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The Life & Times of Bridget Dempsey
Bridget Dempsey was the mother of Annie Chatfield Smith. She was my paternal great-great grandmother and my dad’s great gran. I wish I had met her, as I have a lot of questions that remain unanswered. I think both her parents died when she was very young, so perhaps those questions were always ones that Bridget would have liked the answers to as well.
Bridget was born to Irish parents in London during the middle of the 19th century. I believe that this is the Irish link that my Great Aunt Doreen had mentioned; the story her mum told her of a young girl who ran off with an Irish drover and was disowned by her family. Research proves that this tale is not quite the truth. Bridget’s story is one of hardship and poverty and the family tale is either further back in history, or has been romanticised somewhere along the way, or perhaps altered to hide a truth.
Bridget’s immediate family, from what I can gather, were never around and perhaps her children would ask her about her parents and siblings. Being unable to tell them very much perhaps she felt the need to make something up, or perhaps she had even been told this tale herself. Future discoveries that I have not made yet may prove me wrong, but for the moment we will stick to what we know for certain about Bridget Dempsey. It is impossible to tell the real story of her life. All I can do, is find out as much of the truth as possible whilst making suggestions based on history and society at the time to fill the gaps.
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[Pic: Bridget's birth certificate]
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Bridget was born on the banks of the River Thames at the Lying-In Hospital, which is now the Premier Inn Hotel next to the London Eye. I have walked past it without knowing its relevance, as I am sure many of you have too. Next time I walk past I shall stand and think of my great-great grandmother and imagine that I will be standing where she once stood; or at least where her parents (my great-great-great grandparents) will have been at some time in the far distant past. I shall also be counting my lucky stars that I am in a far more fortunate position than Bridget and her family were at that time. Why Bridget was born in a hospital during the middle of the 1800s I am unsure; most women would have given birth in a domestic setting at that time. However, it is possible that the dire living conditions amongst the poorer classes in London, particularly the Irish immigrants, at the end of the 1840s was the reason why.
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[Pic: The Lying-In Hospital, York Road, Lambeth]
During my research of Bridget and her parents, I have discovered that they were likely extremely poor. Bridget’s parents were Michael and Mary (formerly Nash) Dempsey and they were both born in Ireland. Almost certainly, they were from Limerick in the South West of the country. As both her parents were Irish, and I am unable to find any reference to the family prior to their marriage, I can only presume that they came to England in search of a better life during the potato famine (1845-1851).
The Irish Famine was the greatest tragedy of its day; a million Irish men, women and children died from disease and starvation. More than a million fled the country for better lives, and I am sure some of them achieved great success. Most of them went to America, but many came to the UK. If I am correct in my assumption, then Michael and Mary fled starvation and poverty, either with their families or alone, and ended up living in the slums of London; out of the frying pan and into the fire. However, this decision resulted in one surviving daughter who went on to marry and have 11 children (stated in the 1911 census) at least 8 of whom went on to survive to adulthood who produced their own children resulting in descendants throughout the UK and as far as Australia. So any success that we, their descendants might have, could be attributed to any decisions and sacrifices that Michael and Mary made.
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It was extremely common, throughout the 1800s that labourers from farming communities would leave their homes in favour of industrial towns where better prospects were to be had. Michael and Mary could have been tempted by America, Canada or Australia, but they chose London. Perhaps because it was closer and cheaper to get to. It is likely that they travelled from Ireland to South Wales, which was the cheapest passage, and then they walked with many others all the way to London.
Unfortunately, London in the middle of the 19th century was an overcrowded city with growing pollution problems. It was ridden with disease and the poor were the most susceptible. There was a lack of fresh water, poor sewage systems and a housing crisis. Families would have to share homes with many others and were living on top of each other in one room with extremely unsanitary conditions. The only jobs available, if you were lucky enough to get one, would have been low paid, and hunger would have been a constant companion. Mortality rate was high and the average life expectancy in London was 37. Deaths would be caused by cholera, smallpox, typhoid and tuberculosis; all diseases associated with poverty and poor living conditions.
An overcrowded, disease ridden London is the better life Michael and Mary ended up with. It is here, in the parish of Shadwell in the heart of the East End, that Church of England records show their marriage on 18th July 1847. I am unsure why they would have married in a Church of England when they were Catholic. It is possible that there were not many Catholic churches around in the 1840s. A few decades earlier Catholicism had been illegal, and the Catholic church was only now becoming more prominent. The nearby Catholic Church of St Michael and St Mary on Commercial Road in Stepney was not built until 1852 (though I am actively researching this as Bridget and Elizabeth’s baptisms are recorded at this church before it was even built. At the time of its building it was the largest Catholic church in London. The church is closed due to Covid-19, but I have been promised some information when it opens in September so an update will follow if possible)
As well as the fact that marriage inside a Church of England might have been Michael and Mary’s only option, it could also be that marriage outside the Church of England was frowned upon. The Marriage Act of 1753 had made marriages outside the jurisdiction of the Church of England illegal, as well as stating that both parties should be over the age of 21 to marry without their parent’s consent. Perhaps that is why Mary states of full age on the marriage certificate when she was still a teenager; the only option was to lie if parents had not given consent or were not around to do so. Perhaps if they had married in a Catholic Church, their parents (if they were also in London) would have got to know about it and stopped it? Perhaps it was Mary that was the daughter of the vicar disowned by her family? I don’t think we will ever know this for sure. I have looked into it but am unable to find any information. Also, although the law regarding marriage outside a Church of England had changed 10 years earlier in 1837, perhaps it was still felt that only marriages falling under the jurisdiction of the Church of England were recognised. As a matter of interest, I do not think Mary was pregnant at the time of their marriage, so I am hoping they married out of love and not necessity.
