The Maddock Family- Part 1

The following blog post has been written by Katie Royle, a student at Manchester Metropolitan University currently studying for a Master's in Public History and Heritage. As part of her course Katie is using the Together Trust Archive located at Manchester Central Library to undertake research on some of the young people emigrated to Canada. This is the first part of Katie's research into the Maddock family, detailing the circumstances behind how the family came into contact with the Charity.

It was a happy day when Charlie Maddock stood proudly in the church awaiting his new bride in Kingston, Ontario, in 1899. Dressed in his smartest suit, with his younger brother smiling by his side, he was ready to settle down and start a family with his new Canadian wife. Outside the church, the snow was over a foot deep, the air crisp and clear - a world away from his life in smog-filled industrial Manchester; a life of hardship and squalor that had been transformed forever just over ten years earlier.

Charlie Maddock photographed at the Refuge before emigration in 1892, M189/9/2/1

In the 1870s, Manchester was the first industrial city and the hub of the exploding textiles trade. Huge and imposing factories, cotton mills and warehouses sprung up all over the city, spewing out smoke and noxious fumes. Thousands from all over the world flocked to find work, and overcrowding and poor sanitation was rife. Described as “hell on Earth” by Frederich Engels just thirty years earlier, Manchester was known as one of the filthiest, and unhealthiest places in Britain. It was into this Manchester that a young couple from leafy Cheshire, William and Elizabeth, arrived in 1876, ready to set up home with their newborn baby, Charlie.

The son of a poor salt boiler, William Maddock had taken a fancy to horses, and when he was 18 got a job as a coachman and moved up to being a groom at the stately Darnhall Hall, owned by Thomas Knowles MP, near Winsford, Cheshire. Just over a mile away, 21 year old Elizabeth Sherwin was working as a cook in Hawthorn Hall, also owned by a politician. Due to their proximity, it is likely that they met whilst William was accompanying his master on visits to Hawthorn Hall, or they may have attended the same church on Sundays. However they met, they fell in love, and on Valentines Day 1876, Elizabeth and William were married at the newly built Victoria Wesleyan Chapel in Prestwich. This was not local to them; however, Elizabeth was heavily pregnant, which might have been the reason for their quiet ceremony - of note, neither of their parents were present. Charlie was born just four weeks later, and the young family set up home in Charlotte Street in the city centre, ready to settle down into their new lives. Two years later, Charlie was joined by a brother, Joseph, and then David was born, meaning there were now three little ones to feed and clothe. William worked as an ‘ostler’, and it is likely that he was employed at one of the many inns and hotels in the city, tending the horses. Although they were poor, they were not impoverished, and among their neighbours on Charlotte Street were accountants, clerks and newspaper reporters. All three boys attended the local school, St Michael’s, around the corner on Miller Street, and the family made ends meet, staying in the same rooms in Charlotte Street for ten years.

However, in 1888 things took a devastating turn for the family, when William died. He was just 35 years old. It is hard to imagine the devastation Elizabeth must have felt. She found herself widowed at 38 years old, before any widow’s pension was introduced, with three young boys depending on her, and all alone with no family nearby to speak of. Already living hand to mouth, keeping the rooms on Charlotte Street was now impossible. The family had to move to the only place they could afford, a single room in one of the poorest slums in Manchester, on the banks of the River Irk and in the shadow of the imposing Clemson Dye Works. Now their neighbours were fish sellers, hawkers, and porters, the poorest of the poor. The area was described by an investigator of the time as: 

 ‘The worst courts are leading down to the Irk, which contain unquestionably the most dreadful dwellings I have ever seen. In one of these courts, just at the entrance where the coveted passage ends, there is a privy without a door. This privy is so dirty that the inhabitants of the court can only enter or leave the court if they are prepared to wade through puddles of stale urine and excrement.’

Manchester Slum, taken from a history of the Charity's first 50 years 'Making Rough Places Plain' by William Edmonson.

Elizabeth took work as a charwoman, or a ‘laundress’, at Crumpsall Workhouse, a lowly job that was back breaking work for very little wages. Charlie, now 14 and the ‘man of the house’, gained employment in the dye works to help support the poverty-stricken family. 

Advertisement for Clemsons Dye Works Manchester on Hargreaves Street 1896 (from www.atticpaper.com). Charlie Maddock worked there in 1891, age 13.

Tragically, just a couple of years later, Elizabeth started to sicken. Although it is not recorded how she died, her death coincided with a major epidemic of smallpox that hit the poor of Manchester particularly hard. Her job was punishing, often working 14 hour shifts and as she weakened, this became impossible, leaving 13 year old Charlie the sole breadwinner for a family of four. They couldn’t afford medicine, or coal to keep warm, and the poor condition of their home would not have helped; Elizabeth would have gone hungry to feed her children, which would have weakened her further, and what meagre possessions they had – a table, chair and even the one bed, were sold off to buy food, leaving her lying on some straw. With his mother steadily declining, a desperate Charlie appealed to the Manchester and Salford Refuge for help, who provided him with a little bread, soap and candles – he sold the candles and soap to buy some port wine, which he thought might help his sick mother. Working at the Crumpsall Workhouse, Elizabeth would have seen first-hand the terrible conditions, as well as the shame, experienced by its inmates and would have been desperate for her sons to avoid such a fate. Fading fast, she instructed Charlie to write a letter to her brother in Middlesborough for help, but it was too late; Elizabeth died that night.

Charlie knew that he had to do something to avoid entry into the workhouse and again appealed to the Manchester and Salford Refuge for help. Thankfully, they admitted the boys that very night. On their admission papers, their home was described as: 

‘Their house is in a wretched condition, the mother died on some straw and is laid out on a box. The three boys have been living in the house alone since their mother died.’

On his admission form, Charlie had stated clearly that he wished to go to Canada. With the knowledge of Clemsons and the dire working conditions there, his experience of life living in the slum, and now with both his parents dead, he sought a new start for himself and his two younger brothers.

Charles Maddock admission form M189/2/5576//241

Life in the refuge was different to life in the slum. The boys were clean and fed – for the first time in as long as they could remember, they could sleep in a real bed. They could also carry on with their schooling, Charlie was named Best Boy for his examinations in the three Rs, and also played the trumpet in the Refuge brass band. Bound for Canada, they were placed in the Emigration Training Home on Ducie Street, where they would have learned skills such as joinery, and printing, as well as some basics of farming to equip them for their placements in Canada. The Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuges and Homes had a well-known motto: 'We help those who try to help themselves’. At 14 years old, Charlie would have gained paid employment; in one of the workshops, as a Parcel and Messenger boy or one of the Shoe Black Brigade, earning a little money and contributing to his and his brothers’ board. 

After a year at the Ducie Street training home, on a sunny day in March 1892, the three boys departed from Liverpool on the steamship SS Sarnia bound for Ontario.

For details of the Maddock brothers new life in Canada, see the next blog post for the second part of their story.