This administrative and highly official looking document is the Warrant of Removal of Margaret Adams and her four children, from their
home of Newcastle to Belfast in February 1857.
The laws of settlement and removal were a major part of 19th
century legislation designed to deal with the very poor and the homeless. The
laws dated back to 1662* and gave local authorities the power to remove anyone
without what was known as 'the right to settlement' and who seemed likely to
become a financial burden. Anyone born outside of the area they were living in
only became entitled to the right to settlement by meeting certain conditions
and this generally didn’t take into account the length of time they had been
living in the area or their connections with the area. As with much legislation
designed to restrict movement and migration it was only concerned with the very
poor. The historian Robert Humphreys suggests that the settlement and removal
laws were used to '[contain] the poor within predictable geographical pockets'.
The removal laws were only applicable to the very poor and destitute
and many of the people targeted through the laws would have been in a position
of homelessness (which is why we're interested in these records). What's more,
the act of forcibly removing individuals and often whole families hundreds of
miles to places where they may have had little or no family or friends would
have undoubtedly pushed many more people into homelessness. Women, particularly
pregnant women and mothers with young children, tended to be most affected by
the laws of removal in the 19th century (of the warrants of removal for 1857 at
Tyne and Wear two thirds were issued to women). This is due in large part to
the brutal reason that women with young children would be more in need of
charity than single adults.
At first glance, there's little we can learn about Margaret Adams from
the document. For a piece of paper that marked such a monumental upheaval in a
person's life, the removal warrant left little space to record much about that
person. We know that Margaret was a widow, that she had four children aged 3 to
12 (all named on the record) and that they were living in All Saints parish in
Newcastle (this parish covers the area near Newcastle Quayside). The record
also tells us that Margaret left Belfast around 17 years previously. We can also
assume that she was illiterate as, in the space left for her signature, she has
written an X.
Most of the people who were removed from Newcastle in that same year
tend to disappear again from historical records – the removal order serving as
the only testament to the fact that they ever called Newcastle their home. We
had assumed it would be much the same case with Margaret Adams, particularly
given that her name isn't very distinctive and would quite easily be lost
amongst the many other 'Margaret Adams' in the census. However, to our
surprise, a quick search brought her up, top of the list, in 1851 living in a
house on Butcher Bank, a busy working-class area in the heart of Newcastle,
with three of her children (the youngest, Isabella, was yet to be born at this
point) and her husband, William Adams, a boilermaker, also born in Belfast.
Between these two records we can start to build a picture of the life
and experiences of Margaret Adams. We can learn from the removal order that
William and Margaret emigrated from Belfast in around 1840. Even before the
Irish famine of 1845 to 49, emigres from Ireland to England followed a
well-worn path, drawn across the channel for any number of reasons, though
mostly in search of well-paid employment in England's industries. Newcastle
wasn't one of the major destinations for Irish emigres, but its shipbuilding
industry offered the hope of employment to those willing to travel on east from
the more traditional destinations like Liverpool and Manchester. By 1851
Margaret and William Adams were part of a 10,000 strong community of Irish
emigres living in Newcastle.*
Furthermore, between the census record and the removal order we know
that, at some point between 1851 and 1857, Margaret lost her husband and her
life was turned upside down.
There's no evidence left to suggest how William Adams died.
Boilermaking was a dangerous job and the risk of boilers exploding and killing
and injuring those around them was substantial. An article from the 12th March
1853 edition of the Newcastle Guardian and Tyne Mercury reported on an
explosion in Manchester and its disastrous consequences:
'...the boiler burst with a terrific explosion, which was heard at a
distance of several miles. The part over the firebox was torn into three
separate pieces, each being hurled to a distance of six or seven yards,
destroying five of the pillars supporting the structure, and upwards of 1500
square feet of the slated roof were blown off. In this shed from 60 to 80
workmen were at breakfast, dispersed in groups about all parts of it, and hence
resulted a shocking loss of life, four men being killed on the instant, in
addition to 10 or 12 who were severely injured.'
The 1851 census record also suggests that the Adams family were likely at
the very centre of a flashpoint of one of the worst tragedies to hit Newcastle
in the city's history. On 6th October 1854 the great fire of
Newcastle and Gateshead tore through the city leaving numerous dead and injured
and decimating communities. The Adams family's last recorded home in 1851 – Butcher
Bank – was hit terribly by the tragedy that began from an explosion at a
factory in Hillgate, Gateshead. An article from The Newcastle Journal (7
October 1854) described the scene around Butcher Bank:
'The explosion had scarcely taken place, and the ignited materials,
bricks, stones, timbers, and the other explosive ingredients fallen on the
various parts of the Quay, opposite the scene the catastrophe, amidst the wail
of women, the cry of children, and the rush of men for safety from the falling
missiles, and fire, and brimstone, than it was found that from various parts of
the Quay, the block of warehouses behind, the Butcher Bank, and even so far off
as the foot of Pilgrim Street, where the descending fire fell, flames speedily
arose and sulphurous smoke filled the atmosphere, which might almost justify
the fear of the panic stricken thousands whom the explosion had drawn from all
parts of the town, that it was really doomed to destruction by the explosive
conflagration, while the stupifying effects of the concussion, and the
unexpected nature of the conflagration rendered all parties for a time unable
to make those decisive efforts which are invaluable at the commencement of such
an occurrence to quench the flames.'
