A - Z Blogging Challenge - B is for Betsy

Continuing my introduction to some of the people in my novels, today we meet Betsy, who is the heroine of my ‘work in progress’ which is set in the mid-19th century.

Betsy is, in fact, my great-great grandmother. Baptised as Elizabeth in Liverpool in 1825, she was obviously known as Betsy as this is the name shown on the 1851 and 1861 censuses. In 1844, she married John, a mariner, who became a captain with the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company, commanding, at different times, the company’s paddle steamers, Ben-my-Chree, King Orry, Mona’s Queen, and Tynwald between Liverpool and Douglas in the Isle of Man.

SS Ben-my-Chree 1845-60

My grandmother's brother Joe (Betsy’s grandson) once told me his mother had two younger brothers, who were sailors. However, when I started researching my family history, I discovered that Betsy and John actually had nine children. The first died when he was 11 weeks old, the second survived to the age of 15 but was killed when he ‘fell from aloft’ on a ship returning from Australia to England in 1861. The next 3 children, all boys, died aged 6, 4, and 2, and were buried at Braddan Cemetery in the Isle of Man between August and November 1854. Since Isle of Man death certificates at this time don't show the cause of death, I can only assume there was some kind of epidemic.

My great-grandmother (also named Elizabeth) was the only daughter, born in 1856, and her two younger brothers were born in 1858 and 1864 (with another dying in 1860, aged 9 months.) This certainly indicates the truth about high childhood mortality in Victorian times, but it must have been heartbreaking to lose so many children.

Betsy’s husband died in 1871 but she lived until 1906 when she was 81. Sometime in the 1870s she moved with her daughter to Colne in East Lancashire. I have yet to find a reason why she made this move, since she was born and bred in Liverpool and lived in the Isle of Man during most of her marriage to John. Her daughter Elizabeth later married a local cotton weaver, and Betsy ended up living with them and their family of 9 children, in a small terraced house on the outskirts of Colne. One wonders where they all slept when there were only 2 bedrooms!

The house where the family of 12 lived in 1891 and 1901

My great-uncle Joe, who was 15 when his grandmother Betsy died, told me she was very much the ‘matriarch’ of the family and always spoke her mind.

The story I’m writing is based on these facts about Betsy, and also on information I’ve discovered about her husband John from the Isle of Man newspaper archives and the minutes of the Steam Packet Company – combined with plenty of my own imagination about their first ten years together from 1845 to 1855. I've had to take some liberties with dates to fit my story, and also with names since the same names crop up regularly in Victorian families, which would only lead to confusion for readers of a novel!  

I don’t have any photos of Betsy, but here is one of her daughter Elizabeth. Since several of Elizabeth’s children resembled her (including my grandmother), I like to think Betsy may have looked liked this, too.