WILLIAM MARY WILSON 1799-1865
Scotlandspeople have a document for her parent’s marriage on 10th December 1798. William Wilson, a surgeon in Glasgow married Jean Muir, the daughter of John Muir of Peel, Kilbride.
William Mary was their first-born child, born on 25th October 1799, however the birth record shows that sadly her father William was deceased by the time of her birth.
'William Wilson, Surgeon Dead & Jean Muir, a d. William
Mary b.25th witness John Muir and Andrew Foulis.'
William Wilson died of fever, aged 24 on May 8th, 1799.
Scotlandspeople OPR Deaths 644/01 520 0039 Glasgow
crown copyright
Jean was a widow within 6 months of her marriage and by this time was 4 months pregnant. This baby, her daughter, was named after the father, she was destined never to meet.
I have not been able to follow William’s mother’s story after
this, but it appeared that both remained in Glasgow, where William’s maternal
grandfather was a Merchant.
On the day of her 19th birthday on the 25h
October 1818 a marriage record shows William Mary’s marriage to John Randolph a
student of medicine in Glasgow. Interestingly there are 2 records of this
marriage, the first accessed via ScotlandsPeople recorded on the 25th
October 1818 and in Lydd, Kent, the family home of the groom’s mother on the 26th.
Perhaps of interest is that John’s own father died when he was only 3 years
old.
After their marriage John and William moved Kent, John completed his medical studies, becoming a Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries in 1820 and a MRCS in 1827. Meanwhile the couple were living in New Romney in Kent.
Their first child Catherine Jane was born in 1819 followed the following year by their eldest son, William Wilson Chisolm in 1820, another nod to William Mary’s father. Margaret Isabella was born next in 1822 and has her own story available here.
Margaret Isabella Randolph 1822-1838 (mypynthdev.blogspot.com)
Next,my
2 x Great Grandmother Margery Rosella was born in 1823. Other children were
Elizabeth Arneil b.1824, Jane Blizard b.1826 who died in 1830, the year that
another daughter, Mary Muir was born.
By 1833, the family had moved to Westminster, London and were living at 10 Parliament Street in Whitehall.
Matilda Beatrice was born at the end of 1833. In 1836 Georgiana was born and in 1837, Caroline Cecilia. Life must have become more difficult around this time as in Nov 1840, John Randolph was declared bankrupt. It is interesting that in the 1841 census Margery ‘Rosella’, Mary, Matilda, Georgiana and Caroline were all staying with their paternal Grandmother, Catherine. Whilst John and William Mary were living at 2 Bridge Street Westminster, John having received his Certificate of Conformity in early 1841.
In 1842, John and William Mary’s final child was born, a son, John James , sadly though he and his sister Georgiana had both died in 1845. By which time the family had moved to 55, Marsham Street in the City of Westminster, London.
It is helpful that this couple have used their ancestors surnames within their children's names, which has helped authenticate earlier ancestors marriages/parentages. e.g Mary Muir Randolph & Elizabeth Arneil Randolph.
In 1851, whilst the Randolph’s were living at no.55 Marsham
Street with a house servant and porter in their employ, their neighbours at 54,
was a Master Butcher and at 56, a School Master. A few doors along there were
more diverse family businesses. Bookbinders, Umbrella Makers, Coach Fitters,
Barmen, Beer sellers and Laundresses, made for quite a cosmopolitan community.
This image of 64 Marsham St was taken in 1915 and was provided by Vincent O'Laughlin to www.pubwiki.com. Obviously this is 50 years on but I feel it represents the sort of street it would have been in the 1850's/60'sWhilst Marsham Street was around half a mile from the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey it was equally approx. half a mile from the area Charles Dickens named ‘Devil’s Acre’.
Devil's Acre by Gustav Dore from Royal Academy website‘Close under the Abbey of Westminster there lie
concealed labyrinths of lanes and courts, and alleys and slums, nests of
ignorance, vice, depravity, and crime, as well as of squalor, wretchedness, and
disease; whose atmosphere is typhus, whose ventilation is cholera; in which
swarms of huge and almost countless population, nominally at least, Catholic;
haunts of filth, which no sewage committee can reach – dark corners, which no
lighting board can brighten.’
(This passage, first published by Cardinal Wiseman in An Appeal
to the Reason and Good Feeling of the English People on the Subject of the
Catholic Hierarchy, was widely quoted in the national press, which led to the
popularisation of the word slum to describe bad housing. )
In 1863 John and William Mary’s widowed daughter Margery Rosella, died at 55, Marsham St, a couple of days following a suicide attempt, having stolen Laudanum from the surgery and using it to overdose.
William Mary’s own story is completed a couple of years later, when she also died at 55, Marsham Street in 1865, following a 3-year battle of her own with breast cancer.
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