Real Lives

When their eldest son William met with his fatal accident in May 1881 it is almost certain that William and Hannah Cheeseman (by then Chisman) were again living at Winfrith.  They were not however to resettle there immediately and within at most eighteen months they had again moved. 

William was once more hired as a shepherd, this time at Church Knowle on the Purbeck Hills, some eight miles to the west of Winfrith. Two years after the death of young William, Hannah bore her last child, a son, who was born at Church Knowle in 1883.  Hannah was by then aged thirty-five, while William was fifty-five.

It is known that at least one of his sons did not consider William to be a good father.  Indeed there is a suggestion that William was in fact a drunkard. When the Chismans were living at Blacknoll it is very possible that James Hibbs and William’s mother Amelia had been a restraining influence.  However, with their deaths that influence had ended and perhaps the material situation of William and Hannah had simultaneously deteriorated.  The move to Milton Abbas, the return to Winfrith and the further move to Church Knowle indicate a less settled state and family tensions could have been heightened by the death of the eldest son.

After the birth of their last child in 1883 matters clearly worsened.  Did an ageing William resent his younger wife’s energy?  Did a deeper resentment and memory of the circumstances of their marriage irritate him? Was he naturally a drunkard, or was he provoked by circumstances? Was he angered by some element in Hannah’s behaviour?  The questions readily present themselves, but the situation in the Chisman household remains hidden.  There is, however, one certainty:  William and Hannah were to part.
 
The date and circumstances of their separation are not known.  Perhaps it was after a return from Church Knowle to Blacknoll that Hannah left William, taking the children with her. Perhaps the family had moved to Portway at Winfrith and William had then deserted them.  All that is certain is that at some point before the end of 1890 Hannah found herself installed at Portway Farm with some of her children.  Hannah had become the head of the household and of William there was no sign.

Subsequent events sadly afford no reason for believing that Hannah’s separation from William was without animosity.  If the situation had been such that William had been forced out of the family home it would have been a very difficult episode.  In Victorian England the husband was (and was expected to be) the master of the household.   It is most probable that it was Hannah that had departed.  If so this would reflect her resolve and perhaps William’s condition.  It is possible that Hannah received help from her own brothers, one of whom is believed to have owned land in the vicinity.  (If any help had come from her brother John it would indeed have been an extreme irony.)

Even had she received support, Hannah nonetheless found herself with the responsibilities of a mother, married only in name and without the help of a husband.  Yet the relative positions of Hannah and William had changed and would continue to do so.  Since a disgraced Hannah had returned to Blacknoll some twenty years earlier the wheel had almost turned full circle.  Whatever William’s feelings had been towards Hannah at the time of their marriage, he must at least have seen that marriage as assuring himself of support and comfort in old age.  That was now a hope or expectation shattered.

Portway lies close to Winfrith village as it is approached from Blacknoll.  The beginning of 1891 saw Hannah at Portway Farm, with her eldest daughter Annie, then aged twenty-one, and her three remaining sons, aged fourteen, eleven and seven years.  Her other two daughters had left home, but one was working as a domestic servant at nearby Fossil Farm House.  It is clear that despite the adverse circumstances Hannah was coping.  It is even possible that without William she enjoyed a relative prosperity.  Perhaps at Portway Farm she was indeed a small tenant farmer.

William Chisman’s condition, however, was very different. Now in his sixties, he was probably living at Blacknoll, alone, and possibly finding it increasingly difficult to work to keep himself.  His final years were truly a period of decline. For a person alone, with no means and no family support, employment was imperative.  If through ill-health, unreliability or simply lack of employment William had been unable to work, then his situation was precarious.  It would seem that this was the path that William trod and eventually, unable to support himself, he entered his last haven before the grave.  By at latest the end of 1900 William was a pauper and an inmate of the Union Workhouse, Wareham, the very place where over thirty-five years earlier the seventeen-year-old Hannah Hibbs had given birth to her illegitimate son.

If William’s wife or children knew where he was, it appears there was no contact between them.  If he had not abandoned his family, they had certainly abandoned him.  William died on 23 January 1903.  He was aged seventy-six.  His body was not brought ‘home’ by his family, but was buried in a churchyard near the workhouse.  He had bequeathed his children only his name, Chisman.
 
Some years earlier Hannah had moved the short distance from Portway Farm to Fossil Farm Cottage.  There in 1901, as head of the household, she and her two youngest sons occupied four rooms.  Her sons were then young adults aged twenty and seventeen.  The elder worked as a ‘farm carter’; the younger as a farm labourer.  At least one of the two youngest Chisman daughters had already married.  Although Annie remained a spinster, she was no longer in the household.

