Life of Kitty Wilkinson , livre ebook

Michael Kelly
The Life of Kitty Wilkinson
* * *
Dedicated to My Mother and Father
Copyright Michael Kelly 2000, 2012
Published by AJH Publishing, an imprint of Liverpool Authors www.liverpoolauthors.com
The right of Michael Kelly to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
eISBN: 978-0-9568414-4-5 (Printed edition: 978-0-9564527-2-6)
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Contents
Acknowledgements
Tributes to Kitty Wilkinson
1. Eighteenth Century Liverpool
2. Catherine Seaward 1785-1794
3. Low Mill, Caton 1796-1804
4. Return to Liverpool 1807-1815
5. The Young Widow 1815-1831
6. Cholera 1832
7. Vauxhall District
8. Kitty and Queen Victoria
9. William Rathbone
10. Thomas and Kitty 1846-1856
11. The Need for Cleanliness
12. Kitty’s Final Years
13. In Honour of Kitty Wilkinson
Appendices
Kitty Wilkinson’s Family History
Eric Victor Demont, Kitty’s great-grandson
Orphans
Donations
Dates on Death Certificate
Silver Tea Service
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
In writing this book I have received most generous help. I am especially indebted to Mr. Thomas Morley for all the help and guidance during the four years it has taken me to prepare this memoir of Kitty Wilkinson.
I should like to express my gratitude to John and Molly Boyd for the hours they spent reading and correcting my manuscript and giving me the benefit of their advice. Also, I would like to thank John Boyd for his photographic skills. I owe a special debt to Canon Nicholas Frayling, Rector of Liverpool, for his encouragement and help in reading my manuscript, and to Margaret Galvin, editor of ‘Ireland’s Own’, for publishing my article ‘The Great Kitty Wilkinson’.
I would like to thank Mr. Bernard Morgan for his knowledge of Liverpool Irish History and for his unwavering assistance, I would like to thank the staff of the Public Records Office, Central Library, Liverpool for the help and assistance during the last four years. Also I would like to thank Emma Challinor archivist of the Rathbone Papers, Sydney Jones Library, The University of Liverpool, for her very valuable assistance.
I am also indebted to John E Moore, archivist, and the staff of The Maritime Archives & Library, Merseyside Maritime Museum, who drew my attention to material I should otherwise have missed. I should also like to thank them for permission to reproduce the William Morris Sea Chart of Liverpool Bay.
I should like to thank Roberta Zonghi, Curator of Rare Books, Boston Public Library, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America for undertaking the search for the biographical article on Mr. Joseph Tuckerman. I would also like to thank the Librarian at the Caton branch of the City of Lancaster Library.
Last, but not least, I would like to thank my friends who have had to put up with me.
Tributes to Kitty Wilkinson
Lady in the window
I heard of a Saint, (I must find her name), Who fought for her friends when the cholera came. She had running water, they had not, So she took in their washing and boiled the lot! She stemmed the tide of that dread disease, She prayed to God, but not on her knees! Her work-worn hands and aching arms Spoke more clearly to Him than upraised Palms. He gave her strength, and through His grace Her work has its remembered place A window on a quiet stair, A tribute still, to those who care. Janet Marshall 2003
In 1927 The Right Hon. T.P O’Connor, M.P. wrote:
The self-devotion of this woman instinctive, untaught, uninspired by anybody but her own brave and beautiful character – to the relief of suffering and want is really an incredible story. She seems like some ‘hound of heaven’ to pursue misery, suffering woman, half-starved children, wherever they might be hidden.
She may be described as the discoverer of the methods of fighting the terrible scourge of cholera when it came to Liverpool in 1832.
Chapter one
Eighteenth Century Liverpool
Catherine (Kitty) Seaward was born into a skilled working class family in Derry, Ireland, on the 24th Oct 1785. Her mother was engaged in spinning and lace making and was competent in reading and writing. The occupation of her father is not known although it has been suggested that he was a soldier. Derry City, the main town of Londonderry, stands on a hill close to where the River Foyle falls into Lough Foyle. It is ninety-five miles northwest of Belfast, the chief industries at that time being flour milling, shipbuilding, bacon curing and the making of linen clothes.
