Deal With Your Past

This is the final part of my story about my great grandmother, Charlotte Browne Gradwell Marshall. The story begins here and continues here.

A few months after her older boys were placed there in 1905, Charlotte asked Father Hudson’s to take little Freddy, now two and a half. Her sister, Jane Talbot, couldn’t care for him any more and Charlotte had secured a position in Surrey as housekeeper to a priest. She offered to send half of her wages for Freddy’s keep. Father Hudson’s refused at first, but eventually they agreed to take him.

On a cold December day in 1906, she boarded the train at Euston Station to deliver her little boy to the Birmingham orphanage. Her letters reflect her desperate resignation to having her four boys and one daughter many miles away from where she now had to earn a living. 

Soon after this, she needed somewhere for her oldest daughter, Lillian, as well. Once again, Charlotte declined the offer of a Protestant home, to ensure her daughter would be raised a Catholic. Lilly was placed in a convent home in Oxford, many miles away from her siblings, in early 1907.

Charlotte wasn’t doing well at this point. She was very depressed without Freddy and even took him back temporarily, but had to pay others to look after him so she could work. Her health declined so much that she feared she would lose her job.

Finally, by late December 1909, Charlotte was back in Birmingham with no job. Seriously ill, she was in the Aston Workhouse infirmary, where her husband had died just 4 years earlier. Young Freddy was put into yet another orphanage, not where his brothers were this time. With her family scattered and all of her resources exhausted, we can only imagine her desolation in the grim confines of the Aston Workhouse, among more than 1000 other inmates.

But Charlotte recovered. She got another position, this time as a cook. And within two years of her desperate illness, she began a new life, with a new husband, William Marshall. By 1914, most of her family was reunited in Birmingham. All six children survived to create their own stories. Charlotte herself lived to see some of her grandchildren.

I feel truly privileged to be descended from Charlotte and to tell you these parts of her story. I am grateful to Father Hudson’s and the Sisters of Mercy for their generous responses to my request for information about Charlotte and her family.

This is the story of Charlotte, my great grandmother, widowed in 1905 in Birmingham, England, with six children under age 10. See Part 1 of this story.

Within 2 months of her husband’s death, Charlotte was desperate, desperate enough to ask the local Catholic orphanage, Father Hudson’s, to take in her three oldest boys. Her parish priest wrote on her application: “Mother seems consumptive. Good deserving case. Protestants have offered to take children, but Mother refuses.” 

Her faith was important to her — she wanted them cared for by people who shared her religious beliefs. 

While she waited for Father Hudson’s decision, she was granted charitable relief of 5 shillings and 5 loaves a week. In those days, the poverty line (by some estimates) was a family income of 20 shillings a week.

Charlotte’s sister Jane Talbot was willing to take baby Freddy at first, and already had one of the two girls, but she lived in Surrey, more than 100 miles away. 

Father Hudson’s agreed to take the older boys but requested payment as soon as Charlotte found work. She applied for little Dorothy to be accepted there, too, but Dorothy was sent to a Sisters of Mercy orphanage nearby and rarely saw her brothers again until years later. 

Charlotte moved to Surrey to live with her sister while she looked for work, but managed to visit her boys from time to time. She wrote to Father Hudson’s after a visit: “I am very much grieved over little George having sores and ringworm on his head.” She begged for word that her son was getting better.

Father Hudson’s wrote back briefly to say the boys were doing well.

Charlotte’s story continues tomorrow.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you a story. This story begins in Birmingham, England. In the 19th century, factories and shops attracted workers from all over, including Samuel Browne, who moved there from Derbyshire and married a local girl. This story is about his youngest daughter, Charlotte.

Born in 1873, Charlotte grew up in a back-to-back house, which was a common type of cramped housing for working families built around a dismal shared courtyard containing an outhouse, a water pump and little else. This was Charlotte’s world as a young child.

By age 11, she was orphaned, living at a training school for servants run by the Sisters of Mercy. It was a home for Catholic girls who would otherwise be in the workhouse. 

By 1895, things started to look up for Charlotte, when she married Edward Gradwell, a handsome young brass worker. Children soon followed, first Lilly, then Will, Teddy, Dorothy, George, and the last, Freddy, my grandfather. 

Freddy was barely a year old when his father died of one of the most common diseases of the urban poor, tuberculosis. He died in the Aston Workhouse infirmary, aged 36, leaving Charlotte with 6 children under 10 and no means of support. It was 1905.

Charlotte’s story continues tomorrow.