In the next few years Hannah’s two youngest sons married and it seems likely that Hannah went again to live with her daughter, Annie, somewhere in Portway.   Certainly mother and daughter were both resident in Portway at the time of Hannah’s death.  Hannah, born ten years after Queen Victoria had come to the throne, lived on through the Edwardian years, dying just a month before the death of Edward VII.

Hannah died on the 29 March 1910. She was aged sixty-three.  Her death certificate records that she was the ‘widow of William Chisman, Shepherd’. 

Hannah had grown up at Blacknoll and spent much of her married life there.  Then after the brief periods at Milton Abbas and Church Knowle she had returned to Winfrith to settle finally at Portway, at the edge of Winfrith Newburgh village.  At the other end of the village stands the church where Hannah had been christened and married and which had witnessed the christening of all but one of her children.  Fittingly Winfrith churchyard became her final resting place.

Hannah’s grave lies inconspicuous, close by the lych-gate.  It is marked by a modest, but dignified headstone: a silent witness made poignant by knowledge of the life it commemorates.  The stone bears no reference to her husband William.

On 13 December 1864, Hannah Hibbs gave birth to a son. The child was named Frank Edwin Hibbs.  The birth took place in the Union Workhouse at Wareham.  The child’s father, Hannah’s own brother, John, had also left the family home, but his circumstances were very different from Hannah’s.  Five months earlier, in July 1864, John had married.

The workhouse had provided a refuge for Hannah, but she could not remain there indefinitely. What was to be become of her and her child and in what manner did Hannah’s situation exercise the mind of her father?  He had lost the benefit of her services in the cottage, but did he want her to return and could he let her do so?   Her absence from home would have been evident to neighbours and the reason apparent.  Moreover, any attempt to conceal the paternity of Hannah’s child would not have prevented speculation among the Blacknoll community.  Yet Hannah was to return to Blacknoll.

The sequence of events that unfolded over the next three years is unclear. However, early in 1867, just two years after the birth of Hannah’s child, the Hibbs’ neighbour Jonathan Cheeseman died, aged seventy-four. Perhaps James Hibbs and the newly-widowed Amelia Cheeseman were already on friendly terms.  Possibly James had confided in Amelia and sought her advice about Hannah.  Whatever the nature of their previous acquaintance, following the death of Jonathan a closer relationship developed between them.  It would not have been unreasonable for James and Amelia, widower and widow, to have sought mutual solace and support.

It is not known whether Hannah had by then returned to Blacknoll, with her child.   However there can be little doubt that she was the subject of discussion between James and Amelia and it is not unlikely that it was Amelia who proposed a remedy to Hannah’s predicament.  Whether Amelia took the initiative or whether the proposal arose in another manner, Hannah’s situation was to be resolved.  She would marry Amelia’s son, William Cheeseman, a bachelor twenty years Hannah’s senior. William had first encountered Hannah as a young girl or at latest when she was just adolescent.  He would have seen her grow into a young woman.

For William the prospect of entering his later years alone, without help or companionship, must have been unwelcome.  Perhaps his nature had prevented his marrying previously; perhaps a lack of opportunity. Yet even had he felt strongly the wish to marry, could he in normal circumstances have contemplated marriage with Hannah or, importantly, she with him?  But circumstances were not normal and Hannah’s feelings towards William and marriage were probably of little account.  Practical considerations would have prevailed.  . 

William and Hannah were married at Winfrith on 6 August 1868.  Hannah was aged twenty and William was forty (though on the marriage certificate claimed to be only thirty-seven).

Their marriage was not the only one to take place in Winfrith church in that summer of 1868.  Exactly one month later, on September 6, Hannah’s father, James, and William’s mother, Amelia, became man and wife.  James was sixty-seven years of age and Amelia was seventy.  The witnesses at the marriage ceremony were their newly-married children, William and Hannah.

William and Hannah set up home at Blacknoll.  Hannah, long used to domestic chores and living in a male household, was perhaps better prepared than William.  The latter now found himself in an entirely new situation as head of a household and with a young wife.  He also found himself with a stepson.  More than that, it was the child of his wife’s brother, a younger man well-known to William and a man whom he would continue to encounter.  Some sense of resentment on William’s part would be understandable.  It is not impossible that this might have reinforced any feeling he harboured that Hannah was indebted to him for having rescued her from her plight.

William Cheeseman began his married life in a less uncertain world than that into which he had been born.  In 1837 the young Victoria had come to the throne and by the second half of the nineteenth century Britain was a confident and prosperous nation.  Not every citizen, however, shared in that prosperity. Life for agricultural workers remained far from idyllic.  Employed as a farm labourer, William would have led a relatively hard working life for poor wages and would have been fortunate if he enjoyed security of employment.  It is possible that the Cheeseman’s situation had been eased if, as seems probable, William’s elderly father-in-law, James Hibbs, owned or rented a little land, which through subletting or exploitation, would have augmented meagre incomes.

