The next three posts will each tell the story of a
member of one particular family - Joseph Henry Holyland, his wife Augusta (nee
Upton) and their son John William Holyland.
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| 3 + 5 Wharf St, Leicester - home and business premises of Joseph's father and brother |
Joseph Henry Holyland was born on 4 Dec 1847 in the
St Nicholas area of Leicester. His father, John, was a tallow chandler and
eventually moved into furniture sales. Joseph was the second child, and first
son; nine children were born into the family in total and all bar one lived to
adulthood - quite an unusual feat in mid 18th century Leicester.
Like many men in Leicester at that time, Joseph
worked in the shoe trade, as a clicker - a skilled occupation(1). On 25
August 1867 he married Augusta Marshall Upton and their first child was born
just 5 days later, but lived only a fortnight. Although Joseph's parents had
successfully raised 8 out of 9 children, Joseph and Augusta were less fortunate
and over the next 22 years, despite having 16 children, only 9 survived to
adulthood.
For the first several years of the marriage, there
are no records to suggest that Joseph was anything other than the hardworking
head of a rapidly growing family. Although moving house frequently, the family
stayed in the central part of town, and an 1883 trade register lists Joseph as
a "boot and hosiery dealer" on Bedford St in the town centre. His
brother and uncle were also dealers in hosiery, but Joseph stopped trading at some
point and went back to doing piecework as a clicker.
However, in 1884 Joseph was in court and the report
makes it clear that this was not the first time. It seems he had developed a
taste for alcohol; on arriving home one night, Augusta accused him of having been
drinking all week, whereupon he hit her on the face and head. The magistrate
said that it was "no good inflicting a fine on a man like the
defendant, who had been convicted repeatedly of assaulting his wife and who
seemed to be a regular brute" (2). Joseph was sentenced to 21 days'
hard labour.
Joseph was by now neglecting his family. In 1885 he
was ordered by the court to have his children vaccinated against smallpox
within a month. In the summer of 1890, he was fined for failure to send his
children to school.
And in autumn of that year, Joseph Henry Holyland
became the defendant in one of the earliest cases brought by the forerunner of
the NSPCC. Augusta had gone into the asylum; the two oldest surviving children
of the family had cared for the smaller ones then escaped the family home
themselves, leaving Joseph to care for seven children aged 15 months to 15
years. The oldest of these, Annie, testified in court that her father had not
worked for several months; he had been "on the drink", had pawned
their furniture and left the children without food.
The court was told that this was not the case
of a poor deserving man with a large family who had been thrown out of work;
there was, in fact, no excuse for him not working. Should Joseph have stayed in
his job, he could have been earning up to £2/week. Furthermore, his previous
employer said that Joseph could have had "as much work as he wanted";
he was keen to employ him as Joseph was "a good worker" (presumably
when sober!) (3)
The case was adjourned for a month, at the end of
which Joseph swore to the court that he had "signed the pledge" and
intended to stay sober.
It's easy to paint Joseph as a villain here and
maybe he was indeed just a "regular brute" who drank too much, beat
his wife and neglected his children. Or maybe, just maybe, the death toll of
his children had left him depressed, and the absence of Augusta through her own
ill-health tipped him over the edge.We won't ever know.
Joseph died
aged 44 in February 1892. The cause of death was given as phthisis (or TB) and
haemoptysis (ie coughing up blood). Death can sometimes occur in TB due to the
infection eroding into one of the main arteries in the chest, causing
catastrophic bleeding, so it's possible that Joseph's end was very sudden. He
left a widow and 9 children, the youngest only 2 years old, and was outlived by
both his parents and 7 out of his 8 siblings. He is buried in Welford Rd
Cemetery, separately from Augusta, his parents and all but one of his children.
There is no headstone.
2. Leicester Chronicle 02 February 1884
3. Leicester Chronicle 15 November 1890
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