Halseys in Kent

John was a busy man, but by 1802 it had all got too much for him as a widower twice over.  The coroner's inquest, at "at the sign of The King's Arms" on 28th January decided that  "on the 27th day.... of  January......and in the year aforesaid...in a certain public highway then called the King's Highway  driving a certain coach drawn by four horses it so happened that the said John Halsey, being intoxicated with liquor, had accidentally fell down....... and  the horses and the wheels of the said carriage did then and there accidentally, casually and by misfortune go upon and pass over the neck of the said John Halsey by means whereof  the said..J..H..... did there and then receive one mortal wound of which he then and there instantly died."  The local paper said it happened in St Peter's Street.   The church, his business (and no doubt the pub too), was on one side of the road and, unfortunately for him, he lived on the other. So, several drinks too many, after work on a wet, dark January night and, hey presto, before the coachman could give voice to his customary warning oaths, John had a coach-wheel or two over his neck, poor chap! He was buried in St Peter's churchyard on 1st February, a few yards from where he died, alongside his first wife. Frances, 

John junior, his son, (see Table II below) was also a Freeman and Cordwainer and on his father's death took over as parish clerk of St Peter’s, in addition to his duties as a lay-clerk in the cathedral. As a lay clerk he would  have sung in the Cathedral choir, but whether as counter-tenor, tenor, baritone or base is not told. 

Frances,  daughter of John the elder, married Benjamin Eastes  from Guston  at St James Church, Dover. and their story is a Dover story, to be told on a separate link.  The photograph of  St George's Church below , where brother John and sister Frances were both baptised, was taken well before wartime bombing destroyed the church, some of its records and most of St George's street, leaving only the tower standing.

Table II

John's marriage to Mary Eldridge lasted but six months.  No details are available concerning the circumstances of her death. He married his second wife Mary Elisabeth Matson 21 months later and their marriage was to last for 48 years until they both died in 1839.   St Peter's Church was to be the church where most of the family baptisms took place, as well as parental burials. Pictures of the west and east ends are below. The church is hemmed in on all sides so there is little scope for one full length photograph.

Their  family numbered thirteen, as set out in Table III below.

Table III

Number eleven in the family was Anne, destined to be the black sheep, baptised in Holy Cross in May 1812, a picture of which is shown below, with Westgate to the left.  The church tower was reduced in height in the late 1880s to the height shown in this photograph.  The church is now the city council chamber.

In 1828 Ann, at the age of 16, had an illegitimate son.  Her son was christened Sidney Jones on 23rd November , and it seems more than probable that his Christian  names were pinned upon him by his  mother determined that his father's identity  should not be lost to eternity.  There were one or two families by the name of Jones in Canterbury at that time, indeed, one such lived in the same parish, but I have so far found no trace of a Sidney Jones.   Perhaps the  father was a soldier in the garrison at the time or some young traveller.  Whoever he was, no evidence has come to light so far of an examination of Anne by the churchwardens of St Peter's or Holy Cross, nor by the parish overseers, to establish the identity of the father, nor is there a trace of any filiation and maintenance order. The teenage mother and her infant son were consigned forthwith to the Canterbury workhouse by their loving family.  A strange, indeed inexplicable, outcome.  Particularly so, as, when Anne's father , described as "Cordwainer and Parish Clerk" died eleven years later in his house  at 5 Groves Lane on 11th October 1839, aged 74 years, present at the death and informant was none other than his rejected daughter Anne. His  burial and that of his wife a few months earlier, were just a few steps away from the busy main street running east-west through the city and at the east end of the churchyard. The tombstone still stood in 2004 but was in a poor condition.

Day to day management of the workhouse was in the hands of a contractor whose terms and conditions of contract, as specified in a new contract to be awarded in 1834,  It makes interesting reading, dealing with almost every aspect of workhouse life, from the clothing to be provided on admission (the personal clothing of inmates to be bundled and retained by the contractor until discharge) to the meals and mealtimes on a daily basis throughout the year and to the supply "of clean linen, night caps, stockings, shirts and shifts on every Sunday morning; and to the changing of the bed-sheets "at least once in every four weeks" !!  An abbreviated version of the contract details is provided in an appendix.  The meals were, as is to be expected, basic and it might be possible to argue that the monotony of the diet was little different from that suffered by most poor people in their own homes, but the total absence of fruit from the table, in a county where fruit could not have been a rarity, must have been a sore distress to many.

The workhouse occupied a building previously been known as the Poor Priests' Hospital. backing on to one of the streams of the river Stour that run through Canterbury and is still there today, much refurbished, serving as the Canterbury Heritage Centre.  A new larger workhouse was built in the late 1840s outside the city walls.  Anne and son  Sidney appear infrequently and irregularly in the surviving workhouse documents.

At this time and for some years to come, Canterbury was an unhealthy place. As the 19th c  advances,  the newspapers contain more and more references to open drains and sewers, foul smells and ill health. A report was produced in the mid 1840s entitled "The Sanatory Condition of Canterbury" (sic).  In short, the condition was highly "insanatory" and the author calculated that its mortality of 1 in 45 considerably exceeded that of other cities of equal or greater extent; and that "its inhabitants died at a lower average age, viz., 34 years, than appeared to be the case in other towns , not even excepting London."  Without having the time or energy to check the author's statistical calculations, there does seem to be evidence in the local press of a certain casual attitude towards health and sanitation on the part of the city councillors, which cost the lives of many of its inhabitants.  Including our poor, unhappy, pauper Anne.  On 15th August 1854 a short report appeared in the local paper that the Sanitary Committee had been advised -

"of the dilapidated and dangerous state of some houses in Fortune's Passage, where life was likely to be sacrificed if immediate attention were not given to remedy it.  The other day a portion of one gave way, to the great consternation of and peril of the inmates."  The reporter "complained of there appearing no rightful owner and said that when he applied to the solicitor, who collected the rents on a mortgage, he expressed indifference about them and said he did not care how soon they tumbled down." 

On 8th August. a week earlier, another report had appeared of a meeting where a Mr J Brent  deplored the state of the river Stour, which ran close by Fortune's Passage, and the "vast accumulations of filth" which were fast choking up the channel. "The pestiferous accumulations were near the old workhouse", the article continued, (as was  Fortune's Passage), and the council was advised that "they would not be doing their duty to their fellow citizens ....if they did not attend to the removal of these offensive accumulations, when fever and cholera were raging in the city.  Messrs Wootton and Neame (the latter an Alderman) denied the existence of Cholera. " 

Within ten days Anne knew only too well of it.  On 18th August 1854 just three days after the second of the warnings, she died of "Cholera - 12 hours".  Although it was the Workhouse Master who registered her death she died, unaccountably, not in the workhouse but in "Fortune's Passage", that ill-omened address off  Stour Street.  It seems as if she may have been prepared to risk all to escape from that dreaded place of managed poverty and discipline.  She was buried in St Mildred's churchyard a short distance from where she died. 

 Hers was not the only such death in that dreadful summer. It was no satisfaction to her that only then did the corporation start to tackle the "sanatory condition" of  the city.   

On the left is a rear view of the workhouse, which in its previous life had been known as the Poor Priests' Hospital.   The river Stour abuts it and alongside is a passage similar to the fateful Fortune's Passage. Below on the right is the Eastbridge Hospital mentioned in the next paragraph.