Sometimes these anniversary items highlight how much has changed since they occurred and strangely how much things still stay the same. This is a case in point and involves the working relationship between manual workers and the Board and the shareholders. I would suggest that although over a century of welfare legislation has occurred between 1900 and today the relationship is still the same. Improvements have taken place but the power distribution is still the same. The time for forelock tugging may have passed but the power dynamics are still the same.
6th November Board meeting
The anniversary takes place on the 6th November 1900. At the Board meeting that day the Board were told some sad news. Jefferson, one of the gravediggers, had died. He had been ill for some time. It had been reported to the Board back in September that he was unlikely to return to work.
At the November meeting therefore the news of his death perhaps was not a surprise. The secretary, Michael Kelly, informed the Board that he had been asked to visit Mr Jefferson. He had complied. Jefferson took the chance to ask a favour of the Board. According to the minutes of the meeting Michael Kelly said he,
went to see him, (Jefferson) who asked that the company might give him a place of burial and allow his wife a little to bide her over the winter months.
Kelly placed the matter before the Chairman, John Pybus as a Board meeting was not scheduled till later in the month. John Pybus agreed that he could have a burial place and that Jefferson’s wife could have 10 shillings a week until the next Board meeting when the issue would be fully discussed.
As such, this situation was the one that presented the Board on the 6th November.
Long serving employee
At this meeting Kelly said that Jefferson had been employed by the Company for 34 years. He was one of the longest serving employees. He also said that only one payment of 10 shillings had been paid. The Board readily agreed that the burial place was agreed. However, upon reflection, it was agreed that Mrs Jefferson would only receive 5 shillings a week. This payment would discontinue at the end of March.
On the 4th December Mrs Jefferson wrote to the Board thanking them for their help.
William’s life
William Jefferson was born in Skidby in 1835. Or Cottingham. Or Newland as he seemed to change his birth place every census. Suffice to say that he was baptised as a non-conformist in June 1837 in Hull. His father was a coal porter and William’s early life was spent in the slums of Collier Street. This site is now subsumed under the Hull Interchange. By 1851 both William and his elder brother John joined their father as railway coal porters. Indeed the family address was cited as the Railway Depot.
By 1861 he had left the family home and was living in a tenement in New George Street. He still earned a living as a railway porter but was supplementing this as a general labourer. In 1867 William married Sarah Ann Howell.
1871 and after
The census of 1871 tells us that William and his new wife were living in Porter’s Terrace, Walton Street and his occupation was now listed as labourer at the Cemetery. William and Sarah were joined by a child called Joseph who was one year old. By 1881 the family had moved again. They now lived in Mason’s Terrace, Wellington Lane. William was listed as a General Cemetery labourer. The family had grown too. Joseph now 11 has two brothers, George and Amos plus a daughter Annie.
The 1891 census is the last that William appeared on. By that date the family had moved yet again. This time the address was in Seaton Street off Fountain Road. This house would have been a relatively new build at the time as the Swann Estate that most of Fountain Road was comprised of was only begun in the 1880s. He was cited as a general labourer and the family had grown once again. Joseph was now a printer and George was a boot and shoe maker. Amos and Annie were still scholars. The family had acquired Frederick and Alice, 5 and 3 year old respectively.
William died on the 28th October and was buried on the 31st. The cause of death was cited as yellow jaundice and exhaustion. The address at the time of death was 168 Waterloo Street.
William’s deathbed worries
It was this family that William worried about on his death bed. It was this family the Board graciously offered 5 shillings a week to compensate for the loss of the main breadwinner.
I know that, like me, you would like to know what happened to this family. Cast adrift in Victorian Britain, with no welfare safety network, no pension. Their only solace, if it can be called that, would have been at the top of Fountain Road and it was the Sculcoates Workhouse. What did they do to counteract this disaster?
Ice cream anyone?
