Has anyone else come across women of the late 1800's, in their family who have suddenly 'upped sticks' and deserted their children and husband. I know women's sufferage came about at the end of the 1800's and I am wondering if this influenced women who were not happy at home bringing up children etc to leave them and move on. I have one case in my own family and as yet I am not sure if she went off with another man or just vanished. In another case that I have been trying to sort for a friend, the woman in question married in 1881 at the age of 20. It looks as if she had about 7 children in 10 years before she vanished. The husband is recorded in 1891 as being a Pawnbroker Manager and married but there are no children or wife with him. I have found a set of 10 children living with a couple of the same surname in Gloucestershire but 7 of them have the surname of the runnaway wife as a second name. It looks to me as if a brother and his wife took the children on. I have also found entries in the 1891 census for a woman of the same surname as the runnaway wife working as a laundress in a school about 40 miles away. Then in 1901 she is living even further away as a railway restaurant worker. Any ideas? Were women suddenly taking their lives into their hands or what? Yorkie

Slightly earlier I have a woman who married a local farmer in 1859, had three children, then left home with the servant of her brother in law. He was 10 years younger than her. They had a couple of children together and then went to Australia where she died in 1884. They always claimed to be married on the census, and when emigrating, but back in Yorkshire her deserted husband also put 'married' on the census. I often wonder if he ever knew what had become of her or if the three daughters she'd left behind ever heard from her again. In my own family I have a wife who 'vanished' after the 1861 census who I think I've identified working in Walsall under her maiden name while her husband is in the same town with wife number 2 who he didn't actually marry until just before her death in the early 1880s. Tracy ----- Original Message ----- From: <AYorkie19@aol.com> To: <ENG-BLACK-COUNTRY-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 2006 9:37 AM Subject: [B.C.] re free thinking women > Has anyone else come across women of the late 1800's, in their family who > have suddenly 'upped sticks' and deserted their children and husband. I > know > women's sufferage came about at the end of the 1800's and I am wondering > if > this influenced women who were not happy at home bringing up children etc > to > leave them and move on. > > I have one case in my own family and as yet I am not sure if she went off > with another man or just vanished. In another case that I have been > trying to > sort for a friend, the woman in question married in 1881 at the age of > 20. > It looks as if she had about 7 children in 10 years before she vanished. > The > husband is recorded in 1891 as being a Pawnbroker Manager and married but > there are no children or wife with him. I have found a set of 10 > children > living with a couple of the same surname in Gloucestershire but 7 of them > have the > surname of the runnaway wife as a second name. > > It looks to me as if a brother and his wife took the children on. > > I have also found entries in the 1891 census for a woman of the same > surname > as the runnaway wife working as a laundress in a school about 40 miles > away. > Then in 1901 she is living even further away as a railway restaurant > worker. > > Any ideas? Were women suddenly taking their lives into their hands or > what? > > Yorkie > > > ==== ENG-BLACK-COUNTRY Mailing List ==== > Wherever possible (except for personal messages) > please post replies to the list.Other people can learn from them! > >

In 1916, my great grand mother ran away four times from the remote cottage in Herefordshire, where she lived in with her 8 children and often absent husband. On the fourth occasion, she sold the chickens and used the money to buy a train ticket to London where she had a sister who was in service and got a job house keeping. One night, she went out and got lost during a Zeppelin raid, so popped into a Police station for directions. She must have had a migraine as she commented that the pictures on the wall were moving. That comment kept in her a cell over Christmas and in Cane Hill mental Asylum for several months more until they tracked down my great grand father who didn't make things any better by telling them that she'd always been a bit unstable, temperamentally. So they moved her to St. Mary's Asylum, Burghill, Herefordshire, so she'd be chargeable to her own Parish. She was eventually released. As my mother grew up in an orphanage, we discovered all this from Asylum records, by accident, whilst researching my mother's aunt and uncle's time at St. Mary's. The above is a very short version of a VERY long story! Nettie