Who was Ann Bird ?  

Whilst tracing my Northamptonshire Leatherland ancestors, I became intrigued by the life of my great x three great aunt’s long term lodger, Ann Bird. She was not an ancestor but her life story is interesting so this is her story.

Sarah Leatherland (1838-1915), lived in Kilsby, Northants, for most of her life. She was the second wife of Samuel Leatherland, a farm labourer whose first wife died of TB leaving nine children. Seven years after being widowed, Samuel married Sarah Whiteman in Kilsby.

Sarah was a dairymaid in 1861 living in the household of Richard Cowley, a farmer of a hundred acres. The Cowleys had been landowners in Kilsby since at least the sixteenth century. 

Sarah was twenty-eight years younger than Samuel. She already had two illegitimate children (although I have a suspicion that her second child - born a month after Samuel’s wife died - might have been his). She was five months pregnant when she they got married.

In the 1891 census Samuel Leatherland, now aged 81, was described as a retired agricultural labourer. I noticed that Sam and Sarah now had a 49 year old lodger, Ann Bird.  I assumed that she was helping Sarah to look after her husband and paying rent to boost the household income.  

Samuel died three years later. Ann continued to live with Sarah, being described as a lodger / housekeeper in 1901 and a boarder in 1911. In the 1911 census they both described themselves as “Old Age Pensioners” so must have been in receipt of the newly introduced State Pension.

Much later, when revisiting the census, I noticed something rather odd. In 1891 and 1901 Ann Bird’s marital status was ‘married’, but she was clearly not living with her husband. The plot thickened when the 1911 census revealed that she been married for 45 years and that she had given birth to eight children, five of whom were still living. 

Where were her husband and children ? Had she deserted them ? Had they deserted her ? Why was she lodging with Sarah ? Who was Ann Bird ?

Further research showed that Ann was indeed a married woman.  Born Ann Cryer in Towcester in 1841, her father died when she was a girl. In 1861 she was a lace-maker living with her mother and brothers. Three years later she married a Charles Evans Bird who was a shoemaker,in Northampton. Charles came from Daventry. He was two years younger than his wife.

                    

                                                  Alpha Street, Northampton

In the 1871 census Ann and Charles Bird were living in Alpha Street, Northampton with two young sons, a one month old daughter, plus  Ann’s mother. Ten years later they remained in Northampton. Their eldest child was now sixteen, the youngest five. Charles was a 'Blake sole' sewing machine operator. The Blake sole machine was invented by American, Lyman Reed Blake, for sewing soles to the body of the shoe.

But by 1891 something must have happened to their relationship. Ann had moved to Kilsby, a small village fifteen miles north-west of Northampton, and she was living as a lodger with Sarah and Samuel Leatherland. The census shows that Charles Bird remained in Northampton with their five children. This must have been challenging as he still worked as a shoemaker, so I was not surprised to see a thirty one year old housekeeper, Mary Mott, living with the family as a boarder. 

Mary was fifteen years younger than Charles. Perhaps, I wondered, she was the reason why Ann left home ? Then I noticed that there another Mott living in the household, a six year old girl called Frances. Mary Mott was single, but Frances was described as daughter of the head of household implying that she was Charles’ child. 

If Charles had fathered a child outside wedlock perhaps this might explain why Ann left the family home. Frances’s birth certificate proved to be interesting. She was born in Northampton in 1885 with no father was named. But she was given the first names Frances Gertrude Bird - a rather obvious clue as to her father’s identity !!

If Ann left her husband and family because he had had an affair, how did she end up in Kilsby ? Was there a prior link with Sarah Leatherland ? I found no evidence that they were related, but there were Cryer and Bird families in Kilsby, so I have not ruled out some sort of distant family connection.  

If Ann and Sarah were not related, was there anything else which might explain a move from Northampton to Kilsby ? The answer may lie in Sarah’s children. Her son, Henry Leatherland, had become a Police Constable in Northampton by the time of his marriage in 1887. Perhaps Henry came across Ann in the course of his duties as a policeman and, knowing of her domestic troubles, perhaps he suggested that she might move to Kilsby to lodge with his mother ? Just a theory. 

By 1901 Charles was still living with Mary Mott who was described as housekeeper. He was now a grocery shopkeeper in Kingsthorpe. Two daughters and a son lived at home but they were twenty-five, nineteen and sixteen and all working in the shoe trade, so it seems likely that  Mary was now Charles’s 'partner' rather than a substitute mother. Their daughter Frances was now using the surname Bird.

In 1911 Mary remained living with Charles as housekeeper and shop assistant, and the children had left home.  Ann remained lodging with Sarah Leatherland, but the following year Ann Bird died of pneumonia. Her death certificate shows that she died in Northampton in her daughter Hannah’s house. Hannah was informant and described her mother as “wife of Charles Evans Bird master grocer”, despite them not having lived together for at least twenty years !

So how did Charles react to his estranged wife’s death ? Ann died on 29 August 1912. Just eleven days later, on 9 September, he finally married Mary Mott ...

So it seems that Charles and Mary were in a cohabiting relationship for over two decades. At the time divorce was technically possible on the grounds of adultery, but it was expensive, complex, embarrassing and therefore relatively rare.

The story has a rather sad ending. Sarah Leatherland died of senile decay and exhaustion in Rugby Poor Law Workhouse Infirmary in 1915. Mary Bird died in 1923. 

Charles committed suicide ten months after Mary's death. The Northampton Mercury and the Chronicle & Echo reported the inquest. His son found his father in his bedroom on a Sunday morning with his throat cut. He told the inquest that his father was of a highly strung temperament and had been very upset by his wife’s death. The verdict was death from shock caused by self inflicted wound during temporary insanity.