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| Image Source: Birmingham Gaol, Warwickshire: Habitual Criminals Register, Ancestry.com |
How dearly I’d love to say “here she is! That’s Hannah!” Alas, that is not so, but the image above is no less remarkable as it does show the face of a woman who was intimately acquainted with William Wheelock.
The picture shows Mary Ann Webb (who always went by the name Ann), who married William on 18th July 1869. I found her by trying out some alternative spellings of Wheelock in my online searches. An “Ann Waylock” came up in the results; I clicked on her and there she was, looking at me.
Now as Ann wasn’t a relative of mine I hadn’t explored her story in depth, but I’m so thrilled to put a face to her name I thought now was the time to find out more about this lady. She stood in the Church of Bishop Ryder that day in July, and whether she knew it or not, she married a very volatile man. This is her story.
Ann’s early years are a complete unknown to me, bar the fact that she was born in Buckinghamshire and that her father was a labourer named John Webb. However, as my first traces of Ann are in Birmingham I cannot provide any insight into her youth. My first glimpse of Ann is when she is 24, and living in the Gullet, Stafford Street. Now there were a few gullets in Birmingham. The word simply meant narrow street, but THE Gullet, of most notorious fame was where Ann was living. It had a terrible reputation for prostitution, lawlessness, and villainy, but the simple reality was that this was one of the poorest areas in Birmingham, so it was home to some pretty desperate people and would have been about as salubrious as one can imagine. The area was eventually cleared in the late 1870s as part of town developments.
But back to 1841. Ann is sharing a house with four other women: Eleanor Mulligan (25), Eliza Lane (16), Mary Smith (18), and Elizabeth Wilkins (18). None of the ladies give any profession, so we cannot know what they were doing for income, though we can possibly guess.
By late 1842, Robert Maydon appears on the scene. He was a labourer, also from Buckinghamshire, born there in 1804. It’s possible Ann knew him before she travelled to Birmingham but it’s hard to say. Robert, it seems, had a wife, Sarah Pegram, whom he married in 1829. I am uncertain where Sarah is when Robert begins his relationship with Ann, but she is certainly still alive.
Ann gave birth to a daughter, Mary Ann Maydon, on 3rd July 1843, though inexplicably she does so in Cambridge in a place called Shamrock Court in George Street. Ann pretends she is Robert’s wife in the birth record:
The next child to appear is Robert Maydon, born in 1844. However, try as I may, I cannot find a birth or baptism record for Robert, and the search is made all the more difficult by the fact that Robert can’t seem to make his mind up in census records whether he was born in Birmingham or London. Frustratingly, this means I am not certain if Robert is Ann or Sarah’s son.
In 1847, Robert senior’s wife, Sarah, makes an appearance in Birmingham. It seems that by at least late 1846, Robert had temporarily suspended his relationship with Ann to resume seeing Sarah, because on 27th August 1847, Sarah gave birth to John Maydon in Court 20, House 1, Lichfield Street.
That is the last trace I find of Sarah. I don’t know if she died or moved on after Robert resumed his relationship with Ann, or if she was the mother of James Maydon, who appeared in 1850. I have been unable to find a birth or baptism record for him. A James Maiden, born 1850, married an Ellen Rogers in 1875 and gives his father’s name as Robert Maiden, farmer. His address was Hill Street, which is very close to Ann’s home in the Gullet, so I suspect that this is the correct James, and that he was Ann’s son. Robert was no farmer, so I also suspect his father was another man, but he gave Robert’s name as he spent some of his youth living with Robert and his mother. He has Robert’s surname in census records. Probably in the interest of respectability. This was not the only child of Ann’s to pretend that Robert was the father, as we will see.
In 1851, Robert and Ann are living together again in Court 5, House 1 on Thomas Street with Mary Ann, Robert, John, and James. Robert is a bricklayer’s labourer. They soon move though to Court 6, Steelhouse Lane, where their son Matthew was born on 22nd August 1852.
