TitBits magazine (1889) | English Ancestors

Image from Dr Bob Nicholson @DigiVictorian on Twitter.
Click the image for a slightly bigger version that will be a bit easier to read.

Dr Bob Nicholson, who shares stories from the Victorian era on Twitter, recently wrote about a competition in Tit-Bits magazine in 1889. Single female readers were invited to answer the question: ‘Why Am I A Spinster?’, with a prize awarded to the lady providing the best response. In the event, there were too many good responses to be able to choose just one, so on 27th April, 1889, the full page of responses pictured above was published. Some are witty, some poignant.

I’ve been meaning to write about spinsters for a while. I’ve noticed a few in my ancestral lines and wondered why. After all, society was not geared up for independent, single women. Of course, as suggested in the Tit-Bits article, there could be any number of reasons. Perhaps they were not interested in men/ marriage/ motherhood, or perhaps one daughter was expected to stay home to take care of ageing parents. Perhaps they had lost their one true love in war? Or maybe, despite the ‘old maid’ sniggers, they wanted to retain their independence, and this was the only way to achieve that?

To refer back to my previous post about researching female ancestors, before the Married Women’s Property Act of 1870 married women were not allowed to keep their own earnings, while prior to the 1882 Married Women’s Property Act all of a woman’s property and possessions passed to her husband when she married. The only way a woman could retain property and finances was to remain single or, after the death of her husband, to avoid remarriage.

Most women, of course, would not need to trouble themseleves with the matter of how to hang on to their personal wealth. It was more a matter of how would they survive. This was not just a concern for spinsters. Widows and abandoned wives, too, may have had difficulties in later life when left without a husband/ father bringing in the money. Many had to rely on charity for accommodation (e.g. almshouses or living with a brother’s family) and for living expenses. Some of our maiden great-aunts will of course have been sufficiently well provided-for, and others had worked all their lives and continued to do so. I have examples of all of these in my tree, and perhaps you do too.

However, one of my own ancestral families particularly piqued my interest. My 4x great grandparents, John and Sarah, had five sons and five daughters. The family business (Woollen drapers to the people and gentry of York) was doing well, all five boys married after securing admission to the Freedom of the City of York, and the oldest son rose to the position of Lord Mayor of York in the 1860s. And yet of the daughters, one died aged 25 and the others remained at the family home until the death of their parents in 1860, by which time the sisters were aged 48 to 32.

Some years ago I obtained their father, John’s, will. At first sight I was quite upset by what I read. John bequeathed all his money and the family business only to his sons. The four daughters were not even mentioned. Indeed by the census of the following year one of the sons had bought out the family business and although he and his wife remained in their former home, all four sisters had moved out of the rooms above the shop premises in Stonegate and were living together in a private house in York.

And yet the sisters did not seem to go without. In the censuses of 1861-1901 they describe themselves as ‘Railway Annuitants (Railway Stock)’, living off the dividends from these investments. I could also see from the Probate Calendar on Ancestry (England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858-1995) that each of them would eventually leave a will, bequeathing what she had to her remaining sisters.

The Probate Calendar does not provide a copy of the actual will. For that, you have to place an order via the Find A Will website. Fascinated though I was by this story, I really couldn’t justify spending £40 on a series of wills just to satisfy my curiosity. You may remember, though, that last July the price of wills was greatly reduced, from £10 to £1.50 each. Now spending £6 to satisfy my curiosity was entirely reasonable….

It seems that each of the four sisters made a will in 1862, and on the basis of this, when the oldest, Maria, died in 1895 she left £1523 to her sisters. Shortly afterwards, the remaining sisters, now aged 66 to 78, each made a new will, leaving her worldly possessions to whoever outlived her, and in the event of herself being the sole survivor, to three named charities. I suspect each sister chose a charity dear to her own heart, and all had agreed to share the final funds equally between the three charities, regardless of which sister survived the other two. Hence at her death in 1899 Louisa left £1983; and in 1900 Emma left £1956 to just one surviving sister, Sarah. It’s interesting too, to note the circles the sisters moved in. These were educated and knowledgeable women, able to take on the role of executrices for each other. However, the executors for the will of whichever sister died last were to be the solicitors George and Frederick Crombie, both of whom described in the wills as ‘friends’, not merely professionals carrying out a service. It was not until the death of Sarah at the age of 87 in 1904 that they were required to perform this role. Her estate, totalling £6140, was left in equal shares to the York Branch of the RSPCA, the Royal Sailor Rest at Portsmouth and Devonport and the Sailors’ Orphan Home. According to the Bank of England Inflation Calculator, this figure equates to around £750,000 in today’s terms.

How on earth did Sarah end up with so much money?!
I think the key is in the census entries: they lived in York, and they were living on dividends from investments in the railway. Investing in the railways at this time must have been akin to buying shares in Microsoft in the late 1970s. The sisters were very fortunate.

But this brings us to the question of who, exactly, made the investments. Perhaps sometimes the sisters invested their own money, out of any wages or allowance they received from the family business, but almost certainly the bulk of the funds would have come from their father, John. To understand why he would do this we need look no further than the financial arrangements prior to the Married Women’s Property Act of 1882, as outlined above. What John was doing (and what many other fathers did) was to protect his daughters from the system. Had he left 1/9 share of his business to each of his offspring, and had any of the daughters married, her capital would immediately have passed to her husband. And not all husbands were kind, family-oriented men who were good with money… This way, John was ensuring that each of his daughters would never be without an income of her own.

I was so glad to have worked all this out. I’m no longer cross with my 4x great grandfather. And as for his daughters, I would like to have known them too.

Just to clarify – this information wasn’t hard to find!
I found it all using just three types of document: