Maria Louisa Roulson (aka Old Ma Lechmere)

[Edward Stow]

It occurs to me that there is a coincidence of names... Whitfield. The estate of the Clive family near Hereford, where Old Ma's dad was the Butler, and a breaker and enterer at West Ham's training ground in the late 1960s.
Is this a coincidence?

It says Butler on her marriage certificate. I initially read Butcher - word blindness perhaps or maybe wishful thinking.

[Gary Barnett]

It occurs to me that there is a coincidence of names... Whitfield. The estate of the Clive family near Hereford, where Old Ma's dad was the Butler, and a breaker and enterer at West Ham's training ground in the late 1960s.
Is this a coincidence?

It says Butler on her marriage certificate. I initially read Butcher - word blindness perhaps or maybe wishful thinking.

Bob’s nickname was Wibblets, which rhymes with giblets. As a born again vegan, I now find that morally repellant (and repugnant).

A butcher??? He was a yeoman - a Jeeves of the Welsh Marches.

[Gary Barnett]

RJP (as I must call you)

You seem now to have accepted Old Ma's bigamy and are now engaged in mitigation and plea bargaining.

I have merely stated, without any sort of judgement, that she was twice bigamously married . It is up to you or anyone else to draw whatever they wish from that. I will produce a specific film on this subject in due course, illustrating why it is beyond reasonable doubt that she was well aware that JAL still lived where I will no doubt give my opinion on the relevance of it... but I obviously won't discuss this here.

Incidentally there is no evidence that JAL was brutal towards her.

I don't believe I can be accused of inserting my non Ripperological opinions into my posts, so I'm not sure what my personal stance on morality and marriage has to do with this matter... of which I rather doubt you have enough information to form an opinion one way or another.

The case of Old Ma very clearly isn't an innocent or unintended case. As Gary points out the man who controlled her purse strings was a Reverend and her bigamous husband was a policeman. A bad combination.

It was lucky for Hannah Ashton that she came before such a sympathetic judge, another might have taken a different view. Unfortunately, the conviction for the felony of bigamy remained as a stain on her good character for the rest of her life. Did she live happily ever after? It would seem not. But I’m sure she would have taken comfort from the knowledge that people in the 21st century would not judge her as harshly as her narrow-minded contemporaries.

[Gary Barnett]

So are we all agreed now that Maria’s marriages to Cross and Forsdike were both bigamous? And that if she had been aware that JAL was still alive when she went through those sham ceremonies, she would have been guilty of the felony of bigamy - twice?

[Gary Barnett]

So are we all agreed now that Maria’s marriages to Cross and Forsdike were both bigamous? And that if she had been aware that JAL was still alive when she went through those sham ceremonies, she would have been guilty of the felony of bigamy - twice?

Just to be clear, an acknowledgement of how Maria’s actions might have been viewed by her contemporaries shouldn’t give rise to accusations of misogyny against a modern observer. Who’d give a toss nowadays if an abandoned wife remarried, however soon after the abandonment? Or if a woman had a string of kids by different fathers outside of marriage, provided they were well cared for? The word bastard is virtually meaningless today, back in the mid-19thC it packed a considerable punch. The children of a bigamous marriage would have been spoken of (in hushed tones) as bastards.

To understand Maria’s dilemma, we need to park our modern day way of looking at things and try to imagine the social mores and the social distinctions which would have pertained in a small English cathedral city in the 1850s, and, moreover, to appreciate the implications of Maria’s family background. Her father, Thomas, who left a tidy sum of money to his daughters in a will which was executed by the Reverend Archer Clive of Whitfield, was described as a ‘yeoman’ therein. He weren’t no Joe Barnett nor even a Jack McCarthy - ‘e woz proper respectable.

Thomas Roulson was a loyal retainer of the Clive family - one of the most prestigious families in Herefordshire - for 35 years. When his ‘master’, Edward Bolton Clive, died his legacy to Thomas Roulson was at least double that of any other servant in his household. 35 years of bowing and scraping had paid off. Maria was brought up in that environment and when she was of age she was successfully matched with a man from another prominent Herefordshire family.

[Gary Barnett]

Just to be clear, an acknowledgement of how Maria’s actions might have been viewed by her contemporaries shouldn’t give rise to accusations of misogyny against a modern observer. Who’d give a toss nowadays if an abandoned wife remarried? Or if a woman had a string of kids by different men outside of marriage, so long as they were well cared for? The word bastard is virtually meaningless today, back in the mid-19thC it packed a considerable punch.

To understand Maria’s dilemma, we need to park our modern day way of looking at things and try to imagine the social mores and the social distinctions which would have pertained in a small English cathedral city in the 1850s, and, moreover, to appreciate the implications of Maria’s family background. Her father, who left a tidy sum of money to his daughters in a will which was executed by the Reverend Archer Clive of Whitfield, was described as a ‘yeoman’ therein. He weren’t no Joe Barnett nor even a Jack McCarthy, he was proper respectable.