In July 1869, within a year of their marriage, William and Hannah had their first child, a daughter, Amelia Annie, known as Annie.   A year later Hannah gave birth to a son.  He took his father’s name, William.  By 1878 a further two daughters and a son were born to the couple.   Surprisingly perhaps the Cheesemans’ younger son was given the name John.  If William had felt antagonism towards Hannah’s brother, would he have allowed his own son’s name to remind him of John Hibbs?   Meanwhile, however, Frank, the child of Hannah and John, had left the Cheeseman home to live with his own father and his stepmother.

Interestingly, in this period the surname of the family was evolving. In the church records the children remained Cheeseman, while in the civil records the family name had become Chisman.

This period also saw the passing of the older generation.   In December 1875 Hannah’s father, James Hibbs, had died and was buried at Winfrith. He was aged seventy-five.  He and Amelia had enjoyed seven years of marriage.  Widowed for a second time, Amelia lived only a further eighteenth months and died in June 1877, aged seventy-eight.  She too was buried at Winfrith.

Then, sometime between the latter part of 1878 and early 1880, William and Hannah moved with their children from Blacknoll to Higher Hewish, in the parish of Milton Abbas. It is possible that the deaths of James and Amelia changed the circumstances of William and Hannah; possibly releasing them from an obligation of care, possibly removing from them the use of land.  At Higher Hewish William took employment as a shepherd and probably received better wages than he was getting at Winfrith.   The family had earlier connections with Milton Abbas, where Jonathan Cheeseman had once worked, and the choice of Higher Hewish was probably determined by the fact that William’s half brother also worked there in that period.

At Milton Abbas in December 1880 Hannah bore another son, George. Any joy at the birth of a further son was to be short lived.  A few months later, in May 1881, the Chisman’s eldest son, William, was killed in an accident in which he was run over by the wheel of a coach.  He was just ten years old.

At that time child mortality through illness or accident was high, but that fact would have been of little comfort to the family.  The children had lost a brother; and Hannah, having just brought a son into the world, saw another taken from her.  William too could not have been indifferent to the death of his eldest son and namesake.
 
Young William’s fatal accident took place at Winfrith, suggesting that the family had returned there; a suggestion reinforced by the fact that William was once more working as a farm labourer.  It is possible that the Chismans had never intended to stay long at Higher Hewish.  It is equally possible that William had been hired there for a fixed period and that for some reason was not re-engaged.

Whatever circumstance prompted the return to Winfrith, events of the ensuing years would suggest that all was not well in the Chisman household.

To be continued……..

Jonathan Cheeseman was an agricultural labourer, sometimes shepherd; a man of little substance. He was born in 1794 in the Dorset village of Litton Cheney, but even before his marriage in 1817 he had embarked on a series of moves from parish to parish in a small area to the east of Dorchester.   It was there, at Tincleton, in the summer of 1821 that Jonathan’s wife died.  His feelings on the loss of his wife after just four years of marriage were threaded with concern.  How could he both work and care for his two young sons left motherless?

Whatever the immediate solution, Jonathan’s situation was relieved when two years later he remarried.  His second wife was Amelia Vincent, some four years younger than Jonathan and aged about twenty-five at the time of their marriage in May 1823.  Within a year Amelia bore Jonathan a daughter.  Four years later, in 1828, Amelia gave birth to a son, William.  Unsurprisingly William would in due course become an agricultural labourer like his father.  He too at times would work as a shepherd.

As the previous century had approached its end many rural communities had begun to lose their stability. Changes in agricultural practices and mechanisation meant that Jonathan had grown up at a time when rural labour was becoming a commodity and agricultural employment increasingly insecure.  This insecurity combined with falling wages, brought social unrest and discontent to the countryside.  Jonathan’s periodic changes of home and employer possibly owed something to his temperament, but almost certainly owed as much to the conditions of his time.

At William’s birth the Cheesemans were living at Piddletown, but shortly afterwards they moved to Tolpuddle, where in 1830 Amelia had a second daughter.   It is not improbable that the family was still in Tolpuddle during the historic events there in 1834 and possibly was acquainted with one or more of the “martyrs” or their families.   Where the Cheesemans lived in the years that immediately followed is not known, only that they were included in the Athelhampton 1851 census, but finally they settled at Blacknoll at Winfrith Newburgh.

