I simply adore this evocative scene that looks as if it comes fresh from the BBC adaptation of Flora Thompson's Lark Rise to Candleford, not least that in this idle snapshot of a backwater lane in the village of Ramsbury, Wiltshire, you can see my great-great-great-grandmother, Martha, flanked by several of her grandchildren. A domestic cat wanders past between pest control duties in the nooks and crannies of the ancient cottages, and the residents of Whitehouse Lane (note the photographer's spelling mistake) pose for the camera; quite the cause célèbre in the early 1900s. That Martha wears no cap and has her sleeves pulled around her elbows is indicative of her pausing part way through her daily domestic duties to pose for the camera, a seldom-seen snapshot of the drudgery of the rural poor at the turn of the century.
The life of a nineteenth-century woman, with few exceptions, is not the narrative with which we are familiar from history books. We learn of Gladstone and Disraeli, of Victoria and the British colonisation of the globe, of wars waged and battles won in Crimea and Africa, of terrible disease, famine, pestilence and the slums of Britain's exploding urban centres. But what of a woman, born in Victoria's reign in 1847, who had to endure unmarried motherhood, marry two husbands, birth ten children, wave four off to far-away lands, bury another, spend time in prison and plead her case before the Magistrates in court countless times? Such was the life of Martha Marchant, as she was baptised at Holy Cross Church, Ramsbury, in 1847.
Baptised in its font, and later coming to rest in the churchyard, hers was a typical life of a rural woman. Pregnant - 'in the family way,' as it was then known - by a local plough-boy, John Johnson, at the tender age of eighteen and married to him at nineteen in the same church, Martha would go on to birth nine more babies. Her four daughters were destined to follow a very similar path of subservience and humility as her own; her sons were constantly in court for petty offences such as poaching, drunkenness or school attendance cases. Martha herself came up before the Magistrates several times in her younger days. Whether it was a bitter spat with a neighbour that led to a public display of umbrella-brandishing and hair-pulling in 1889 or a conviction for stealing saplings - presumably for firewood - the court records show that Martha had no trouble holding her own.
Her most memorable appearance in the local courthouse was a week before Christmas in 1889. Her daughter, Annie, not yet twenty, had fallen pregnant while not yet married and given birth to a baby boy in October. Harry, the boy's father, had been 'walking out' with Annie for two years but now refused to marry her. Annie, with no means of supporting her infant son, turned to the Magistrates court to sue the baby's father for acknowledgement of paternity. Martha fought vehemently for her daughter; explaining that it was she who had to break the news of the pregnancy to her daughter's beau at her home in Whitehouse Lane. One can imagine the scene unfolding: Harry stood awkwardly waiting for Annie near the kitchen door; Martha seated at the table.
'I have something on my mind that I should like to tell you, Harry,' Martha said, gravely.
'What is it?' Harry asked, though he could well imagine what was to come.
'Well...' Martha began. 'I believe... I believe there is something the matter with Annie.'
'Don't you believe it - it can't be!' Harry retorted.
Martha, knowing what it was to be an unmarried mother, continued calmly: 'I hope... I hope you won't turn your back on her.'
Harry replied: 'I shall never do that. As soon as I can, I shall make a home for her.'
Harry never made good on his promise of marriage, and by December, with yet another mouth to feed in the Johnson household, Annie approached the Magistrates to order Harry to acknowledge his son. He refused to answer to the accusation of paternity and was subsequently sentenced by the Magistrates Court: until his son's thirteenth birthday, he was ordered to pay 1s 6d weekly to Annie. A success for the Johnson family, yet all in a day's work for a woman hardened by life's hardships. Wed to a drunkard and no stranger to pain, Martha Johnson was mother and matriarch embodied; Ramsbury's answer to Queen Victoria in her own right.
Her death in at the age of eighty-five in 1932, twice widowed, brought her once again into the churchyard of Holy Cross Church for her final journey. She had been married at nineteen; widowed for the first time at fifty-nine and seventy-one when women got the vote. How life had changed since her girlhood. And how fortunate we are that she posed by the door of the little whitewashed cottage in Whitehouse Lane in her early sixties so we, over a century later, catch a glimpse of the head of the family: mother, grandmother, great-grandmother; denizen of a simple existence almost extinct from living memory.
Comments
Post a Comment