living together |
It is hard to know precisely what happened
to Sarah, but it appears as though her life in the workhouses wasn’t quite
over. After 1853, when Edward marries
Susannah Futcher, Sarah seems to disappear from his life. She continues her life as an “in and out”, and,
like a mirror of her mother, finds herself alone and ill at the age of 50 or
so. Her reasons for discharge from the
workhouse read: “dead”. It is possible
this is not our Sarah, but what we know for certain is that she never lived
with Edward after he married and began to have children. The last time Sarah and Edward lived together
was 1851. From that point, Sarah seems
to have been unable to break free from the life of poverty.
It’s hard to say why Edward seems to have
left his mother alone. We can only
imagine that he was tired of the life he was leading. He had an opportunity, with a wife and a
trade, to break free, and perhaps to him that meant leaving everything behind,
including his mother. We can only
imagine the trauma of working in a workhouse crammed with children and perhaps
not being able to see a chance of escape.
He would not have had a strong
bond with Sarah, because they would have only been together in the periods they
were not in the workhouse.
Sarah and Charlotte lived parallel lives:
both giving birth to illegitimate children when they were 20, living in and out
of workhouses, and then sadly dying alone in one. It was Charlotte’s grand-son, and Sarah’s
son, though, who managed, by getting a trade, to break free of poverty. It is interesting that even today, breaking
free from poverty often means generations of struggle and the right combination
of education, circumstance and perseverance to make it happen. For Edward, the workhouse is ironically where
he would have found his means of survival and ultimately spell the end of the
cycle for the Davies family, and consequently also the Bonds.
Sources:
Various Census, workhouse, tax
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol8/pp40-47
