Sarah Jane Gillyon (nee Roden) Sarah Jane was born in Tindall Lane
Beverley on 6th August 1851, the daughter of an Irish Immigrant
and a local girl. At the age of 18
she was living in Paragon Street in Hull when, on 23 July 1870, she married
Henry Park Gillyon, also born in Tindall Lane Beverley on 8th
February 1851 and also living in Paragon Street in Hull. They must have known each other all their
lives, gone to school together. At
the time of the marriage Sarah Jane was about 5-6 months pregnant. Eight months later during the 1870 census
Henry Park and Sarah Jane were back in Beverley with their 5 month old
daughter Jane. By the time their
second child was born they had moved to Grovehill just east of Beverley. For a time Sarah Jane’s younger brothers,
William and George, boarded with them there.
In total Henry and Sarah had nine children, including Sarah who died
in February 1882 aged 7 months. On 2nd
October 1887 Henry Park died of Hepatitis aged 36. Presumably this is when Sarah Jane and the children moved from
Grovehill to Dyer Lane in the centre of Beverley. Perhaps they had been living in a workers cottage that they were
no longer entitled to or perhaps the |
|
rent was too expensive for a widow with 8 children to
feed. In those days the earning potential of a widow was very low
and welfare consisted of the workhouse or the goodwill of charities. Although Sarah Jane worked in a variety of
menial jobs (sick nurse in 1891, charwoman in 1894) it evidently wasn’t enough
to provide for herself and the children.
In 1889 she admitted the twin boys, Thomas and Henry, to Hull Seaman’s
and General Orphan Asylum on Spring Bank.
She may even have been ‘persuaded’ towards this painful decision by any
charitable organisations she was reliant on.
In 1894 Sarah Jane gave birth to Albert in Dyer Lane and must have moved
to Hull shortly afterwards. The move to
Hull may have been prompted by Albert’s illegitimacy. In a new place she could say her husband had just died and no-one
would know, and she was familiar with Hull.
Or would she have moved there anyway, the twins may still have been in
Hull, and her two eldest girls had married and were living there. It would have been a way of re-uniting the
family. Following her death from
pleurisy and bronchitis in Hull on 21st May 1897 in her daughter
Jane’s home Sarah Jane was interred with her husband in the grounds of St
Nicholas church in Beverley.
What don’t I know?
·
Who
looked after Mary Jane, William and Isabella after Sarah Jane died?
|
|
|
|
Tindall Lane, from
Wednesday Market Place (left) and looking to Wednesday Market place (right),
2007 |
Dyer Lane looking towards
Saturday Market Place, 2006 |
Back to Sarah Jane’s
family tree