November 2007 – Edition 31

Wrong! This theory overlooked an obvious point, that
perhaps Jane had married a Jerrems. I can now tell
you who she was, drawing on UK Censuses and other sources.

A word of explanation about the source materials I used. The
results of the 1841 to 1901 Censuses (carried out each 10
years) seem to be very piecemeal, at least as regards the
areas where they have been scanned and can be read by me in
Australia from the Mormon’s website. Also the very limited
births, deaths and marriages records available on the
website are merely alphabetical lists of the children born,
one of the spouses and the person who died, plus the date
and locality. The full certificates have not been scanned.
The upshot is that I have limited information to work from.

The result is that this article speculates on a number of
aspects, but I feel that it is better to write something,
rather than wait for definitive information which may never
come.

Back to Jane. Recently I found a Jane Jerrems in the
1851UK Census. According to the Census she was born in 1798
or 1799, and she was born in Stow, about 3 kilometres
from Willingham, where she lived at the time of the Census.
She was a widow whose means of income was “farm 120 acres at
Stow”, and she was living with her two daughters Mary
born about 1834 (i.e. aged 17) and Jane born about
1835 (i.e. aged 16).

Two farmer labourers (George Smithson and Charles Pepper)
also lived at the house, which was described simply as House
No. 39, presumably on the main street.

The date of birth of this Jane tallied with the date of
birth of the Jane on the tombstone. Further, this Jane lived
in the same village (Willingham) as St Helens Church, the
site of the grave.

But who had been her Jerrems husband? The
International Genealogical Index showed a John Jerrems
as having been married at Stow on 12th May 1832 (his
bride’s name was not shown). The 2 girls were born in 1834
and 1835, which fit in with John’s marriage in 1832.

But who was John Jerrems? Looking for a likely
candidate in our ancestry I saw that my great great great
grandfather “Big Bill” had a younger brother John who was
born in 1784 at Willingham. At first glance it seemed a
little unlikely that Jane had married someone 15 years her
senior, but it was possible. Then I thought about the fact
that she was farming 120 acres at the time of the Census.
This was an enormous area of land which might indicate that
he had married late, after building up the farm.

Spare a thought for the plight in those days of widows in
general, and of Jane in particular. It is likely that John
died soon after the birth of young Jane in 1835 because
otherwise the couple would have kept trying for a son.
John’s death at this stage would have left Jane at the age
of about 38 looking after 2 toddlers, with negligible
prospects of remarrying because (a) by the time an
acceptable period of mourning had elapsed she would have
been of a problematic age for future childbearing and (b)
she had 2 girls to look after, possibly making socialising
difficult.

I am spending time on this subject because Jane was
not an isolated case in the Jerrems annals. Our great great
grandmother Elizabeth was left in a similar pickle
when her husband Thomas died in Melbourne in 1866 at
the age of 51, with 4 children still being teenagers. She
was 50 at the time and lived a further 36 years.

This brings me to the plight of widows in general in the
19th Century. The vast majority of married women led a very
subordinate lifestyle, relying heavily on their husbands for
financial support, decision-making, paying bills, carrying
out heavy work, chaperoning daughters etc. Until the advent
of the Married Women’s Property Act in the 1920s they
could not buy land in their own right, or be given full
title to land, they could only be given a life estate which
lapsed when they died. The husband was the head of the
house, but often husbands had a selfish habit of dying
fairly young.

This left widows in the invidious position of being thrust
into the role of their former husbands with very little
experience, and perhaps inadequate means of support. There
was no governmental financial assistance so widows had to
draw on family assets, take in boarders etc to earn money.
Further, there were perhaps some things a woman could not do
from a propriety aspect. For instance perhaps she could not
drive a horse and buggy to church or the market, let alone
look after the horse (but this may not necessarily have
applied to women in the rural community). A man (if
necessary a servant) was needed for these things.

However great great great grand-aunt Jane may not
have been as badly off as many widows. She would probably
still have had parents and siblings in the Willingham area,
and her husband’s siblings (e.g. our great great great
grandfather Big Bill, his brothers Robert and Charles, and
sister Jane) lived there or in nearby Gainsborough. In
addition John and his forbears, back to at least his
grandfather William Jerom, had lived in the area for over a
century, so one would expect that she had a good support
network from the family and community. Even so, bringing up
2 daughters would still have been a challenge.

The fact that Jane did not have a maid or other servants
indicates that she led a self-sufficient life and possibly
did not gain a large income from the farm. The reason for
this is that farmers did not make a lot of money from
farming in those days. Even if the farm had been temporarily
broken up into a number of smaller farms and let out to a
number of tenants the income may not have been large, and in
any case Jane may have been putting money aside for the
girls’ dowries.

It is possible that Jane received help in the house during
the day by someone who lived nearby (this person would not
have been shown as living at Jane’s address). It is also
possible that the daughters had kept house, as was the
custom in those times, so the need for a servant would have
been reduced. Although her nephews living in Gainsborough
employed servants, their families were much larger.

Perhaps Jane had lived on the farm with John until he died
and then she moved to a family cottage in Willingham to
bring up the girls.

It is of course not clear where the two farm labourers
(George and Charles) fitted into the picture. Perhaps they
were employed by Jane, or were boarders brought in to
supplement her income, or were a bit of each (e.g. one may
have carried out some yard duties and driven the horse and
buggy for lower board).

One gains the impression that she lived in a modest house,
based on her neighbours’ houses. House No.40 was occupied by
a labourer and his wife, and No. 41 was occupied by a
“pauper-Agricultural Labourer”. On the other side was a
bootmaker and his wife.

Jane died in 1870 in nearby Gainsborough, aged 72, a
respectable age for those times.

In terms of ownership of the two graves, we now know that
Jane was Mary’s daughter-in-law.

So we have now filled in a further (albeit very small) gap
in the mosaic of our Jerrems ancestry and in the process we
have learned a little about the social fabric of those
times!