Page 173 - Just another English family (Sep 2019)

Note: Fred and Harry Oates are actually stepsons of Annie Soothill, although correctly shown in the census as sons of Walter. They are the children of Walter and Mary Agnes.
John Soothill (1823-1911) and Mary Briggs (1823-?) had had a large family of six children – three boys and three girls. By the time of the 1911 census, John was still alive. John – shown as an 88-year-old pensioned dyer’s labourer – was a widower living in Dewsbury with his 55-year-old daughter, Isabella, and her 26-year-old daughter, Mary Ethel, whose occupation was a rag sorter. In the 1911 census Isabella is using her maiden name of Soothill, so rather endorsing the possibility mentioned in the last chapter of Mary Ethel being illegitimate.
Of John and Mary’s other children, only Walter seemed to be in the 1911 census. Walter (1864-1918) had married Mary Agnes [SURNAME?] (1865-1901) in Dewsbury in 1885, but he seems to have re-married to Annie, a dressmaker born in Manchester, after Mary Agnes’s death in 1901. The two children – Fred and Harry Oates - in the census will be from Walter and Mary Agnes. Neither Fred (1894-1971) nor Harry Oates (1897-?) seems to have married or had issue. It is interesting to note that Walter and Annie’s household had a 15-year-old domestic servant, Annie Hawkins, who was born in Normanton, Yorkshire, and, thus, this household of house painter and dressmaker shows some evidence of being more affluent. Like his father, John, Walter and his wife, Annie, were living in Dewsbury. Walter died in Dewsbury in 1918.
So how do the entries in the 1861 and 1911 censuses for this grouping compare? This grouping is derived from John and Mary who were both born – and all their children – in Shelf, Yorkshire, but by the 1911 census they were living in Dewsbury. John as head of the household was shown as wool dyer and fifty years later in the 1911 census is shown as a pensioned dyer’s labourer so perhaps indicating his actual level of occupation. 88-year-old John is heading one household at another address in Dewsbury, while his son, 48-year-old Walter, was heading another household in Dewsbury. Walter is shown as a house painter with
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