Leeds in the 1870s

[Dakota]

My great grandparents lived at several addresses in Leeds including 12 Glebe Street during the early 1870s. How would I go about findng out who would have owned the house and what rental policies were back in those days? In general, I'm trying to figure out how they got to the house - he was a coal miner and I was wondering if perhaps the house was owned by a coal company as there is quite a parade of family members living in the house during 1871. Between 1868 and 1871 they lived in three different houses and lost 3 children, all of whom are burried in common graves in the Beckett Street Cemetary. Would it have been common practice to continually move or would it be more likely that the houses were owned by the coal companies and if he changed companies that they would have moved? Can you tell I'm confused?Thanks

[dogduke]

Some SL members will hopefully correcst me if I am wrong,but as I understand things 'Glebe'is a fairly common part of addresses and referred to land/property owned by the church(CofE)and any rents were paid to the incumbent vicar by way of salary/perks.As seen from many threads coal mining took place all over Leeds.I live close to Beckett Street cemetry and would be happy tohave a mooch round if you tell me what to look for.

[Dakota]

They lived at 12 Glebe Street - which I've been able to find on a map and also found some pictures of it at leodis. They also lived on Stipendiary and Freehold, and I found pictures of those developments before they were torn down and rebuilt. But the idea of the housing being owned by the church makes sense as it seems like there was a continual revolving door particularly on the house at 12 Glebe Street. But everyone was related which made me wonder if they all lived together - would have been a lot of people to jam in the little units or if perhaps as people were leaving they let the relatives know so they could move in. But I guess I'm also perplexed that since they seemed to be fairly low income that they kept moving thinking that would have cost money. It may be that i'm thinking in today's terms where you would sign a lease for at least one year, maybe it wasn't like it back then??? For example in the census of 1871 which seemed to have been taken in Feb/Mar of that year, my great grandparents are living in Bowling with his mother and a cousin was living with his family at the house on Glebe Street, then in August my great-grandparents were living in the house as that is the address shown on the entry of death registration of one of their sons and at some point in that year, my great grandmother's sister was married and her address is shown as 12 Glebe Street.If they were living in that area, would you happen to know what mines might have been in the area that would probably have been where my ggfather worked? I've never been to Leeds which is why I am struggling with this - I can't really conceptualize where everything is or would have been "back in the day".Thanks

[dogduke]

If you check through the site you will see many references to mining in east Leeds and Leeds as a whole(hole?)If you are born and bred in America it will be difficult to grasp life as it was in this period,many posters will recall the 'midnight flit'where you fled your home,your belongings on a handcart and settled in new rented accommodation because you had not paid the rent.Overcrowding was rife,that would explain lots of fmily names.Glebe Street was one side of the cemetry.Tough times that I feel you and lots of people in the land of the free could never imagine.I thank God that I only saw the latter end of it.Keep in touch with this site - it's top banana if you are interested in old Leeds.The offer still stands if you need info on the cemetry.

[Dakota]

Thank you so much - I have been trying to get a sense of what their life would have been like. But it seemed like they were constantly in different places and I didn't know how common it was that they were that mobile. I believe that they went back to Bowling in the spring of 1871 because my great grandmother's mother was dying and she was probably needed to help with the 9 younger children that were still at home. Six weeks after her mother died, they were back in Leeds where their 3rd son died. Was it that easy to get around? Would they have walked or ws transportation affordable? They immigrated to the US and eventually homesteaded in Dakota Territory. My great grandmother didn't like the way her husband had built the house so she built a new kitchen by herself while pregnant - truly a remarkable woman. My dad's oldest sister lived with my ggrandmother when she moved into town off the farm after my ggrandfatther died and I was able to talk to my aunt about what she remembered about her grandmother before she died. So I have a small sense of her. I don't know if there are any records of the burials in the Beckett Street Cemetary, I have the dates of the 3 babies deaths, but they are buried in common graves and I don't know if there is any way of knowing which graves the boys are buried in. My cousin was going back to England last December and we so badly wanted to be able to find the graves to put flowers on for my ggrandmother, Sarah. She had 16 children in all and as she moved from place to place she was leaving graves behind. When she homesteaded in Dakota Territory she lost several children while living on the farm and had them buried by the house because she didn't want to leave any more babies behind - that's always stayed with me so I was hoping to be able to remember the babies she had to leave in England.

