Five more women

 In investigating the lives of past Charterhouse residents it is usually more difficult to find out about the lives of women, especially those with common names.  But where an occupation is given and we have some other bit of information to go on, we can use all the data available online to give them some substance.

MARY ELIZABETH FARR was born c. 1852 and married (or didn't - there's no record of a marriage) William Farr, a boiler maker.  In 1881 they lived at 15 Cottingham Terrace, Sculcoates, by the side of the Drain.  By 1891 they had moved buildings at 2, Sykes St, close to the Charterhouse.  It was obviously a hard life in poor circumstances.  She didn't get her name in the papers until: 

Hull Daily Mail, 21 June 1900

That's all we have.  So what happened?  An electric car was an expensive novelty, so what it was doing on Sykes St, why Mary was in it and why she jumped out must remain forever a mystery.

William died in 1898 and Mary continued to live in Sykes St with her daughters Jane and Rose.  She worked as a charwoman.  She was admitted to the Charterhouse on 6 February 1919 and died in 1937.

ELIZABETH JESSOP was born Elizabeth Murphy in Lincolnshire c.1820 and married James Jessop in Hull in 1850.  They had a daughter, Rebecca, in 1855 but James died in 1858.  Elizabeth took a job as Matron of the Hull Lying-in Charity at 4 Reed St, where she and Rebecca lived in furnished accommodation.  

This charity was established in 1804 as a small maternity hospital for those married women who could not afford the fees for private midwives.  It was managed by a committee of ten ladies (said a report of 1898).  As well as the Matron there was a certified midwife in attendance and doctors on call if needed.  The Matron was responsible for the administration of the charity.  

Elizabeth retired in 1896 and was admitted to the Charterhouse on 1 October that year.  She died on 9 May 1911.  

HELEN MARIA HARRISON lived almost all her life in one house, in Prospect Place, Hull.

She was born in 1838 to James and Margaret Harrison.  On the 1851 census James described himself as an estate agent and genealogist.  By 1871 he was the "town clerk's assistant".  Helen herself was always a music teacher.  We have no more detail than that.

On the 1881 census Helen was living with a family on Grimston Street, described as a servant and music teacher.  Was this a desperate need to earn more money or an escape from the parental home?  By 1891 she was back in Prospect Place with her widowed father.  He died in 1893 and Helen continued to live there alone.  She was admitted to the Charterhouse on 6 January 1910 and died in May 1916.

SARAH TASKER was born Sarah Tasker in Wyberton, Lincolnshire.  She married Frederick Tasker in 1863 and in 1871 the couple were in Skirbeck, Lincolnshire, with Frederick listed as shipsmith & innkeeper.  During the following decade the couple came to Hull.  In 1881 they were managing an establishment which was variously described as a cocoa house, a coffee house and refreshment rooms at 55-56 Paragon St.

This was the White Horse Hotel (on the left of the photo), a temperance hotel which belonged to the Hull People's Public House Company.  This group owned 18 of these hotels in Hull, providing meals and non-alcoholic drinks to take people away from the pubs.  Some of them lasted up to the 1920s before conceding defeat and getting a drinks licence.

Frederick died in 1893 and Sarah carried on alone.  In September 1900, so the Hull Daily Mail tells us, she was granted a "billiard licence".  A year later she was manageress of a coffee house at 10, Witham, another of the People's Public House temperance establishments.  

She was admitted to the Charterhouse on 2 January 1907 and died on 3 March 1915.

EDITH WITTY was another resident who didn't marry.  She came from an East Riding family and was herself born in Hornsea on 18 July 1866.  They were in Hull by 1871 in Durham St, East Hull.  Edith's father John was a shoe-maker.  By 1881, at the age of 14, Edith was a domestic servant - a general skivvy - in the household of a bootmaker.  Ten years later she was back with her parents in Dryden's Entry, Salthouse Lane, but still working as a domestic servant.

Dryden's Entry

In 1901 she was a live-in servant again, this time in the house hold of a "Minister of the Catholic Church of Zion" in Grimsby.  (This was an evangelical sect originating in the United States.)

In the following decade Edith seems to have broken away from the domestic servant role.  On the 1911 census she is a visitor in another household, and her occupation is given as office cleaner.

We don't know when Edith was admitted to the Charterhouse.  It's too late for our register, and the published electoral lists show her living alone until the late 1920s.  However, she appears in the Charterhouse on very informative 1939 electoral register.  She died in 1946, so would have been one of those evacuated from the house in 1941 and not returned.

Edith Witty seems to have been one of those people for whom the Charterhouse was originally founded - the genuine aged poor.