Amelia Birchall was the youngest child of Alfred Birchall and Mary Compton, both Quaker families. Amelia was born in 1829 in Leeds, and this is the story of her life reflected in the industrial innovations of her lifetime. Quaker records are excellent, they record lots of details of the people concerned. This is the marriage for Amelia's parents 1817. It tells us who her grandparents were and their occupations. Alfred Birchall was a merchant of Leeds, son of Samuel and Anna, both deceased, wool stapler, and he married Mary Compton, daughter of Thomas and Mary of London, pewterer. And they married in London. I will return to the topic of marriage partners between London and the north another month. Alfred and Mary Birchall had seven children. The Quakers do not have infant baptism but made records of the birth of each child, even down to the detail of who was present at the birth. So Amelia was born on the 29th day of the ninth month (the Quakers do not give months names just numbers) in the year 1829. Present at the birth were the surgeon Thomas Pridgin Teale [a founder of the Leeds School of Medicine], Elizabeth Merryweather (she was at a lot of births) and Elizabeth Birchall. Amelia was named after her aunt, another Amelia Birchall. Sadly her mother Mary died and was buried a few weeks after Amelia was born. Father Alfred was a merchant, but soon went into business in the textile industry in Leeds in partnership with Thomas Laycock. In 1829 Trade Directories listed the company of "Birchall and Laycock of 48 Albion Street, Leeds and Stone Bridge Mills, Farnley". Formerly the company of Birchall and Jowitt, woolstaplers, had been at 48 Albion Street. Alfred's mother was a Jowitt. A good wool stapler could make money. They bought the wool and then sorted and graded it according to the staple and quality, then sold it on to the spinners. But Alfred then went into textile manufacture himself. This is Stonebridge Mill, Farnley, much in decay, with proposals of development into a residential complex. Alfred was able to educate his children, sending them away to school. The boys went to Bootham School in York, which still exists and is a Quaker school, the girls to Ackworth, also a Quaker school, founded by Dr John Fothergill of Wensleydale. This is Ackworth School near Pontefract. It had first been an outpost of the Foundling Hospital in London which took in abandoned children. They were then sent out to a small selection of schools around the country before being apprenticed. When the Foundling Hospital lost some of its Government funding the school was put up for sale and Dr John Fothergill persuaded the Society of Friends to purchase it as a boarding school in 1777. Meanwhile things did not go well for Amelia's father Alfred. In 1832 the partnership in the woollen mill broke up and the mill was advertised to let with all the machinery. Alfred had to try something else, and this time crossed the Pennines to go into business as a broker with a Counting House in Manchester. Sadly by 1846 he was described as a Share Broker, Bankrupt and died in 1853. But by now Amelia was making her way in this new industrial world. This is Croft Hall at Croft on Tees, right on the boundary between the North Riding of Yorkshire and County Durham. In the 1851 census Amelia Birchall was a Governess at the Ladies Boarding school in Croft Hall run by Mrs Maria Satchell. An indication of the rise of the Middle Classes in the early and middle of the nineteenth century was the aspiration of parents to send their children to boarding schools. Croft Hall was just one of many. This is just part of a column in the Newcastle Courant for 11th January 1850. Two of these schools for young ladies give their fees, which for full board and education were cheap. Boarding schools for boys and girls sprang up all over and for many middle class women it was an opportunity to work as a teacher or governess. The school at Croft Hall had previously been for boys, and under Mrs Satchell it only survived from 1842 to 1855. In 1851 when Amelia was teaching there most of the girls were from the North East of England, an odd one from Yorkshire or Lancashire and two exotic pupils from abroad, one girl from Demerara and one from Brazil. What Amelia did after the school closed is unknown, but on the 21st July 1858 she got married at St Cuthbert's Church, Darlington. This is odd because Amelia's family and the family of the groom were both Quakers. There may have been some reason that they were prevented from marrying at the Friends Meeting House, but here is the marriage licence taken out in 1858 which states that William Fossick of Norton bachelor over 21 years was to marry Amelia Birchall of Darlington spinster over 21. When the marriage was announced in the Durham Chronicle of the 23rd July 1858 it described Amelia as sister of A C Birchall of Darlington. Amelia's brother Alfred Compton Birchall had married Jane Ann Plews of Darlington, perhaps this was a reason for Amelia going north and taking the job at Croft Hall. Alfred's marriage had not been a Quaker ceremony either, and he became a Wine Merchant in a company called Plews & Birchall. However, there were other connections that might have thrown her into the company of William Fossick of Norton / Stockton on Tees. If Amelia had kept her connections with the Quakers, Darlington was known as a Quaker town with such industrialists and bankers as the Backhouses and the Pease families who had fingers in many pies that forged the industrial revolution in the north east. William Fossick her husband had been born in London and his sister Eliza Fossick had married Frederick Backhouse of Darlington in 1833 in Wandsworth. Another sister Sarah Fossick had married John Beaumont Pease of Darlington in 1825 at the Gracechurch Meeting House in London. William's brother George Fossick had come north to Stockton to go into partnership with Thomas Hackworth to make railway locomotives and marine engines. George Fossick had married Jane Brady in a much reported wedding at the Friends Meeting House, Stockton in 1859. Jane and some of her siblings had gone to school at Ackworth and would have known Amelia. A Fossick and Hackworth engine from Grace's Guide. William Fossick began as a druggist and was in Darlington in 1841, he then