Page 179 - Just another English family (Sep 2019)

where 19 members are listed. We have five heads of household – Joseph (1863-?), Albert (1864-1946) and Thomas (1881-1959) who are all sons of Thomas (?-1897) and Betty Soothill (née Bedford) (1839-1911) and John William (1864-1929) and Edward (1880-1928) who are both the sons of Benjamin (1841-1919) and Harriet (née Woodsworth) (1843-1892).
The remarkable feature is that none of the 19 members listed is over 50 years of age. In other words, none of these could have been in the 1861 census. Betty Soothill – the mother of Joseph, Albert and Thomas – died a month or so before the 1911 census. Without Betty, the average age of the entries of this grouping in the 1911 census is around 25 years. Eight of the 19 members are under 21 years of age and seven are in the reproductive window of 18 to 50 years. There seems much scope for expansion among this grouping which 50 years earlier had only been two non-entries in the 1861 census.
Following their marriage in 1862, Thomas and Betsey had a fairly large family of six children – three girls and three boys. The eldest child, Joseph, was born in 1863 and at the time of the 1911 census was living with his wife, Mary Ellen (née Kendall) (1862-1938) in Brighouse, Yorkshire. They had had quite a large family and three of their boys - Walter (1890-1976), Harold (1891-1965) and Albert (1894-1979) - all married but after the 1911 census, so it is this chapter which considers the development of their families. Their other son, Fred (b.1887) had died the same year as his birth.
Walter (1890-1976) married Alice L. Taylor (1892-1975) in Halifax in 1919. They had two children – Bessie Taylor (1921-?) and Mary K. (1925-?). Bessie married in 1949 and Mary married in 1948, so one can only expect their parents, Walter and Alice appearing in the putative 1961 census.
Walter’s brother, Harold (1891-1965), married Emily Culpan (1892-1962) in Brighouse, Halifax, also in 1919. They had three children – Eileen (b.1920), Gordon
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