Nothing But Bad Times: Chapter Six, Part One
If one is to look at the 1901 census, one can clearly see that the Owens family had now started to split geographically. From the outset, they had all stayed in the same place, all existed within a close bracketed community. Their makeup, was that of a model family. This was not so anymore. Whilst the majority of the family were still in Anderston, Mary Ann had moved to Holytown, and Elizabeth had followed. Catherine and her family were now in Stirling, and Eliza's eldest would find that 1901 would be a year her life would change forever.
Catherine by now had given birth to a total of eleven children, and had spent just less than half of her time on earth in a state of pregnancy. She was now just over forty years old, and soon, her eldest children would begin to go out into the world and find spouses. Charles, the man who had introduced Catherine and her family to Scotland, was a very well loved man indeed. His time on the ferries and Clutha's of the River Clyde had earned him many friends. Be that as it may, In May 1901, Catherine's seemingly smooth run at life stopped at a shockingly abrupt pace. Around early May, Charles complained of back pain and thus had to leave his job of nearly thirty years. He found himself vomiting and came down with a severe fever. He was taken to the Victoria Infirmary in Glasgow, where to everybody's astonishment, he died suddenly on July 12 after a routine monitoring. Catherine was mortified. She felt as if her world had ended. How could she posibly go on? Charles was the only man she had known, and he had left her alone now with more children than shillings in her pocket. He was the man, who had made all this possible? I think that if this story were ever to be made into a film, his character would be one who would take a lead role, for his role in the story is paramount to everything that had happened, and was to happen next.
Three weeks after Charles' death, Catherine applied for relief to support herself, and to pay for Charles' burial. She was approved by the board and given five shillings a week, as well as twenty one pounds from Charles' will. But that money would not last her long at all...and Charles wasn't the only shocking death in the family that year either...
It was December 30 1901, and Catherine's sister Elizabeth was an anxious woman, as her husband James Rice had not come home that night from working on the railways. He was working with Michael Hughes all day, but became worried when Michael came home to Mary Ann, and James was not with him. Michael's face was as white as a sheet, he looked as if he was about to vomit. Elizabeth asked him where James was, and Michael told her to go inside, he would talk to her in a moment. Five minutes later Michael knocked at the door, this time Mary Ann was with him. Michael had devastating news for Elizabeth. James had been working on the Caledonian Line at Motherwell Station all week, and was on his way home with Michael, when he stepped onto the line in the way of a cargo train passing swiftly. I am not sure how Michael and Mary Ann would have put it to her, but the impact of the train had torn James to pieces. His death certificate states that his cause of death was "compound fracture of the skull, loss of right leg, fracture of left leg, loss of right arm, and loss of fingers on left hand". This gruesome and truly devastating death must have shattered Elizabeth, only into her fifth year of marriage. Poor Elizabeth must have sobbed her heart out. To make matter even worse for her, she was five months pregnant with their third child, who turned out to be a son, born on April 7 1902. She called him James in his father's memory. James Jnr would also have a short life and a tragic end. He died on his twenty second birthday (1924) of influenza.
For Catherine and Elizabeth, the news that their little brother Joseph was to marry would have provided little balance. Catherine found herself struggling to make ends meet, and Elizabeth too was distraught and a widow aged twenty seven. However, despite these twin tragedies, their mother Eliza now had just given up her last child, Joseph, who married a woman called Rose McGinty, in Anderston, on December 31, 1902. Unable to have children of their own, they adopted a boy called John Dougan, sometime soon after their union...
Copyright © Matthew Reay, 2008
