"A fairly strong woman"

HOLYLAND - In loving memory of our dear mother, August Marshall Holyland, who passed away on May 21, 1910.

Cold is the grave where dear mother is laid

Sweet are memories that will never fade

                                                                                           ----Sons and daughters

(Leicester Chronicle 24 May 1913) 

Life should have relatively easy for Augusta Holyland; both parents inherited property and should have been able to give her a comfortable upbringing.

Unfortunately, she was instead the second illegitimate child of a mentally ill woman and a man who was in and out of the workhouse; life in Victorian England was therefore never going to be easy.

Augusta Upton Marshall was born in July 1850 in Desford, Leicestershire. Her parents didn't marry until seven months later when her mother was already pregnant again, and at that point her names were switched to Augusta Marshall Upton. (DNA evidence suggests that the man her mother eventually married was indeed her biological father). Even her birth registration was confused, with Augusta registered as a boy. Augusta's mother was admitted to the asylum when her children were still small and spent most of the rest of her life there. At census times, the young Augusta was being cared for either by neighbours or by grandparents.

Augusta was barely 17 and heavily pregnant when, claiming to be a year older,  she waddled down the aisle to marry Joseph Henry Holyland in August 1867. Her first son was born just 5 days later, but lived only 2 weeks. Her husband Joseph is the subject matter of the previous blogpost, "A regular brute".

It wasn't until her fifth pregnancy, in 1872, that Augusta and Joseph had a child that survived to adulthood. But still the babies kept coming -- 16 in total, including one set of twins, over 22 years. Only 9 of those babies survived childhood; several of the little mites filled the family plot in Welford Road cemetery over the years.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Augusta was being beaten by her husband, who apparently drank regularly and did not hold down his jobs. It's unsurprising that Augusta's resilience eventually cracked; in July 1890, when her youngest baby was 10 months old, she was admitted to the asylum, suffering from "melancholia".

partial copy of Augusta's admission to the asylum, June 1890

There she stayed for 18 months, only to be widowed 2 months after discharge.

Joseph was dead, but the beatings didn't stop - in June 1892, Augusta's oldest son was convicted of  assaulting her. The following winter, November 1892, Augusta, by now a charwoman, took herself and three of her youngest children to the workhouse, where they stayed until March. (The children were transferred to Countesthorpe Cottage Homes several miles away). This may have been a last resort, but we can presume that this kept Augusta  and her children comparatively warm, clothed and fed, which may not have otherwise been the case.

Leicester union workhouse

At some point after this,Augusta decided to take her mother's name of Frances. Her fortunes perhaps  improved after her spell in the workhouse, and she subsequently lived and ran a fancy goods shop on Charnwood Road, one of Leicester's main thoroughfares. (Her father-  and brother-in-law had been successful shopkeepers - did they perhaps help to set her up?) It was there, one evening in May 1910, that she complained of chest pain and shortness of breath. Her daughter Maud gave her ginger water to drink, and rubbed her chest with goose fat, but to no avail. By the time the doctor was sent for it was too late; Augusta had died of "heart failure" (the description would suggest an acute heart attack). She was buried in an unmarked grave in Gilroes cemetery, Leicester.

At the inquest, where Augusta was known as Frances Augusta Holyland, Maud gave evidence that her mother had been "a fairly strong woman and never had had any illness". A century on, I think that to survive the life that she had, Augusta's fount of inner strength must actually have been phenomenal.