Whatever Happened to Jane?: Part 2

An advertisement in the local newspaper helps us to pick up the story of Jane and the Barton family as they moved with Robinson's work to a new parish. Having had a period of "time off" from his previous parish in Alconbury in Huntingdonshire, the first the record has for us in the new appointment is possibly evidence that the Bartons had been living in this area during a period of recovery "from the illness of his wife and children" as revealed in Part One of this blog.

This To Be Let notice indicates that the Bartons had been living in this villa lately and gives an excellent description of what life might have been like for Jane and her children for it was a home of ample proportions. " . . . a beautiful marine villa, delightfully situated on a promontory on Morecombe Bay at Hammerside Hill." It gives us a clear glimpse of the scale of the home with ". . . a dining room, 26 feet by 15, [approx. 8m x 4.5m] a drawing room and a suitable number of lodging rooms, with a stable and coach-house, garden and pleasure grounds." This notice appeared in "The Liverpool Mercury" in May 1839.
The notice of appointment of the Rev Barton to the Heysham parish seems to lend some credence to this being where the family was living, as it clearly gives Hammersmith Hill as where the Rev Barton is from. Assuming that Hammerside Hill, from the "To Be Let", is the same place as Hammersmith Hill in the announcement in the "Lancaster Gazette" of Saturday 28 July 1838 about the induction of the Rev Robinson Barton, we learn that the Barton family was in all likelihood living in the villa atop the promontory overlooking Morecombe Bay at this time. From the detail below, it would appear that Robinson was inducted to the Rectory on Tuesday 24 July 1838. The physical state of the Rectory, after the family had lived in the villa as described above, seems to have led to Robinson beginning a process of renovation and to have landed him in serious hot water, as will be outlined below.

As was recorded in Part 1 of this blog, by this time Jane was 45 years old and it was on 27 October 1839 that their last child was born at 10 to five in the morning. He was a son and they baptised him Henry. 

The 1841 census, taken on June 6, reveals that the whole family was by now living in the Rectory along with three domestic servants. We can conclude that the renovations that took place in August 1839 because the "rectory was very much dilapidated" probably took place while the family still lived in Hammerside Hill prior to them moving in to the renovated Rectory. 

The 1838 Heysham Tithe Map, above, shows the ancient church at 388 and the Rectory at 389 to demonstrate the significant size of the parish buildings at the time the Barton family arrived in July 1838. The image below shows the church as it may have looked for the children as they settled in to life in the newly renovated Rectory.

It is just three months after the 1841 census was taken that we find Robinson taking centre-stage in the first of many disquieting pointers to the future. It would seem that despite his being appointed as a local magistrate in Heysham, it was not long before Robinson's style and demeanour was met with stern opposition from Heysham locals from all classes! In a host of local newspapers around the middle of September 1841, when Henry was barely three months old, we read of another local magistrate, Mr T. J. Knowlys taking a case against the Rector for "lewd and immoral conduct, profane cursing and swearing, and intemperance." The case was heard on 14 September 1841 but referred back to the conduct of Mr Barton two years previously, not long after his arrival in the parish. The Commission of Inquiry was held amid great public excitement, in the local hotel in the village of Halton which we are told "was crowded with visitors from the adjacent townships."

While the witnesses' evidence was widely reported in local newspapers, it was a lot more difficult to find a report of the outcome of the Inquiry. The Stamford Mercury did hold a very small article on 29 October 1841 that reported "that Mr Barton's conduct was free from all blame, and his character unsullied, as it had always previously been esteemed, and that there was not a prima facie ground for further preceedings."

Knowing what we now know about the conduct of some clergy in some churches with respect to modern day enquiries, one might be forgiven for retaining a small level of disquiet abut the charges levelled at Rev Barton. Is it possible that there was some level of "cover up" with respect to this situation? Further research may reveal more.

