HOW TO HAVE AN ALL MALE GENERATION

WILLIAM THOMAS DENNELL & ELIZABETH RICHARDSON

As mentioned last time, my Great-Grandfather had no surviving girls, so I have decided that this will be about William Thomas, the aforesaid great-Grandfather, and his wife Elizabeth.
William Thomas was the tenth child born to John Dennell and Mary Glow, but unfortunately only 5 lived. William Thomas was born on the 16 October 1839 at Halton which was then near Leeds but is now integrated as an area of Leeds, 2.1/2 miles from Leeds Centre.
He was christened when he was 1 month old at the family church which was the parish church of St Mary, Whitkirk. In 1853 Whitkirk was a parish in the wapentake [county division] of Skyrack, had 3041 souls, and comprised of Austhorpe, Seacroft, Thorpe Stapleton and Temple Newsam townships. Within the Township of Temple Newsam are to be found the pleasant village of Whitkirk, 4 miles East of Leeds, Colton, Halton, Newsam Green, Osmondthorpe and Templethorpe. The church was a vicarage valued at £202 [the annual salary of the vicar], in the patronage of Trinity College, Cambridge and the parish school has an endowment of £10 p.a. There is a Methodist Chapel at Colton.
By the time of the 1841 Census William Thomas was aged 1 and obviously living with his family where only 3 of the 5 children were still at home, the others were George 11, Maria 4, and they were living nearer to Templenewsam. The older children were in various positions of service, Sarah Ann at 18 being a live in servant at the farm of an elderly couple, William & Christina Watson, at Berwick in Elmet. Caroline, 14, was nearer to her family, being a general servant in the household of Edward W Birchill, a Surgeon and Apothecary at Halton.
In 1843 John & Mary's fourth daughter and last child, Harriet, was born at Halton, Whitkirk. soon followed in 1844 by the marriage of William's eldest sister Sarah Ann to Joseph Cawood also at Whitkirk St Mary.
Between the 1844 wedding and early 1851, the family, apart from the married daughters and George, uprooted and moved to Sheffield, joining John's sister and her husband in the St Philips area.
By the time of the Census in March 1851, 10 year old William was still living at Cross George Street in the St Philips area of Sheffield, but it must have been rather crowded by then as they had a lodger, William Dickinson from Coulton, who was also an Assistant Corn Dealer, probably working with John.
Ten busy years passed which gave William 2 illegitimate nieces, 2 legitimate nieces, 1 illegitimate nephew, 2 brothers-in-law and 1 sister in law. Also his aunt Sarah left industrial Sheffield for the equally industrial Birmingham. In early 1861 21 year old William was a silver plate chaser and the only child still at home with John & Mary and nephew, Walter aged 3, but at this time they were living at 12 Cross George Street.
Marriage to Elizabeth Richardson followed in May 1863, but their firstborn, Clarissa, died at only 7 days old from weakness, [possibly premature] in the August of the same year. Another birth followed in the late summer of 1864, that of Frederick William, who only managed to live until he was 3 months old and died in March 1865 of pneumonia.
Round about midnight on March 11th 1864 the Dale Dyke Dam at Bradfield, near Sheffield, collapsed, releasing a torrent of water that killed some 250 people. It devastated an area that stretched from the Dam, down the Loxley Valley, through Malin Bridge and Hillsborough, to Sheffield town centre and beyond.
William Thomas & Elizabeth were living were living with his parents John & Mary on the edge of a devastated area. These buildings had been rapidly erected to provide accommodation for the ever increasing numbers of workers needed by the Industrial machine. For many, many thousands, decent living standards were something they could hardly even dream about. Reality was likely to be a jerry-built hovel in a shanty town of back-to-back houses, possibly shared with several other families. Earth floors, one outdoor privy, or lavatory, for the use of the entire terrace, and a waste-disposal 4system that consisted of a bucket and a warning cry of "Watch out!" to passers by. If you were lucky.
In this building frenzy, the health of the tenants nor the living conditions were taken into account, so the death of newborns was a regular occurrence. The houses would have been very damp due to flood damage and overcrowded due to the style of building.
William's younger sister Harriet got married to Herbert Sedgwick in June 1865, but tragedy struck again later in 1865 when his older sister Caroline suffered a fatal miscarriage at the age of 38. Bronchitis killed his father John 65, at the beginning of 1866 when William was 26.
The birth of another Frederick William, who this time survived, was celebrated in the early summer of 1866, nearly two months after the death of William's father.
Many more children followed, John in 1868, Walter [my grandfather] in 1869, William Thomas in 1870, and George in 1871. George, sadly, died after only 1 month. Another George was born in the summer of 1872, followed by Robert Bruce in 1873. Unfortunately George died at the beginning of 1874, but fate had not finished playing with them. Their daughter Florence Elizabeth was born at the beginning of beginning of 1875 but died at the beginning of 1876.
In the early summer of 1876 William's sister Maria re-married, this time to the father of her 21 year-old son Walter, James Bingham of Sheffield, and at the end of 1876 another daughter was born, Lillian Elizabeth.
At the age of 38 in 1879, Elizabeth gave birth for the last time, to twin boys Joseph and Leonard. Leonard, however, did not reach adulthood, dying at the age of 15.
So that is how William and Elizabeth managed, despite having thirteen children, to only have male children surviving. The surviving sons stories are for another time.