Could These Be Alice Mackenzie's Relatives ?

[Gary Barnett]

Percy Blackburn

I hope this is legible. It’s the 1864 marriage record of Percy and Jane. The witnesses, William and Mary Ann Edwards, appear on numerous other marriage records at All Saints Church, Battle Bridge (Islington).

It seems that by 1867, the couple were back in Peterborough - at least that’s where the birth of their first legitimate child, Minnie, was registered in the Jun Q of that year. The window for Alice to have left Leicester to be with her sister in London is very narrow, her husband having died in February, 1867.

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[Gary Barnett]

Twenty years before she was brutally murdered in Castle Alley, Alice ‘McKenzie’ had fallen victim to the endemic violence of the East End:

“The prisoner [George Palmer]... struck her on the eye with his clenched fist and injured her face. He then seized her by the legs, dragged her downstairs, and threw her out of the house. She was found wandering in the Mile-end-road at 2 o’clock this morning. She had no bonnet or shawl on, her face was bleeding and she was sobbing loudly.”

(From The Sun, 7th January, 1869.)

Alice was only 24 at time of the attack, she had lost her husband and child a couple of years previously, and she was either unable or unwilling to return to her family in Peterborough. Why did she leave Leicester after her husband died and head for London, I wonder? What drew her to the capital? In search of the fabled streets of gold, perhaps, or something more tangible?

Her older sister, Jane, had married an interesting character named Percival Blackburn in London in 1864, but they appear to have returned to Peterborough by mid-1867. Did Alice travel to London hoping to make contact with her sister without knowing for certain that she was still there?

Or even worse, did she make contact with Jane in London only to be abandoned by her a few weeks/months later?

[Gary Barnett]

Scrub that. This OB case works age-wise for Alice’s ‘husband’.

https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/brow...1-48#highlight

This BP almost certainly wasn’t the man who was Alice’s paramour. He was Norfolk-born, whereas Alice’s fella was born in Stepney.

[Gary Barnett]

Alice and Ben Palmer were living at 18, Woods Building in 1871. Where was no. 18? Either on one of the corners with Winthrop (then Little North) Street or just behind Whitechapel Road?

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[Howard Brown]

Twenty years before she was brutally murdered in Castle Alley, Alice ‘McKenzie’ had fallen victim to the endemic violence of the East End:

“The prisoner [George Palmer]... struck her on the eye with his clenched fist and injured her face. He then seized her by the legs, dragged her downstairs, and threw her out of the house. She was found wandering in the Mile-end-road at 2 o’clock this morning. She had no bonnet or shawl on, her face was bleeding and she was sobbing loudly.”

(From The Sun, 7th January, 1869.)

Alice was only 24 at time of the attack, she had lost her husband and child a couple of years previously, and she was either unable or unwilling to return to her family in Peterborough. Why did she leave Leicester after her husband died and head for London, I wonder? What drew her to the capital? In search of the fabled streets of gold, perhaps, or something more tangible?

Sorry I missed this when you posted it, Gary.
I'd wager it wasn't the only time she got a beating....
Thank you for posting it.

[Gary Barnett]

John Clare

John Clare, the Northamptonshire ‘Peasant Poet’, was born in Helpston, a village some 6 miles or so from the city of Peterborough and within the administrative region of the Soke of Peterborough. He was a deeply troubled man who suffered from feelings of alienation and who ended his life in Northampton General Lunatic Asylum. His poem ‘I am’ makes me think of Alice McKenzie struggling to survive in the East End of London far from her family in Peterborough:

I am yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes?
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live like vapours tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange, nay, rather, stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below, above the vaulted sky.

[Gary Barnett]

In the same way HR claims that Polly Nichols ‘rubbed shoulders’ with Charles Dickens, we can perhaps claim that Alice did so with John Clare.

And with this man, who was born in Leicester while she was there and who died just a few yards from where she died in Whitechapel.

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[Gary Barnett]

Am I the only one who sees ?s replacing other punctuation marks I post on the Forums?

[Debra Arif]

Am I the only one who sees ?s replacing other punctuation marks I post on the Forums?

Hi Gary, No, I am seeing them too all over the forums and it's driving me Crazy. I see allsorts of strange symbols in posts.For example:

I think it?€™s a real long shot, How.

What is encouraging, though, is someone in Edmund Davy?€™s position making a photographic record of his servants.

I also can't see any pictures you post anymore.

[Gary Barnett]

Hi Gary, No, I am seeing them too all over the forums and it's driving me Crazy. I see allsorts of strange symbols in posts.For example:



I also can't see any pictures you post anymore.

That’s sort of a relief. At least it’s not just me. :-)

The photo below is of Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man. Nothing new. It?s a stock photo that I’m sure you’ve seen before.

BTW, I’ve just made contact with the secretary of the Peterborough Local History Soc. One of her ancestors lived in the Minster Precincts at the same time as the Pitts family and he was a servant to Canon Marsham Argles - no. 2 to the Bishop, I think - and the Bishop’s son married an Argles woman. It was their servants who appear in the photo I posted.

I’d love to know exactly who Charles Pitts worked for and where Alice and her siblings went to school. Fingers crossed!

[Cogidubnus]

I'm getting it too Gary...it's not always consistent, but it's there...oddly enough when I read my own posts the apostrophes are correctly displayed, but yours aren't...

[Gary Barnett]

I'm getting it too Gary...it's not always consistent, but it's there...oddly enough when I read my own posts the apostrophes are correctly displayed, but yours aren't...

How strange. Look at my post below. I edited it to add ?At least it?s not just me? and the apostrophe in it?s looks ok to me. All the others are ?s

[Cogidubnus]

Yes he is rather....

ALL the apostrophes in your last 'quote' show up as question marks...including the one before At

[Debra Arif]

That?s sort of a relief. At least it?s not just me. :-)

The photo below is of Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man. Nothing new. It?s a stock photo that I?m sure you?ve seen before.

BTW, I?ve just made contact with the secretary of the Peterborough Local History Soc. One of her ancestors lived in the Minster Precincts at the same time as the Pitts family and he was a servant to Canon Marsham Argles - no. 2 to the Bishop, I think - and the Bishop?s son married an Argles woman. It was their servants who appear in the photo I posted.

I?d love to know exactly who Charles Pitts worked for and where Alice and her siblings went to school. Fingers crossed!

Good news about the contact at Peterborough. Good luck with that.

[Debra Arif]

Hi Gary, No, I am seeing them too all over the forums and it's driving me Crazy. I see allsorts of strange symbols in posts.For example:



I also can't see any pictures you post anymore.

Weird. Why doesn't the example I put in a quote box between those two sentences show in the post? It didn't when Gary replied using the quote button either.