John Stoliday (1817-1896).
My 4th great-uncle.
John Stoliday was born on 25 April 1817 and baptised on 8 June at All Saints’ Church in Rackheath, Norfolk, to parents James Stoliday and Mary Gay. He and his family had several brushes with the law…
John grew up with his parents and siblings in and around Rackheath and his father, like most men in the area, worked in the fields as a husbandman and labourer.
John’s story takes a twist in March 1848, as a John Stolady aged 33 was convicted of larceny at the Swaffham Sessions in Norfolk and sentenced to 14 days in prison. If this is our John, he’d stolen a quantity of iron in the village of Denver belonging to Charles Peach of Downham Market. Considering that he married in Downham a few years later suggests this is him, even though the age is out by a couple of years. The case was reported in the 1 April 1848 edition of the Norfolk Chronicle.
On 28 April 1851, labourer John married Catherine Smith at St Edmund’s Church in Downham, Norfolk. She came from Crimplesham and already had an illegitimate child, who was baptised in the village on 17 October 1847 and named after her father Ambrose.
The Norfolk Chronicle of 22 May 1858 reported that John had been charged with assaulting Catherine while they were living at Felthorpe, north-east of Norwich. A hearing at Norwich Shire Hall heard Catherine say that she’d quarrelled with her husband and that, because she’d thrown water over one of their parents, John allegedly knocked her down and kicked her. However, he claimed that Catherine had struck his father with a stick. The case against John was dismissed but Catherine ended up being convicted of throwing a pail of dirty water over someone and was fined 14s 6d.
Census reports from 1861 onwards show John and Catherine living at Salhouse and Rackheath, where he worked as an agricultural labourer. But it wasn’t long before Catharine was in trouble again, this time with her son Ambrose, as reported in the Norfolk Chronicle of 12 February 1870. Farmer Frederic King told justices at Norwich Shirehall that mother and son had assaulted him after he chastised Ambrose for not having come to work on the Sunday. Catherine, hearing her son’s shrieks, came up and abused King, throwing stones at him that she’d taken from her apron. One struck the complainant on the leg. Catherine and Ambrose said they had been provoked by King striking Ambrose. The magistrates dismissed the case against Ambrose but fined Catherine 6d with costs of 16s, even though they agreed she’d been greatly provoked. They also told King that he could not take the law into his own hands.
Ambrose went on to live with the Stolidays, as shown in the 1871 census. John died in Norwich in 1896 and was buried in Rackheath on 19 November 1896. Catherine crops up in the 1901 census living in Norwich with her daughter Sarah Ann’s family. She died in 1910.
The couple had at least five children: Job Stoliday, born in 1851 in Downham but he disappears after the 1861 census; Henry Stoliday (1856-1881), who drowned when the Yarmouth-based vessel Edmund & Charlotte sank on 29 June 1881; James John Stoliday, born 1859; George Stoliday (1862-1939), who served with the British Army in Burma and India; and Sarah Ann Stoliday (1864-1950).
Sources: Rackheath Parish Registers published in 1984 by Norfolk and Norwich Genealogical Society. BMD, census and other records at Ancestry.com and Findmypast.com. Newspaper archives at Findmypast.com/British Newspaper Archive.