Death in the times of the cholera

Behind St.Bartholomew’s at the entrance to the vestry, a small set of stairs made of old gravestones leads down to the area just behind the cemetery wall, the first few meters are made up of gravestones, which have been (like the stairs) moved from their original location.

The fifth one from the stairs is very worn, but with slanting light the following text can be made out:

UNDERNEATH

LIES THE REMAINS OF HENRY

BAYLEY WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE

APRIL 10^TH 1842 AGED 83 YEARS

ALSO OF MARYS HIS WIFE WHO DE

PARTED THIS LIFE DECEMBER 2^ND 1815

AGED 50 YEARS. ALSO OF HANNAH HIS

WIFE WHO DIED 7^TH OF AUGUST 1849 AGED

73 YEARS. ALSO JOHN HENRY, SON OF

HENRY AND MARY BAYLEY WHO DIED

7^TH AUGUST 1849 AGED 13 MONTHS.

The grave is the traditionally flat sandstone slab, that is in use in St.Bart’s since the end of the 17^th century. As mentioned in an earlier blog, there is an assumption that the early slabs, ie those laid before the extension of the cemetery in the 1860s, represent the elite of the parish, or at least those who were connected to St.Bart’s through their large tithing or their offices (e.g the vicars, curates, sextons). We know from the unpublished 1960s graveyard survey that the stone was then on the higher ground close to the vestry door.

So who were the people represented here? The first, Henry Bayley is recorded in the 1841 Census[i] as living on Pepper Street, now Hawthorne Street. Described as a pavier, he is hardly the sort of person you would expect to have a large slab for a family grave. However, his son, also Henry and nearly 50 years younger than him, is described as a schoolmaster and at that point that may have refered to the school that operated opposite St.Bart’s on the corner of Chancel Lane and Mill Street, and might have given him the right to a stone. However, as the schoolmaster he was clearly not well paid, as the Bayleys are not listed as occupiers in the tithe map of Wilmslow (dated variously to 1837-1841) for any property on Pepper Street. This can either suggest that they were not there at the time, which is unlikely, or that they were subtenants to some of the other occupiers listed.

Henry appears to have been originally from Cheadle Hulme parish, the next parish to the north (and including Handforth), as his Christening record shows[ii]. However, both his wives, Mary Sumner and Hannah Moore have very local names, and may have come from old Wilmslow families, with stones belonging to both families dating back to 18th century. Henry Bayley the school master was the child of the second marriage and was born in 1817, a year after the father wedding to Hannah Moore at the age of 56. We know currently  no other children from either marriage.

When Henry Bayley died in 1842, he was buried in the grave of his first wife. There is no absolute proof when this stone was cut, in 1815 or in 1842, but a passing glance at the surviving monuments suggests the opening phrase ‘UNDERNEATH’ is more common in Wilmslow at the beginning of the century than in the 1840s.

With the death of the father, Henry Bayley appear to have given up on the job as schoolmaster and migrated to Manchester to become part of the burgeoning Industrial workforce, using his learning to gain a job as a bookkeeper. In 1847  he married Martha Adshead in Manchester Cathedral. Martha gives an address in Salford on the Wedding certificate, but her family lived in Wilmslow.  [iii] On 18 June 1848 Henry’s son, John Henry is christened in the Methodist Church in Chorlton, which included Hulme, where the family now lived.[iv].

Unfortunately, John Henry would not see his second birth day. A year after the Christening cholera came to the Northwest. At the end of the epidemic the registrars for Manchester and surrounding districts would report in the Newspaper a rate of mortality 53% above the normal for the summer of 1849. From early June onwards the authorities in Liverpool would refuse to give details about the presence of the disease in the city, and by the middle of June the Cholera is affecting the work of the navvies on the Woodhead tunnel, then under construction, while Stalybridge, Dukinfield and Ashton report small outbreaks[v]. A week later the first case is identified in Angel Meadow in Manchester (now Balloon Street on the site of the Coop headquarters) and in Macclesfield[vi], at the end of June the cholera is reported from Manchester, Salford, Warrington, Ancoats and Hulme. [vii] The cholera would from now on continue in Manchester and the surrounding are until the end of 1849[viii]. The Bayleys in home in Hulme, 57 Upper Medlock Street found themselves very much in the centre of the epidemic and by the end of July Hannah Bayley, Henry’s 73 year old mother fell ill with diarrhoea. This is one of the first symptoms of cholera, but by 1849, Manchester like many other towns, was differentiating between cholera proper and the early stages of diarrhoea, mainly because diarrhoea in itself was a major killer in the 1840s (see table 12 in Leigh and Gardiner 1950) and by itself could not be deemed conclusive evidence of cholera. However, when Hannah died on the 7^th August, she had suffered from the disease for 14 days and died according to the certificate from exhaustion (which in itself is also a sympton of advancing cholera, as are convulsions). On the same day 13 months old John Henry also died from diarrhoea and aforementioned convulsions.

However, in both cases the doctors decided on a 'conservative' approach and certified both death as diarrhoea, rather than cholera. This meant meant that the dead did not fall under quarantine restrictions of the board of health, so there would have been no need to burn the furniture and bedding and both grandmother and grandson were transported for burial to Wilmslow, to be buried three days later on August 10^th, 1849.

Leaving possible cholera victims unburied for three days and transporting them for 20km would by today’s standards be considered a serious public health risk and unlikely be permitted. However, as the 1850 report for Manchester clearly shows, Manchester’s doctors very much believed in transmission by miasma and with a certificate to prove that it was not cholera, Henry and his wife would have been conforming to the expectations of the time, reuniting Hannah and her grandson with Hannah's husband in the family tomb in Wilmslow.

Both were recorded on the surviving grave slab, although for some unexplained reason, Martha is actually called Mary, clearly the error of the stone mason and perhaps an indication that despite Martha’s mother and sisters still living on Grove Street, both were no longer considered a part of the small, but rapidly changing Wilmslow Community. 

Within a year, Henry and Martha would christen their new baby daughter Hannah Sara in Manchester Cathedral, another daughter Priscilla following in 1852. The family continued to live in Hulme for at least another ten years, but at a different address and eventually Henry would rise from bookkeeper and warehouseman to Foreman in the Chemical Works, a job that would take him from Manchester to Warrington and eventually to Middlesbrough. The contact with Wilmslow never completely ceased, as even as late as 1901 Martha’s sister Sarah continued to visit them in Middlesbrough, were both of them are buried. 

In the second part of this paper, I will look what the effect of this double funeral and the cholera was on Wilmslow.

---

[i] 1841 Census of England, Wales and Scotland:
Detail: Class: HO107; Piece: 115; Book: 5; Civil Parish: Wilmslow; County: Cheshire; Enumeration District: 9; Folio: 59; Page: 24; Line: 19; GSU roll: 241246 (Accessed via Ancestry.com 1/8/2015)

[ii] Bishop's transcripts of Cheadle Parish for 25 June 1759 Accessed via findmypast 10/7/2015.

[iii] Anglican Parish Registers. Manchester, England: Manchester Cathedral. (Accessed via Ancestry.com 1/8/2015)

[iv] Ancestry.com. Manchester, England, Non-Conformist Births and Baptisms, 1758-1912 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014. (Accessed via Ancestry.com 1/8/2015)

[v] Manchester Mercury 16 June 1849.

[vi] Manchester Mercury 22 June 1849

[vii] Manchester Mercury 30 June 1849

[viii] John Leigh, Ner Gardiner (1850), History of the Cholera in Manchester in 1849 as reported to the Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths. (London and Manchester 1950)