The barebones of their struggle are recorded in the census returns. By 1901, some six months after William had died, their circumstances have changed. Sarah is now the head of the household and she is listed as an ice cream retailer. Her eldest son Joseph is also listed as an ice cream vendor as is young Frederick. George has left home as has Annie. Alice is still at school and Amos, now being 25, has no occupation listed. The family were making the ice cream and presumably selling it from the new address of 168, Waterloo Street. So they had pooled their resources and survived.
By 1911 the family were now living at 28, Aldbrough Street just off Cannon Street. Sarah was now retired and Joseph was running the business alongside Frederick. Alice was running a market stall where presumably ice cream was sold. George was still at school. And Amos? The 1911 census is interesting in that it wanted medical details of people who had ‘infirmities’. This ranged from ‘deafness’ to ‘imbecility’ and many things in between. Amos sadly fell into this bracket. He is listed as ‘feeble-minded’ and as such in a world where Victorian values were gauged upon how much you contributed he would have been classed as a burden. Yet another thing that William must have been troubled by as he lay on his deathbed.
The family breaks up
Amos died in 1920 and year before Sarah passed away. Joseph the eldest son had died in 1916 and the ice cream business died then too. Annie married and went to live in a terrace off Waterloo Street and Frederick went to live with them. George had left the family home long before and worked as a stevedore on Hedon Road. Alice had married on Boxing Day 1913 and so the family had splintered by the time Sarah died. I’m sure she would have been consoled, if that’s the right word, that Amos died before she did.
The grave that the Company had given to the family was only for two. William was the first to lie there and it was expected that Sarah would join him. With the death of Joseph these calculations went awry. Joseph occupied the second spot. However Michael Kelly, probably with some thought of his fellow worker William’s wishes, managed to squeeze another burial in. So a grave for two has three in it. Sadly there was no room for Sarah as Amos took this third spot. Amos died of heart failure.
So when Sarah died in the January of 1921 there was no grave for her to go. Frederick bought another space not far from the previous one and Sarah, his mother was laid to rest there. Sarah died of bronchitis.
Fair shares?
So what did I mean at the beginning about the relationship between a workforce and the owners? What has that got to do with anything in this story? I suppose this is where politics rears its ugly head so if you don’t want to hear that I’d suggest you dip out now.
Some of you may remember one or two articles where I have told of how the finances of the Cemetery were founded. How the initial shares were priced at £10 each and the issue was over-subscribed. You may also remember that the £10 was to be paid in instalments and only an initial £1 was paid to the Company. Over the life of the Cemetery occasionally the shareholders were asked to pay a little more but none of them ever had to pay the entire £10. Surprisingly there was also occasions when what is called ‘return of capital’ gave money back to the shareholders. In essence the shareholders risked very little.
Now we come to the reason why the people bought the shares in the first place. This was the expected return from owning shares that is known as a dividend. This is still current practice today in most capitalist countries.
Money for nothing
Even though the shareholders had not paid the full amount for their shares they still expected and received dividend payments. Over the life of the Cemetery the shareholders were paid dividends that made their initial outlay appear ridiculously small. Some times the dividend would reach 16 or 17 shillings per £1. And this would be paid every year. As you can see simply raking in such dividends over 2 years would defray the cost of the shareholder’s initial purchase of his or her share.
What has this to do with William Jefferson’s sad death? The point I’m labouring here is that at the AGM the year William died the dividend was set at 9 shillings. The same rate followed the next year. So each shareholder received 9 shillings for each share they owned. This would have included the members of the Board who took the step to reduce the payment to Sarah Ann Jefferson from 10 shillings to 5 shillings. What justification could they have had? Why did they think this was the right thing to do?
No I don’t have an answer. I suppose that Mrs Jefferson was grateful and who am I to criticise a decision made over a 100 years ago. But sometimes, just sometimes, something feels so wrong that you can’t allow it to pass by without comment. This is one of those. Sorry
Pete Lowden is a member of the Friends of Hull General Cemetery committee which is committed to reclaiming the cemetery and returning it back to a community resource.