Hi again, Everyone,
I'm at a bit of a loss with the SMITH family of Bedale. I've been tracing an individual called Charles SMITH, born about 1845 in Bedale, who seems to have started life as a joiner and then became a carpenter, and eventually was involved with the railways as an "inspector of signals".
Remarkably, his birthplace of Bedale seems to pick him out from all his other numerous namesakes.
In the 1851 and 1861 Censuses of Bedale he is living with his mother, Elizabeth, a tailor's widow, born in a place I cannot quite decipher - Watton? (in the 1861 it looks like Thornton Wittall?), with his siblings Mary Ann, Jane and John in a dwelling called National School House, next to Flood Bridge House, which in turn is next to the Union Workhouse. His mother is described as "pauper, tailor's widow" in the 1851; and in the 1861 Census there is a lodger Annie DAVIES aged 22 who is described as an infant school mistress.
Could somebody tell me why an impoverished family with their head presumably prematurely dead would be entitled to live here (and not the workhouse)?
And is there anyone privy to the Bedale PR's who could maybe unravel what might have happened to the family before 1851, i.e. a death and burial of the now absent tailor, or even an earlier marriage pre-1841 or so.
I'm a bit unfamiliar with this part of Yorkshire, too, hence the uncertainty with interpreting the mother's exact birthplace...
Many thanks,
keith