Many of the reports of the fire list the dead and injured but no
mention is made of Margaret, William, or their children.
By 1857, whether by workplace tragedy, illness or accident, William was
dead, and Margaret Adams was left a widow left to take care of her four young
children alone. In February of that year, in poverty, having suffered the death
of her husband and quite possibly the destruction of her community just three
years earlier, Margaret was brought before Newcastle’s Court of Petty Sessions
where two men, Mr E. N. Grace, Esq. (Mayor of Newcastle) and Mr C. E. Ellison,
heard the case for her removal from Newcastle to her birthplace of Belfast on
account of her being poor and chargeable to the parish. Despite the fact that
her children were all born in Newcastle it was deemed that they too should be
removed to Belfast as the law dictated that children should inherit their
father’s place of origin and William had been born in Belfast.
After the verdict was passed this removal order was filled in and
Margaret was made to make her mark on the document. She was then passed to
George Grey, Overseer of the Poor of the Parish of All Saints, whose
responsibility it was to see that Margaret and her children were sent away from
Newcastle to Belfast. Three days after the hearing the family were put aboard a
train from Newcastle to the port town of Whitehaven in Cumbria. In Whitehaven
they were put aboard a steam boat (called ‘The Whitehaven’) to Belfast. A stark
‘receipt’ written by the ship’s master, George Hugham, on the back of the
removal order documents their arrival on board the boat.
There’s no record of Margaret’s experience in Belfast in the months or
years after her journey back in 1857. Removal has been the end of the evidence trail
for most of the other people we’ve looked into, so we did not expect to uncover
anything more on Margaret or her children. We certainly didn’t expect her to
turn up on the 1861 census back in Newcastle. Nonetheless, a search of the
census told us she had managed to make the journey back from Ireland along with
her children and was now living with her sister, Ellen Davison, at a lodging
house on High Bridge in the centre of Newcastle. We know that at this time
lodging houses were the lowliest and most deprived forms of accommodation
available to anyone who was either unwilling or unable to enter the workhouse
(see previous post on Thomas Ferens for more) so this tells us that Margaret
and her family, despite having made it back to Newcastle, were still living in
relative poverty in tenuous circumstances. However, the census also tells us
that Margaret now had an income of some sorts as a needlewoman and that her
eldest son, James (now 16), had found work as a coal miner.
Equally as surprising, the family turn up again on the 1871 census. No
longer in the lodging houses, the family are, by this time, living in a home of
their own on Bottle Bank (near the family’s earlier home of Butcher Bank). Margaret
is recorded along with three of her children – her second eldest son Alexander,
her youngest son Richard, and her daughter Isabella. By now, all of them have
jobs – Margaret is still earning an income as a seamstress, Alexander has
become a sailor, Richard a Blacksmith and Isabella a Domestic Servant. It’s
fair to assume that between the four of them they had an income that, if not
offering a hugely comfortable existence, was enough to keep at bay the threat
of homelessness and forced removal from the city.
In fact, such was the family’s change in fortunes, we found evidence that
Margaret’s second eldest son, Alexander, was later able to find the means to
set up his own business as a general dealer and clay pipe manufacturer and the
money he made from this provided for him, his wife and children for the rest of
his life until his death around 1911.
Margaret Adams’ experience tells us a great deal about the legal
systems designed to deal with the poor and homeless in 19th century
Newcastle and we’ll explore this in more detail throughout the project.
However, her story also presents a few more universal insights, in particular
the importance of family support and how the breakup of a family (in Margaret’s
case through the death of her husband) can quickly lead to homelessness –
particularly in an age when the vast majority of employment was closed to women.
In 1851 Margaret Adams appears to have been living a relatively stable
and ordinary working-class existence. Her and William’s move from Ireland a
decade earlier appeared to have paid off, William had found work and they were
able to keep their own home and begin raising a young family. However, her
husband’s death threw Margaret into a crisis that – due to punitive and bureaucratic
laws – led to her being uprooted and forced to move over 200 miles away. Even when
she made it back to Newcastle after her forced removal, it took Margaret some
time to work her way out of poverty and rebuild a life resembling anything like
the one she had had with her husband.
It was family, however, that was also Margaret’s salvation. It seems likely that Margaret’s sister homed her and her children upon their return to Newcastle. On top of this, the fact that Margaret and her children stuck together as they moved from place to place and city to city meant that they were able to support her and, when they reached working age, were able to provide an income and help pull the family out of poverty.