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Friday 16 April 2010

The family of William and Ruth Gidley of Marylebone

Whether William Gidley who married Ruth Ames was the foundling child or not (see previous posting), his death in 1842 left the family destitute, as papers in the London Metropolitan Archives show.
I have found five children of the marriage, although the only boy, George, the oldest, who was baptised in St John's, Lambeth, died 17 months later when the family had moved to Marylebone. The four girls, Mary Ann, Grace, Emma and Susannah, followed in quick succession, and were all baptised together on 13 June 1841 in Christ Church, Marylebone. Their mother Ruth described herself in 1841 as being a British subject born in Spain, but in 1851 her birthplace had changed to "North Walson, Norfolk". In 1841 William was a servant, living in Little Carlisle Street, Marylebone. When their daughter Emma married in 1862 she gave her father's occupation as "stockbroker's apprentice". Disaster struck on 18th July 1845 when William died of dropsy in the Middlesex Hospital, and only a month later Ruth Gidley found herself undergoing a settlement examination at the Police Court in Marylebone, on August 20th 1842. She had obviously approached the parish of St Marylebone for parish relief, and the Board of Guardians were keen to offload the family to another parish.
The examination ran as follows: "Ruth Gidley of Little Carlisle Street, aged 37 years, her daughters Mary Ann Gidley aged 5 years, Grace Gidley aged 4 years, Emma Gidley aged 3 years, and Susannah Gidley aged 2 years. That she married William Gidley in St Martin in the Fields 8 September 1833, and that he died on 18th July last. That in 1832, then a single man, he hired himself as a yearly servant to Mr Carrick of Southgate, Edmonton at yearly wages of £30, that he served one whole year, and boarded and slept in the house of the said master, and did no act since to acquire a subsequent settlement."
The judgement was that "Ruth Gidley and her four lawful children had intruded and have lately become chargeable to St Marylebone and that they should therefore be removed to Edmonton as their last legal settlement".
The parish of Edmonton felt themselves aggrieved about this offloading of responsibility, and it seems odd to us nowadays that the fate of a whole family should hang on the basis of one year's work by a dead person, which took place ten years previously, before his children were born, and even before his marriage. Presumably none of the surviving family had even been to Edmonton, where it was proposed to dump them. The parish of Edmonton gave notice of appeal and requested a hearing at the next Quarter Sessions in January, but failed to provide any evidence and made no enquiries. The clerk to the Board of Guardians of St Marylebone requested information from Edmonton by return of post, but that is where the file at the London Metropolitan Archives ends. Presumably the family was taken to Edmonton, where there would be no support network awaiting them.
By 1848 Ruth Gidley had returned to London where she married Robert Derrick Smith, a gas labourer. There the whole family was found in 1851, and her second husband had taken on the family. The three younger girls were still at school, and Mary Ann was a dressmaker. By 1861 Ruth was a monthly nurse, away from home about her duties; in 1871 she was now widowed for the second time. Of the girls, Mary Ann married in 1884 at the age of about 48, Grace in 1861 (after which she vanishes), and Emma in 1862 to the presumed father of her illegitimate child aged 2. The fate of Susanna (or Susan) is not known. I can find no reference to her after 1871, when she was a needlewoman, living with her mother in St Pancras. The oldest, Mary Ann, was in the St George's Hanover Square Workhouse in Mayfair by 1891, already widowed, and in 1901 was living in St Pancras, "kept by friends". She probably died in St Pancras in 1908.

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