For now all we can find in the records is that a short 16 months later there is more trouble associated with the Rectory at Heysham. This time there are two suspicious fires in the house. On Tuesday 21 February 1843 there were two fires reported in different parts of the Rectory and then two days later on the Thursday, a further set of fires were lit in the house:

The telling words in this report state that the fires were deliberately lit by someone "well acquainted with the premises". As can be well imagined in a small community, "Of course these occurrences were the subject of general conversation and comment in Heysham and the neighbourhood, and reports were current, to which we do not choose to give publication." The article goes on to divulge that the insurer of the Rectory, the Sun fire office, had made application to the County magistrates "to have these suspicious circumstances fully and closely investigated." There were to be 22 witnesses called to the private proceedings which began in the Town Hall on Monday 27 February, 1843. The results of this inquiry have not, as yet, been located, but will be interesting to read. It is worth reporting here that the following notice appeared in The Lancaster Gazette, placed by the Rev Robinson Barton on Saturday 25 February, two days after the second fire.

It would seem that he placed the advertisement PRIOR to the fires of the evening of February 23, 1843. It will be most interesting to try to locate the details of the inquiry into these fires to see who was considered to be responsible for them!

A year later in February 1844, it would seem that the parish considered that the Rectory was no longer required by the parish as we find the following advertisement of a private sale prior to a planned March Auction of the buildings:

One can only speculate as to the reasoning behind this move by the Parish Council who had been advertising the auction of the Rectory for much of January 1844. 

The final primary source details come in the form of a series of no fewer than six admissions for the Rev Robinson Barton, to private "lunatic" asylums. The first admission takes place on 5 September, 1846. Each admission and discharge reveals a period of confinement of between two months and five months and ends with his discharge on 18 September 1854. At the time of the 1851 census, which was conducted on March 30, 1851 the family can be found living together at 22 Milverton Cres, in the parish of Milverton in Warwickshire. Although Robinson is recorded as being a clergyman with a Bachelor of Divinity, there is no mention of him being the Rector of Heysham. He was admitted to Kensington House in London on the first occasion and his discharge notes read "relieved". He is then confined to Moorcroft House on four occasions, each time upon discharge he is recorded as being "cured". Hayes Park Asylum was also one of the private institutions where he spent time from 9 January 1853 until 4 June 1853.  It is during this time that Robinson and Jane's first child, Anne Jane Barton died on 21 February 1853 in Worcester. She was aged just 21 and it must have been very hard for Jane to have managed all the arrangements for Annie's burial in Claines without the help and support of her husband. By 1853 we find that the Rev Barton has resigned from the living of Heysham and been replaced by the Rev John Royds.

We next discover that Robinson Barton has died in Bastonford, Worcester on 4 June 1858. One can only speculate on the reason for his treatment in private asylums and to the reason for the fires and his swearing etc early in his time at Heysham. I have ordered a copy of his Will and that of his wife Jane in order to shed further light on the lives of John Baron's sister and brother-in-law and this will be my next research direction.         

Whatever Happened to Jane? Part One of a Two Part Story

Sometimes the most colourful characters in our family history research reveal themselves when searching outside the direct line ancestors . . . and so it is with this "off shoot" family in the Baron family story.

James Baron's Will (see "James Baron's Will Revealed", the blog from January 2015) was a goldmine of family detail and one of details that he shared related to his daughter Jane Baron  b 9 June 1794 in Wigan. Jane had been born 13 months before John Baron who is the New Zealand Barons direct line ancestor and little is known about her early life. I was keen to learn more about her and who she married and if there were any possible living relations from her line. James Baron's will, written and signed on the 8 March 1830, made a few mentions of his daughter Jane that led me to believe that despite her being well on the way towards celebrating her 36th birthday at the time he penned his will, that she was unmarried at this time. Despite extensive searching for a marriage I was really just floundering around. A better line of enquiry was to locate the death information for Jane and John's mother Ellen (nee Jackson) which I thought might be found in or around Wigan where James had died and where one could reasonably assume that she might stay living after James' death. 

