Page 155 - Just another English family (Sep 2019)

The fourth brother to survive childhood was Herbert Ashworth (1882-1965). Herbert married Annie Barrett (1878-1954) in Croydon in 1910. They had two children – Geoffrey Edward (1910-2003) and Joan H. (1914-?). Geoffrey married Gladys Winifred (known as Jill) Pascall in Fulham in August 1938. They had two children – Judith M. (1941-?) and Gerard (1944-?). Meanwhile, Geoffrey’s sister became Joan Christopher in 1951 after marrying in Surrey.
In terms of changes in the location of residences and the type of occupations pursued, this grouping shows much greater changes than any of the other groupings. In the 1861 census the 25-year-old head of household, William, was identified as a stuff presser together with his involvement in Methodism. His 19- year-old brother, Abraham, is shown living in the same household working as a woolstapler. By the 1911 census, William has died (in 1893), but Abraham is there as a 69-year-old retired stuff presser still living in Halifax. With this summary, this grouping sounds much like some others – that is, very little social or geographical mobility. But there is much more to tell.
William’s widow, Margaret, is now living in Wallington, Surrey, in the household of her daughter, Ruth Emma (1878-1954), who had married Arthur John McArthur, a bank clerk. Their other children – Alfred (aged 47), Walter (aged 45) and Herbert Ashworth (aged 28) – are showing massive shifts in the types of occupation. Alfred, whilst still living with his family in Yorkshire, is now in Harrogate as headmaster of Ashville College, and he is also a minister of the United Methodist Church. The other two brothers – Walter and Herbert Ashworth - who are still around in 1911 are both living in the Wallington area of Surrey. Walter is shown as a civil service examiner in the accountant general’s department of the General Post Office, while Herbert is identified as a bank clerk. William and Margaret’s absentee eldest son, William Edward, who will almost certainly be a missionary in China at the time of the 1911 census of England and Wales, has his son, Victor, as a representative. Victor is shown as a medical student, living as a boarder in a household in Bermondsey, London. In short, this grouping had within a generation accomplished a quite remarkable journey of socio-economic and geographical mobility. It is the only Soothill grouping who had made such a transition in England & Wales by the first
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