On 27th February 1854, Robert and Ann finally get married, so we can possibly assume - though not be certain - that Sarah had died by this time. They wed in St Philip’s Church.
Sadly, tragedy struck on 21st August that year as Matthew died aged 2 from marasmus. Robert and Ann would have to endure further tragedy with the birth and death of their daughter Sarah aged 13 weeks in 1856.
Robert’s final child, William Maydon, was born in 1860 and at this time Robert’s health was starting to fail. He appears in the 1861 census, living at 10 House, Court 6 Steelhouse Lane with Ann, Mary Ann, Robert, John, James and William. Although William is just one, Ann is working as a chain woman. Mary Ann is a servant, Robert junior is a gun screwer, John is a hawker, and James is an errand boy. Less than a week after the census was taken, on 13th April, Robert senior died of bronchitis and dropsy, and little William would have no memory of his father.
The next we see of Ann is in 1863 when her daughter Elizabeth was born on Steelhouse Lane. Her birth record names Robert Maydon the father, which is obviously a lie. Later, when Elizabeth married, she said her father was Robert Maydon, butcher. The butcher part may well have been true.
Who knows whether Elizabeth’s father offered any financial assistance with her upbringing. All we know is that Ann did not go on to marry a butcher, so it would seem that relationship ended. Elizabeth’s birth may even have been a consequence of Ann trying to bring some extra income into the house.
The next time Ann appears is on 18th July 1869 when she married William Wheelock, a gun filer who lived on the same street. If she was hoping for a stable provider and step-father to her young children, she was to be sorely disappointed. Just over a year later, while they were living at 1 Court Staniforth Street, William made the papers for violently assaulting Ann. He appeared in the Birmingham Daily Gazette on 30th November 1870. For whatever reason, Ann was staying at a neighbour’s house, and William attacked both her and the neighbour’s wife. He received 2 months imprisonment, something he was well used to by now.
In 1871, Ann was back in the Gullet with her son, William, who was 11 and working as a hair dresser, and Elizabeth, who was 8. Ann’s profession is hawker, and noticeably she has reverted to her previous married name of Maydon. I have not been able to locate William Wheelock in the 1871 census. It is probable he was in prison again. Nevertheless, he would join Ann in the Gullet when he got out, and they would both work as street hawkers selling newspapers.
On 18th April 1874, Ann appeared in the Birmingham Morning Post. She had fallen foul of the law.
This is a sad story indeed. Essentially Ann is rumbled by undercover policemen who employed schoolboys to spy on her. Ann was being assisted by her 10-year-old daughter and she was charged with selling stolen newspapers at Snow Hill Station at quarter to six in the morning. William Wheelock was also selling newspapers so would almost certainly have engaged in a similar sort of racket. But Ann was sentenced to 6 weeks in prison, and the photograph of her at the top of this article is her mugshot from this arrest. Her entry in the Habitual Criminals Register is dated 16th May 1874 and the description tells us she was 5’2” with brown hair and grey eyes. It states she had no trade and that one of her finger joints was injured.
Perhaps the most worrying implications of this arrest were that her children were now reliant on William while their mother was in prison. One can imagine that perhaps their brothers and sisters took them in to be safe. Particularly as William too, was arrested a few weeks later for destruction of property and threatening behaviour, more about that in the next post. He was imprisoned for 21 days.
In 1881, Ann was living in 1 Court, 3 House, Sun Street in Edgbaston. She was the head of the household, using the surname Maydon, and claimed to be a widow. This was not true, though I cannot account for William’s whereabouts in 1881. I know he was assaulted in a pub in Aston the previous year, and I know that sometime between then and 1887 he was admitted to the workhouse. Ann lists no occupation, but was living with her son, William, a tin plate burnisher, and her daughter Elizabeth and son-in-law Edwin Lilley.
Elizabeth and Edwin moved to 10 Court Essex Street, and Ann appears to have gone to live with them as her health failed her. She died of bronchitis at her daughter’s home on 8th May 1883. Her death record states she was the widow of Robert Maydon, a navvy. It seemed she did not wish to be associated with William, even in death.
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