WDYTYA? researcher Laura Berry shares the priceless records that uncover the hidden lives of the women in our trees
The old adage “It’s a man’s world” is inherently apparent in genealogy. Until recently only the names and occupations of fathers were included alongside the bride and groom’s details on marriage certificates in England and Wales. Censuses and death certificates rarely provide married women’s occupations, although working-class wives invariably contributed to the family income, juggling employment alongside childcare, perhaps as cooks, laundresses or charwomen (cleaners).
Working from home is not a new phenomenon, and before the height of the Industrial Revolution women and their children were at the heart of cottage industries: spinning, weaving, lacemaking, hat making or whatever the regional speciality was. Their occupations might come to light in local newspaper reports and court papers.
In a WDYTYA? episode from 2012, criminal records disclosed that the actor Alex Kingston’s 4x great grandmother Elizabeth Braham was guilty of running a “house of ill-fame” – that is, a brothel – yet the 1851 census merely showed her as a widowed lodging-house keeper. Running a brothel could earn her up to 10 times more than a servant, and when she died she left a will bequeathing numerous properties.
In some ways widowhood gave Braham a financial advantage. Until the mid-to-late 19th century an ancient common-law right known as ‘coverture’ meant that any money a wife earned, and any property she inherited or owned, belonged to her husband. Hence any legal contracts she was party to included her husband’s name, and it’s rare to find wills for women unless they were widowed or spinsters.
UNMARRIED MOTHERS
Many of us are interested in the origin of our own surname, which we might expect to be passed down through an infinite line of men. Yet it could have been inherited from a female ancestor when a child was born out of wedlock. This was surprisingly common, even in the Victorian era when pressure to marry was high. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries up to 65,000 children each year were born outside of marriage, according to historian Ginger Frost (Illegitimacy in English Law and Society, 1860–1930, Manchester University Press, 2016).
In her 2014 episode baker and presenter Mary Berry learnt that her surname hailed from her great great grandmother and namesake Mary Berry, who worked as a stay (corset) maker in Norwich to provide for her
