Exciting news about Mary Ann Shaw and Emily Shaw

We don’t often hear stories about women involved in the Yorkshire schools, so here’s some things I’ve found relating to two of William and Bridget Shaw’s daughters! Yes, it’s news about them from after the main bit of my case study (my project title specifies 1814 - 1840) but it’s exciting anyway.

News about Mary Ann!

Mary Ann Shaw was William and Bridget’s oldest child, born on 8th September 1811, according to the excellent and useful Laidman one-name study site. She was baptised on 21st September 1811.

I have strong reason to suspect that she had some responsibility in the school and was involved in supervising the boys. There’s a letter from her dad to Mr and Mrs Brooks, the parents of a very ill boy, in which William says “my daughter observed him sitting up in bed” - this is from February 1826, when Mary Ann would have been 14. (What about her sisters? Wouldn’t they have been old enough? No, they wouldn’t - and that’s involved with the next bit of news. You’ll have to wait.) There’s also an account given by Robert Lamb, allegedly the son of a maid at Bowes Academy, and nephew of a local coachman - Lamb says that the pupils at the Academy were “properly looked after by Mrs Shaw or Miss Shaw”. (Get all this information and more in my favourite book, Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby and the Yorkshire Schools: Fact v Fiction by Robert J. Kirkpatrick, published by Mosaic (Teesdale) Ltd., in 2017.)

And here’s the really exciting bit: I’ve found a photograph of Mary Ann Shaw.

Alright, she wasn’t called Mary Ann Shaw at the time the photograph was taken - she was Mary Ann Bousfield by then. She married a local chap, John Bousfield, after William’s death, and they occupied her parents’ house. Apparently they neglected the old schoolroom and allowed it go to ruin.

Anyway, here’s how I found her. The Bowes Museum has a copy of a book called Dickens in Yorkshire by C. Eyre Pascoe, published 1912, so I tracked down a copy for myself. The author goes up to Teesdale and goes to places where Dickens went, interviews local people, and generally sees the sights. He doesn’t explicitly refer to the Shaw family by name, although, after much beating around the bush, he remarks (very hedgingly) that “Local tradition says that Wackford Squeers was one “Dr. Shaw.” It is so recorded in guide-book literature to the present day.”

Pascoe doesn’t seem too fond of William, but he is extremely fond of Mary Ann and Bridget, and Mary Ann's daughter. He refers to Mary Ann herself as “Miss Fanny Squeers”, going by the reckoning that, if Wackford Squeers = William Shaw, then Fanny Squeers = Mary Ann Shaw. Here’s what Pascoe says on pp.28-29:

“If I met one person I met half-a-dozen who assured me, that Miss Fanny Squeers, in propriety persona actually lived at Dotheboys Hall, and married a gentleman of the neighbourhood. I was shown that lady’s portrait - the pleasing portrait of a dignified-looking lady of middle age - and (as it were) asked to accept that as the “counterfeit presentment” of Dickens’s own Fanny Squeers.”

And then turn the page - and there she is!

Delight! Wonder! Marvellous discovery! Here is the face of a woman who had, in her youth, been involved in the running of a Yorkshire boarding school.

(Meanwhile, Pascoe is having delight and wonder of his own, as he declares that if he’d have been born earlier and in the right location, he’d have wanted to marry her. Bit awkward. Gets more awkward when he sees a photograph of her daughter and wants to marry her, too. Oh dear.)

The main implications for my work mean I’ve got to redesign Mary Ann a bit, but that won’t be a problem. 

De-aging Mary Ann - and her brother, Jonathan, whose photographs are on the Laidman site: here he is on his own c. 1870 - and here he is with his family, c. 1874 - and here is another version of the c. 1874 family photo. 

 

News about Emily!

Alrighty! The Laidman site says that Emily was born on 9th March 1825, and baptised on 19th March 1825. She married a chap called Frederick White, and they had a son, also called Frederick White - and that’s all we have.

Or is it?

I’m currently working on the introduction and conclusion to my weird graphic history-comic-experiment, Disorder. There’s a bit about Mary Ann, and how the unnamed daughter in her dad’s letter to Mr and Mrs Brooks could only have been Mary Ann due to the dates. Her sisters Jane (1822 - 1914) and Emily (1825 - ????) would have been too young to be involved in looking after the boys in 1826. 

That set of question marks in Emily’s dates vexed me. Laidman.org had given me a couple of dates and a couple of names, so I went dashing off to FamilySearch to see if I could dig them up. Lo and behold, I got her marriage record and, also quite exciting, a mention of her and Frederick getting married in the Newcastle Courant, in which she’s described as the “youngest daughter of the late William Shaw, Esq., of Bowes”.

I tracked the couple through the censuses - in 1861, they’re living in Lambeth. Oddly, it looks like they’re going as Mr and Mrs Waite rather than White, but that could be a transcribing error or something. Emily’s husband Frederick is the manager of a bottle warehouse, and they’re living with their kids Emily and Frederick, a servant called Anne Cockling, and an ex-governess called Elizabeth Mary White. The listing on FamilySearch gets a bit weird here because it says that Frederick (aged 39) is the head of the household, but Elizabeth Mary (aged 52) is his daughter. Could be another transcribing error or something. Might be worth looking at the actual census documents to try working out what’s going on here. 

In 1871, they’re at Marylebone (via Camberwell and Brixton, if you look at where their kids were born) with offspring Emily J., Frederick, and George N., and Ann Gulley, a servant. In 1881, they’re living in Battersea, but now the household is just Emily, her husband Frederick (who is now an accountant), and their son George H., who is a bank clerk. 1891 is the last census that they both appear in: still at Battersea, now living with their son Frederick (another bank clerk), and servant Anna Cox. They’re given the surname Waite again. 

Next step: Find A Grave! And find a grave is exactly what I did - I found Emily White, who was born on 9th March 1825 (matches up with Emily Shaw), who was married to Frederick White (another match), and who had a son called Frederick White (another match). Emily died on 19th December 1897 at Clapham, in the London borough of Lambeth, aged 72, and she’s buried at West Norwood, also in Lambeth.

Mary Ann reads to her sister Emily, c. 1830.

So yeah! Here is the news, regarding people who died in the nineteenth century. My favourite type of news. As usual, if you have access to drawing implements and a suitable surface, and you fancy making your own characterisations, I'll encourage you to do it!