Blacknoll lies to the north of Winfrith village, at the edge of what was then a tract of wild heath.   As the land rises towards the modest height of Blacknoll Hill, there is a scattering of cottages, a few forming a row. They housed a close-knit community; several families representing a large proportion of its number.  It was for the most part a community of rural labourers and their families, largely uneducated and poor.  Many of the cottages were small, one-up-one-down dwellings that sometimes housed a family with perhaps half a dozen children.  A few of the Blacknoll families owned or leased small parcels of land, but if the inhabitants of Blacknoll were not in the desperate plight suffered by many people, this was a place untouched by prosperity.  Poverty in the countryside was acute and the produce from a garden or the benefit of additional occasional work could make a critical difference to the household economy.  

Already established at Blacknoll was the family of James and Hannah Hibbs, both of whom had their roots in Winfrith. Like Jonathan Cheeseman, who was his senior by seven years, James Hibbs, was an unschooled agricultural labourer and for the Hibbs, as for the Cheesemans, daily existence was simple and rude.
 
It was in May 1823 (just forty-eight hours before the marriage of Jonathan and Amelia Cheeseman) that James Hibbs had married Hannah Cox.  Their first child arrived within months of their marriage, but probably died in infancy.  Almost seven years elapsed before the birth of their next known child.  While it is not impossible that James Hibbs had been absent from home for a significant period, it is more probable that in the intervening years there were other children, untraced, who also had died as infants.  However, even if seven years of the marriage had been barren, Hannah then gave birth with a remarkable regularity.  In the years 1830 to 1844, she bore three daughters followed by five sons (one of whom died in 1845 at the age of four).

Then, after over twenty-four years of marriage, Hannah gave birth to her last child.  It was a daughter, who was baptised at Winfrith on 3 October 1847.  The child was given her mother’s name, Hannah.  Sadly the mother did not live to see her new daughter grow out of infancy. At the end of 1849, at the age of forty-three, Hannah, James’ wife, died.  The young Hannah was just two years old.

If initially the task of running the household and of caring for Hannah and the youngest of her brothers fell to one of the elder Hibbs daughters, it was not for long.  By 1851, before Hannah was yet four, her sisters had left home, leaving James Hibbs inhabiting the cottage with his four surviving sons, aged between six and sixteen, and the three-year-old Hannah.  It is difficult to speculate on the situation that prevailed in the Hibbs household and on the conditions under which Hannah spent her childhood.  She received at most a perfunctory education and she remained illiterate (in contrast to her mother, who could at least write her own name).  In these circumstances the freedom of childhood was short for Hannah and she was soon introduced to household chores.

In the next decade two of Hannah’s brothers left home and in 1860 her second-eldest brother died at the age of twenty-two and so by the end of 1860 there were just three persons in the Hibbs cottage, as there were in the Cheeseman household.

Jonathan and Amelia Cheeseman, aged sixty-six and sixty-two respectively, were living with their son William, aged thirty-three, but unmarried.  William was then working as an agricultural labourer.  Nearby the fifty-nine-year-old widower James Hibbs was living with his son, John, aged nineteen and his daughter, Hannah.  Although only fourteen, Hannah had long become accustomed to looking after the house and the two men.  A little over three years later the Hibbs household was to be the setting for an event that would shape not only Hannah’s life, but also that of William Cheeseman.
 
In the early part of 1864 Hannah, sixteen years old, became pregnant.  For a young woman in Hannah’s social situation her condition would have been as much a matter of practical concern as of shame.  For families living near subsistence level a pregnant daughter and then young mother would not have been welcomed and the child represented an extra burden, another mouth to feed.  The parish too would take an interest.  An unmarried mother and her child could become a drain on the meagre parish chest and an attempt would be made to discover the identity of the father and to ensure that he took responsibility for maintenance.  In many cases, of course, the imminent arrival of a child provoked a marriage (usually with the father if he were in a position to marry).  This solution, however, was not available to young Hannah.  The father of her child was her own brother, John.  At the time he was twenty-one years of age.

What was the relationship that led to Hannah’s pregnancy?  While it is not impossible that the young woman encouraged her brother, or at least did not object to his attentions, it is more likely that John simply forced himself upon her.   It is possible that this was a situation that Hannah had endured or accepted for some years.  However, such speculations are of little value. What was important was the situation and its repercussions.

Hannah was sent to the Union Workhouse at Lady St. Mary, Wareham.  In that institution, isolated from her family and community and among strangers, mostly paupers, some insane, Hannah, then just seventeen years old, awaited the birth of her first child.  Her immediate apprehension was compounded by thoughts of the bleak prospect that lay before her. She had slipped even from her lowly place in society and she would have been aware that many young women in her position would face a future of misery and abuse, always at the mercy of others.  In addition the child she carried was her own brother’s.

What were Hannah’s feelings towards her brother and father?  Did she feel resentment?  Did she feel abandoned?  Whatever her thoughts and feelings, they were at that moment all she possessed.

To be continued…….