A reminder of where Maria’s sister, Charlotte, and her husband were living* while she (Maria) was slumming it in Tiger Bay.

*albeit as a butler and his wife.

[Gary Barnett]

Just to be clear, an acknowledgement of how Maria’s actions might have been viewed by her contemporaries shouldn’t give rise to accusations of misogyny against a modern observer. Who’d give a toss nowadays if an abandoned wife remarried, however soon after the abandonment? Or if a woman had a string of kids by different fathers outside of marriage, provided they were well cared for? The word bastard is virtually meaningless today, back in the mid-19thC it packed a considerable punch. The children of a bigamous marriage would have been spoken of (in hushed tones) as bastards.

To understand Maria’s dilemma, we need to park our modern day way of looking at things and try to imagine the social mores and the social distinctions which would have pertained in a small English cathedral city in the 1850s, and, moreover, to appreciate the implications of Maria’s family background. Her father, Thomas, who left a tidy sum of money to his daughters in a will which was executed by the Reverend Archer Clive of Whitfield, was described as a ‘yeoman’ therein. He weren’t no Joe Barnett nor even a Jack McCarthy - ‘e woz proper respectable.

Thomas Roulson was a loyal retainer of the Clive family - one of the most prestigious families in Herefordshire - for 35 years. When his ‘master’, Edward Bolton Clive, died his legacy to Thomas Roulson was at least double that of any other servant in his household. 35 years of bowing and scraping had paid off. Maria was brought up in that environment and when she was of age she was successfully matched with a man from another prominent Herefordshire family.

I just had a thought (there’s a first time for everything) - who were Maria’s close neighbours in Thomas (Pinchin) Street in 1861 when she (my guess) passed herself and her kids off as Crosses? What were their backgrounds?

[Edward Stow]

I'm not sure she passed her kids off as Crosses, given the death certificate of her daughter.

[Edward Stow]

CALs grandfather Charles Fox Lechmere lived in an equally grand house, that still stands owned by the National Trust, called the Weir - 2 miles from the humble turnpike toll gate house where Thomas Cross was brought up.

[Gary Barnett]

I'm not sure she passed her kids off as Crosses, given the death certificate of her daughter.

It’s called irony, sir. I’m well aware of the surname used on that certificate, and of the fact that it was one of Maria’s Mary Ann Street neighbours who provided that surname to the authorities. Interestingly, that same neighbour was living in Berner Street in 1888.

[Edward Stow]

Irony? A joke?

[Gary Barnett]

I looked Whitfield up in my Herefordshire Pevsner:

A plain, sizeable Georgian brick house with prominent pairs of bow windows towards the S as well as the N. The house was built c.1755-60, but given more or less it’s present appearance c.1775-80, except that the top storey was added only on the c19. Large additions were made about 1850. They have recently been removed (by Philip Tilden). Only the rustication of the windows of the N remains from the changes of 1850. A fine fireplace of brown and white marble inside which looks 1755 rather than 1775.

The gardens are apparently rather special too:

We now, trolling along the byways, are getting the benefit of all that busy Victorian planting. Sloping down to the west from Woolhope in Herefordshire is a wonderful spread of parkland studded with trees in their prime – the fern-leaved beech looks particularly lovely. And yet the people who planted them knew they were never going to see them at their best. It was a gift to the future, as the grove of redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) at Whitfield was, planted by the Reverend Archer Clive in 1851 and now the biggest group of redwoods in Britain. The tallest is 148 feet high, towering above the rest of the trees in the woodland walk, a mile and a half long, that is one of the great treats of this lovely place.

That was from a recent(ish) article in the Independent.

[Gary Barnett]

Irony? A joke?

Sort of, but perhaps not. Looking at the specificity of the POBs of Maria and her two kids, I assume she must have provided the info and it may have been she who decided to call her kids by their pseudo stepfather’s surname. I use the term pseudo because I’ve seen it applied to others who were pretending to be married.

[Gary Barnett]

The Whitfield connection was on CAL’s mother’s side. Someone asked the other day why he didn’t formally change his name to Cross. Well, firstly, he didn’t have to, there was nothing to prevent him from adopting his stepfather’s name and using it in all situations.

Secondly, have a butchers at this:

https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~gupp.../fownhope.html

If that was your heritage, would you disown it to spite a father you barely remembered?

This hasn’t totally gone off topic, because this was what Maria married into and there are reasons to suspect she may have kept in touch with her husband’s family.

[Edward Stow]

Yes maybe it was her doing in 1861.
Along with the false age for Thomas.
It goes with the fake widowhood on her marriage certificate and the incorrect father listed on Emily's death certificate.
And for that matter the odd Bethnal Green marriage to Forsdike.