[drapesy]

I assume that the area of Bowling you refer to is the suburb of Bradford? This area is couple of miles to the south-east of Bradford City centre and probably only 7/8 miles from the centre of Leeds . There were trains and horse drawn buses that would have connected the 2 cities at this time of course - though I wouldn't be surprised if many people, particularly the poorer ones, treated it as a reasonable walking distance - probably with a horse and cart to take their belongings. To give you some idea of the coal mining industry in Leeds - as Dogduke says there is quite a bit of information on SL. The Coal seams run to the south and east of the centre of Leeds and were exploited on a small scale since the middle ages. with industrialisation several pits were established to the south and east of Leeds - some surprisingly near the city centre - Harehills cemetery is to the east and so topographically close to these areas. The pits in Leeds, (such as Middleton to the south which was one of the larger ones ) became uneconomic during the course of the 20th century and had closed by the 1940's and 50's I believe. Mining continued later in areas further south and east of Leeds such as Rothwell, Castleford Pontefract etc though most were closed in the period from 1984 - 1994 following the diastrous NUM strikes. Some open cast mining continues to the present.Best of luck with your research - it sounds like a very touching human story - people uprooting from the land where they'd lived since time immemorial to find a new life on the other side of the world, and in a wild and dangerous place as it would have been then.    

[Dakota]

Thank you. The greats as I call them started off on the east coast of the US when they arrived, then went to Joliet, IL and worked in the Rolling Mill for about 10 years and then went out to Dakota Territory and homesteaded for the rest of their lives. The interesting thing is that part of what's now South Dakota looks a lot like the countryside around Yorkshire where they had come from. I always wondered if that gave them a sense of familarity. I appreciate the insight on the coal industry and the transportation options at the time. I had googled about transportation in England around that time and was mainly getting information about the railroad and one article said that the poor would often just walk. Which is interesting in that while growing up on the farms in SD, Sarah's grandchildren walked to most of the places they wanted to go. One Aunt talked about a church event she and a girl friend wanted to attend, but the father's couldn'l leave farm work to take them to it, so she and her friend walked the 20 miles to the event figuring that one of the families there would be able to give them a ride part of the way home. When I first moved to the Northern Virginia area, I would walk the 5 miles to and from the nearest subway station - must be in my DNA. It was often the best part of my day.Anyway, thanks to both of you for the insight and suggestions, the one surviving grandchild of the greats is 84 and has a real desire to know more about their lives and I've been trying to find what I can. She was the only grandchild that didn't know the grandparents as they had died by the time she was born and sje would hear the tidbits and stories from her older sisters about Grandma and what she talked about so it's been kind of a journey of love for her to find out what I can.Take care

[Si]

Hello Dakota.I don't know if this is the map you've already seen, but it's an Ordnance Survey map of 1906. Glebe Street runs along the southern wall of Beckett Street Cemetery, and I think the common graves (guinea graves?) are just over this wall, if memory serves, so very close to their house - a "back-to-back." Stipendiary Street and Place are a little further south west. Most of the housing shown is long gone, but the hospital remains - St James's, known as Jimmy's. The parallel lines running down the major roads are tramlines (also gone) and a tram depot is to the north of the cemetery.The quarry at Burmantofts isn't a coal pit, but a famous tile factory.PS Click on the map to enlarge it.        

[Si]

I hope you don't mind me posting this Leodis picture of 12 Glebe Street, Dakota. These are quite grand, as back-to-backs go, being double-fronted, and having a garden. Your great grandmother was quite a woman! You've painted a very vivid picture of their lives "out West" and I have visions of John Wayne coming through their front door, a la The Searchers!    

[Dakota]

Awesomely wonderful. Thank you so very much.