Hannah Maria Stoliday (1851-1932), James William Bull (1850-1874), William James Thurgate and John Crisp.
My 2nd great-grand aunt and uncles.
Hannah was born to William Stoliday and Sarah Rose in 1851 in Salhouse, Norfolk, and was baptised at All Saints’s Church in the village on 19 March. She ended up with three marriages to her name, experienced tragedy and lived in London and County Durham, as well as Norfolk.
The 1871 census showed Maria living in Florence Place, Great Yarmouth, working as a servant in the home of widow and annuitant Eleanor Fowler. She doubtless met her first husband in the town, for she married James William Bull on 24 February 1873 at the town’s St Nicholas Church. A fisherman and living at Row 123 in Yarmouth, he was a local boy born on 2 November 1850. But their marriage was cut tragically short when he drowned on 8 April 1874, the result of a fight. The Norfolk News of 18 April 1874 reported that James was master of the smack Who’d-a-Thought-It and had been involved in an argument and fight with the master of another Yarmouth-based vessel, William Haines, on a third, the Wanderer, while they were off the Dutch coast. James ended up going overboard and was lost. The report said police were investigating but I’ve found no follow-up, suggesting that Haines wasn’t charged with his death.
Hannah then married fisherman William James Thurgate on 20 December 1877 at St Nicholas’s in Great Yarmouth. I’ve found few references to him in the records but Hannah cropped up in a Norwich Mercury report of 15 March 1879, in which she was accused of assaulting Elizabeth Marsden in Great Yarmouth. The complainant claimed that while they were in a public house in Middlegate Street, she saw her husband with the defendant and remonstrated with him. At this point Hannah supposedly struck her several times in the face, knocking her down. However, Hannah said that Marsden had engaged in a struggle with her husband, during which her injuries were inflicted. The magistrates dismissed the case. The newspaper report
This wasn’t her only appearance in court. The Yarmouth Independent of 14 July 1877 reported that Hannah was fined 5s and costs for assaulting Mary Ann Attridge in Middlegate Street. Hannah had come out of a pub drunk, hit Mary Ann in the eye and knocked her to the ground. Then the Eastern Daily Press of 17 April 1880 noted that a beer house keeper named Louisa Lawson had complained that Hannah had abused her with foul language near the quay. However, Hannah produced witnesses to the contrary and she was found not guilty.
The Yarmouth Independent of 20 May 1882 then gave us a double dose of incidents, reporting that Hannah had been assaulted by well-known local character Jenny Soanes, who was sentenced to 21 days’ hard labour. Immediately after this case, Hannah faced a charge of assaulting another woman in an incident that led to the Soanes charge! She was found not guilty.
I can’t find William or Hannah in the 1881 census and William seems to disappear altogether. Hannah, though, turns up in south-east London in 1887, marrying widower and mariner John Crisp on 5 January 1887 at Christ Church in Rotherhithe. Although he came from Suffolk, he called South Shields, County Durham, home for many years. And this is where Hannah ended up living with him, as shown in the 1901 and 1911 censuses. John continued to work at sea, in 1901 noted as the master of the Lizzie Fox, based in South Shields but on census night at Strood dock in Kent.
Weirdly the couple appear to have wed a second time for in 1917 the marriage of Hannah Thurgate and John Crisp was registered in South Shields. Was this because there was something not quite right about their first ceremony? Was Hannah able to legitimately marry John in 1887? I say this because the Newcastle Daily Chronicle of 23 September 1893 reported that a William Thurgate had died in the town of Byker from cholera, and he was said to have visited Yarmouth and worked as a fish hawker. Reports suggested he was living in the area with his wife, but she wasn’t named. Could this man have been Hannah’s second husband. Had they separated but not divorced? Was the 1917 wedding an attempt by Hannah and John to put their wedding on a legal footing before they died?
John was still at sea in 1921 when the census showed he was serving as first mate on the Holmside at South Shields. Hannah was living at home there but described herself as a widow for an unexplained reason. John died in 1923, with probate granted to Hannah. Hannah died in South Shields on 8 November 1932. She left effects valued at £1,327.
Sources: BMDs and census info at Ancestry.co.uk and Findmypast.co.uk, where I also accessed the British Newspaper Archive. Birth records at gro.gov.uk. Records at Norfolk Family History Society