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A tale of three weddings, pt 2 - William’s story.

 

As mentioned in part 1, William Holyland was born in the village of Syston, Leicestershire, and baptised there on Jan 21 1844. William was the fourth child of 5 born to Thomas Holyland and his wife Sarah.

Many of the men in this branch of the family worked as butchers, but William’s father seems to have changed jobs frequently, being listed variously as butcher, coal merchant, carter, and labourer. William’s childhood must have been disrupted by several unhappy events -  his mother’s death in 1847; his father’s conviction and imprisonment in 1848 for receiving stolen goods; and the trials of his uncle, also from Syston, who was implicated in the manslaughter of another man and ultimately committed suicide in 1854. Perhaps these events contributed to William and his father leaving the area so that in 1861, as mentioned in part 1, William was in Nottinghamshire and his father was in Derbyshire.

Following his marriage to Hannah Slater in Ashbourne in 1864, William then disappeared from the censuses until 1891, when he reappeared with a different wife and two small children in Ringwood, Hampshire.  By then he was working as a plater on the railway.

Eventually I tracked his passage through the intervening years. In November 1866, 22 year old William “Holeyland” (sic) of Syston, Leicestershire, enlisted in Liverpool  into the 18th regiment of foot, receiving a bounty of £1 “and a free kit”.

The record confirms his occupation as a labourer, but he declared himself unmarried. He was a well-built young man, being 5’ 6’’ tall and 174lbs weight, with “very good muscular development”.  He subsequently saw service in Ireland, Malta, Afghanistan, India and Egypt. An early “hiccup” occurred when in 1868, he deserted. He was at liberty for nearly a year before being convicted in Alfreton, Derbyshire, of felony. He was using the name of Henry Jones but his true identity was discovered and he was handed back to the army on his release, to serve a further 6 months imprisonment (1)

Through 21 years in the army, he never rose above the rank of private, but apart from the above episode, and a couple of early run-ins for drunkenness, his conduct was assessed as good, and he was eventually medically discharged in 1887. By this time he was stationed in Devonport and had married Georgiana Kearl. Their marriage certificate (1886) once again confirms William’s father as Thomas Holyland, a butcher, and the subsequent censuses clearly show that this was the William born in Syston.

 

William lived the rest of his years in Ringwood and died there in 1921.

His story seems unremarkable except for one fact – on his second marriage certificate, he is described as “batchelor”. 

Had his first wife, Hannah, died?  I had been unable to find any trace of her. Or was this marriage indeed bigamous and the “batchelor” statement a knowing lie? More investigation was needed, as detailed in part 3!

 

1. Nottingham Journal 02 June 1869

https://holylandons.blogspot.com/2020/12/a-tale-of-three-weddings-pt-1-first.html 

 https://holylandons.blogspot.com/2020/12/a-tale-of-three-weddings-pt-3-hannahs.html 

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