Ireland during the Eighteenth Century had its own Parliament, and was a united country. However, it was in the firm grip of England and unrest and poverty were evident in all quarters. It was around this time that ‘The Society of United Irishmen’ came into existence. The main aim of the Society was to bring all Irishmen together with electoral reform and the extirpation of English influence. At its foundation the Society stood broadly on the principles of Thomas Paine’s “Rights of Man” (published, 1792 ) The aim of the Society was to bring all men, Protestant and Catholic, together. However the Society of United Irishmen and its leaders were put down on the orders of Westminster in 1793.
George III was on the throne, William Pitt was Prime Minister and England had been drawn into war with France in February 1793. Eighteenth-century Ireland still retained its own language, but the land had long been divided up into large estates by people who spoke only English.
It was in Derry that Catherine spent the first nine years of her life under the influence of her parents. Catherine had a younger brother and baby sister when her parents were making plans to leave Derry, for Liverpool in 1794. Although she would never see Ireland again her childhood memories and experiences in Derry were the foundation that would carry her through life to face whatever the future had in store.
Liverpool was becoming a vast seaport and in 1751 the total tonnage of the British and foreign vessels that entered the port amounted to 65,406. In 1791 (just before the French war) the tonnage had risen to 539,676 and in 1835 to 1,768,426. The town had a population of about 60,000 in 1794, having doubled since 1760. However, from 1794 to 1831 the population of the borough had risen to 165,000.
The immediate result of this immense growth was a steady expansion of the dock system, which, until 1825, continued to be owned and directed by the Town Council. Liverpool, during the time of Catherine’s impending arrival, was like a new frontier’s town; people started to pour in from everywhere. With it they brought hope, fear, greed and honesty, yet for all the problems people would encounter it was an exciting time. Most had their faces pushed into the dirt by those who exploited them, some grew rich in this gold rush and the rest tried to survive and build a new future.
Shipbuilding was at its height during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The yards to the north and south of the docks were famous for the slavery clippers which they turned out. The yards were also employed between 1778 and 1811 for the building of no less than twenty-one vessels of various types for the Royal Navy.
From that time on the shipbuilding industry slowly went into decline. This period also saw the rise and fall of the whale fishery and oil refineries. It was in 1764 that the Greenland whale fishery began with three vessels. It reached its height in 1788, when twenty-one ships of 6,485 tons in total, left Liverpool for Greenland. Between 1810 and 1816 there were only two whalers belonging to the port and in 1823 the last survivor made its final voyage.
James Stonehouse in “The Streets of Liverpool” wrote:
Fish as an article of food was more thought of and in greater request in olden times than at present. From the religious faith of the people, they were constrained to consume fish at particular seasons of the year, and on many particular occasions.
Salmon was so plentiful in the Mersey that Liverpool was able to sell it to other towns. Up to forty-five other types of fish were reported to be in the river, and at one time herrings were caught in great quantities.
Fishery, while it existed, gave employment to a large oil refining factory beside the Queens Dock and the smell of the whale oil would permeate the air along the waterfront. The herring fishery also gave a great deal of employment and several curing houses existed in the town. At one time these were sited in Wallasey and Garston. James Stonehouse also wrote:
The disturbance of the Mersey waters by the innumerable steamships and vessels constantly present on their surface, and their pollution by the Manchester dye-works, the sewage of the places they pass, and the reckless and improvident conduct of the fishermen themselves. They have all conduced to destroy the finny tribes that once made these waters their habitation.
The fishing industry deserted the port to be concentrated at the east-coast ports and vanished entirely by 1835. The town had three iron foundries, but they could not stand the competition from the coal field towns. However, the river that flowed down to the sea was the life blood of the town and energy for its people. It was also the gateway to the New World, for the goods manufactured in the towns of Lancashire,