A good place to start is often in historical newspapers and the British Newspaper Archive has a search engine that can search across the country rather than be misled by the researcher's preconceived notions! Straight away I did score a hit with the following entry recorded in the Huntingdon, Bedford and Peterborough Gazette of 3 August 1833.:

The obvious next step was to find out who this new character, Mrs Barton, was and if this Mrs Baron was, in fact, OUR Mrs Baron, so a search of the burial records for Lancashire, where the Barons were originally from, revealed that an Ellen Baron who had been living in Alconbury, Huntingdonshire was buried in Standish aged 68 years. We had the right mother for Mrs Barton so now just needed to work on revealing who Mrs Barton was. . . 

The Church of England has excellent records that hold really good detail about individuals who have served in the Church. The following clip clarifies that one Robinson Shuttleworth BARTON was the Vicar at Alconbury cum Weston at the time that Ellen Baron died at the Vicarage there. So, it would seem that Jane Baron, daughter of James and Ellen Baron, sister of John Baron married Robinson Shuttleworth Barton some time between the writing of her father's will and the death of her mother, and was our Mrs Barton from her mother's death announcement from the newspaper.

From here the detail of the marriage is easy to locate and paints a confusing picture that pulls up further questions about what was happening for Jane prior to the marriage. The bare bones of the story are that in 1830, after her father James wrote his Will but before he died on January 3, 1831, Jane was married to the Rev Robinson Barton at the parish church in Flixton, Lancashire. The licence issued indicates that Jane Baron resided in the Parish of Flixton at the time of her marriage and her husband to be gave the Parish of Alconbury as his own Parish. What was Jane doing in Flixton at the time of her marriage? Why did James not change his will to reflect his only daughter's new status? Jane was 36 and Robinson 44, on the date of the marriage: 16 August 1830. The two witnesses were R. Wright and Maria Stevenson. Just 41/2 months later Jane's father was dead and his will provided that "one other of his best bedsteads and one other of his best beds, together with all necessary and suitable bedding" was provided for Jane in his last will and testament. One can only wonder if this is the bed that she and her new husband used in the vicarage in Alconbury, or perhaps his wife died in,  just a bare 21/2 years later. 

What the record does say is that at the time of her mother's death, on 24 July 1833 Jane had given birth to one daughter - Anne Jane Barton b 25 May 1831 and was five months pregnant with the pregnancy that became Sarah Parr Barton b 11 November 1833. The death of her mother and the removal of her body for burial back in Standish on 3 August 1833, ten days after the death, must have been a time of great stress for Jane, for she was now 38 years old with a 15 month old child to care for and a new baby on the way. The cause of Ellen's death is unknown at this time but that, too may have been a cause of some stress for Jane if the illness was something that could have been contracted by her young daughter.

Jane and Robinson had two further babies born to them, this time both boys. James was born in 1835 on August 22 and Henry was born in their new parish of Heysham on 28 October 1839. By the time this last child was born Jane was now 45 years of age which even today is relatively old to be giving birth. It is worthy of comment that in a document dated 7 September 1836, when their children would have been 5, almost 3 and just turned 1, the Bishop of Lincoln licensed Robinson Shuttleworth Barton to be absent from his "benefice" until 31 December 1838 on account "of the actual illness of your wife and children". It is possible that the length of time between the births of James and Henry was due to this ill health, but it is also open to conjecture that Jane had suffered a miscarriage between these last two children. Of this the record tells us nothing at all. What we do know is that when she was 45 years old Jane gave birth to her last child after the family moved to the new parish of Heysham, Lancashire where Robinson Barton became Rector and the family lived in the Rectory.

Once they arrive in Heysham the story of Jane and her husband Robinson Shuttleworth Barton becomes truly fascinating, and a little sad but that will have to be a story for another time.