joined the firm of Hackworth and Fossick with his brother George and was an Iron Master, and he also worked for the West Hartlepool Harbour and Railway Company, sadly this led to his unfortunate end. Yorkshire Post & Leeds Intelligencer 21 September 1867 West Hartlepool fatal Railway accident. On Wednesday the lifeless body of Mr William Fossick, iron merchant, Stockton, was found on the West Hartlepool Railway, a short distance below Billingham station. The deceased resides not far from the latter station and had come from Seaton Carew by the 4.30 train. It is said that he was a short time at the public house near to the station, and it is thought he had mistaken the direction on the railway for making towards his home, for he was found below the crossing and had evidently been struck dead by a passing train. By 1871 Amelia had left the north of England and moved to Ramsgate with her son William, taking her cook from Billingham and engaging a local housemaid from Ramsgate. Ramsgate Sands by A B Hollings, Ramsgate Library, on the ArtUk website However, Amelia did not stay there. She moved back north to remarry. Widows had few options and the opportunity to remarry brought her again to the West Riding of Yorkshire and into the heart of the textile industry. In 1874 she married a widower, Joseph Pitman of Meltham Mills near Huddersfield. He was a cashier / clerk / accountant for the wealthy Brooks family who built Meltham Mills. I have not found a contemporary picture of Meltham Mills when it was a spinning mill, but this picture dates from when the site was used for manufacturing David Brown tractors. How did Amelia meet Joseph Pitman ? One of Amelia’s cousins was John Dearman Birchall son of Samuel Jowitt Birchall who was brother to Amelia’s father Alfred. John Dearman Birchall (known as Dearman) married twice, and his first wife was Clara Jane Brook daughter of William Leigh Brook of Meltham Hall and Meltham Mills. The Brook family had a huge mill in Meltham spinning thread which employed most of the locality. Their cashier / clerk / accountant was one Joseph Pitman from Trowbridge in Wiltshire. Joseph Pitman had lost his first wife Sarah in 1873, so two widowed people married and Amelia took on step children from Joseph’s first marriage. Sadly Amelia's own son died not long after she married. York Herald 14 March 1876 Deaths Fossick on the 7th inst at Leeds aged 16, William Alfred, son of the late William Fossick of Norton, Durham In 1881 Joseph and Amelia Pitman were at Bankfield, Meltham, he the cashier at the "thread works" born Wiltshire, Trowbridge, Amelia born in Leeds, and his children. How did Joseph come from Wiltshire to the West Riding of Yorkshire ? He had come from a textile mill owning family. His father Samuel was first a mill overseer in a cloth factory and then a cloth manufacturer in his own right which allowed him to educate his children very well. Joseph had brothers, Isaac, Jacob, Benjamin, and they went to the Borough College of the British and Foreign School Society. Joseph went from there as a teacher to Little Horton in Bradford (where his first wife came from), and his brother Isaac went to Barton on Humber. After several years teaching Joseph became a banker's clerk and in 1851 was at Norton by Malton in Yorkshire, then in 1857 took a job as the cashier at Meltham Mills. Amelia now had a famous brother in law - Isaac Pitman. He became famous for inventing and then teaching shorthand and became a publisher of educational books. When Joseph was still a teacher he dedicated several years to teaching and lecturing this method of shorthand. This looks like something in Arabic to me, but to those of you with secretarial training it was part of your tools of the trade. It was not the first method of shorthand, Samuel Pepys had written his diaries in a type of shorthand, but this is the method that was very widely used in all offices by the end of the 19th century. But Joseph and Amelia did not stay in the West Riding. By 1885 they had retired to the south coast and settled in Worthing. Joseph Pitman died in 1895 and his obituary was in many newspapers because of his association with teaching shorthand and his famous brother Isaac. Amelia died on the 5th of January 1907 at Brighton.
Worthing Gazette 9 January 1907 Death of Mrs Pitman. It will be seen from an announcement which appears elsewhere that Mrs Amelia Pitman died at Brighton on Saturday. The deceased lady was the widow of the late Mr Joseph Pitman (brother of Sir Isaac Pitman, the inventor of Phonography) who came to Worthing to live in 1885, first taking up residence in Christ Church Road, and afterwards removing to Sandown, Byron Road. His death took place at the latter address in April 1895 but Mrs Pitman continued to reside there for some years. A few months later the Worthing Gazette announced that her estate was administered by Guilbert Howard Pitman of 86 and 87 Fleet Street, publisher, who was sworn the value of the property at £2,404 15s 10d gross and £1,554 8s 3d net. Thus the life of Amelia came to an end. From 1829 to 1907 her life had encompassed the mighty textile industry that was central to the Industrial Revolution. Her grandfather, father, uncles and cousins were all involved in the rise of the textile mills of the West Riding which clothed the world. Her first husband and her first brother in law were manufacturing railway engines, forging iron, making railways and engines for steam ships which went around the world establishing trade and making fortunes. Her brothers in law through her first marriage were the mighty Pease and Backhouse families who were bankers and industrialists. Her own experience was of the rise of the Middle Classes and their aspirations to educate their children. Her second husband was part of the clerical class who rose on the back of mass manufacturing, the need for competent bookkeepers and clerks to facilitate trade on a massive scale, and the invention of Pitman's Shorthand which was used by the new clerical workers. All this innovation created wealth which allowed Amelia a comfortable life. She was widowed twice, and lost her only son, but she would always have had at least one or two servants, and enjoyed retirement on the south coast.
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