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[Pic: The Marriage Certificate of Michael Dempsey and Mary Nash]
During the Victorian times, Shadwell and the East End of London where Michael and Mary resided were not pleasant places. As well as living in a slum, the Irish immigrants would have been dealing with the long-standing bad feeling from the English towards the Catholic religion carried over from the reformation. Catholicism became legal in England in 1791, but it wasn’t until 1829 that Catholics were restored most of their civil rights. Also, as still happens today, some people would have been angered by an influx of foreigners; the foreigners on this occasion being the poor starving Irish fleeing the potato famine. It was this influx of Irish that increased the ranks of Catholics within England and more pressure was on to allow them to practise their faith. Having arrived into London in the 1840s, you can imagine the animosity that our Michael and Mary were facing during their daily lives.
So, it is highly likely that my great x3 grandparents had left a starving Ireland tempted by tales of a better life, to live in a poverty-ridden slum amidst bias against their faith and a future of destitution. How must they have felt? If this is the right tale, then they had fled their homeland and left everything they knew and loved behind them. What must they have been thinking about their future? Would they still have hopes and dreams or would they have given up? Would they have felt despair? Or would they have been resigned to whatever the future held for them?
What we know for certain is that their lives together continued for a short while in Stepney as Bridget is born 9 months after their marriage in April 1848. At the time, there were Boards of Guardians in charge of the workhouses, and I am wondering whether perhaps Michael and Mary had appealed for assistance during her pregnancy, and it is them who arranged the birth in a hospital. Perhaps conditions were considered too insanitary for her to give birth at home. Also, London was on the verge of a Cholera epidemic and perhaps this might have had something to do with it.
Bridget was baptised in May 1848 – she had a Catholic baptism recording her as Birgitta, and her parents as Michaelis and Maria Dempsey. She has sponsors (not godparents) which are typical of a Catholic baptism, one of whom is Thomas Cautz who we can presume was a friend of Michael’s. At the time of his marriage Michael is living at the same address that Thomas is found at a few years later during the 1851 census. Unfortunately, Michael is no longer with Thomas in 1851. He is married to Mary at this point and should be with his family, but he is not with them either. He is nowhere to be found!
Michael is certainly still around at the end of 1849 as he and Mary have another daughter, Elizabeth, who is born on 8th May 1850. He is named as her father at the baptism in June of that year, and I am presuming he was present, but he may not have been. Within 6 months of Elizabeth’s birth, Michael has gone, and Mary is desperate. Whether he has died, abandoned them, or gone off to find them a better life than the one they now have in London I do not know, but we can say with some certainty that they never saw him again. There are records of persons named Michael Dempsey, of a similar age to Mary, leaving from Liverpool for the USA around about the time Michael disappeared. It is possible that one of them is our Michael, but no way of knowing for certain. It is certainly true that heads of households would leave first to set up a new life for their families who would follow later once they were settled. However, given the fact that Mary is alone with 2 small children and little chance of being able to support herself it is unlikely that Michael would have left her in that situation. Far more likely he had died, or he was a scoundrel and had left her! (Please accept my apologies great x3 grandfather if this is not the truth.) It is also possible that had he applied for relief from the workhouse for his family, they had deported him back to Ireland! Deportation back to Ireland was an extremely common occurrence during the 1840s.
Anyway, Mary and her children are admitted to the workhouse in Tower Hamlets in October 1850. It is stated in the records that her husband is absent, and the children are sick. The fact that Michael is stated as absent as opposed to dead, means he is thought to be alive somewhere. Mary and the children are still in the workhouse the following March 1851. Mary must have been absolutely desperate to admit herself and her children into the workhouse. Conditions in workhouses were designed to deter people from entering unless they really had to; it was considered the ultimate degradation. Mary would probably have only been allowed to see the children for a short time once a week, and she would have had to work under a harsh and strict regime whilst surviving on a very poor diet of bread and gruel. Charles Dickens’ portrayal of meal times in the workhouse of ‘Oliver Twist’ will not be far from the truth; though the inhabitants may have been kept so close to starvation they would not have had the energy to do all that singing!
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[Pic: Vagrants in the casual ward of a London workhouse - taken from Henry Mayhew's newspaper articles on the London poor during the 1840s]
In the winter of 1852, whilst still residing at the workhouse and not having reached her 2nd birthday, Elizabeth is buried. Mary’s husband has gone, her baby has died, and she must have been on the brink of despair. There was no restriction on discharging yourself from the workhouse if you felt there was better opportunity to be had on the outside, or your circumstances changed. After Elizabeth’s death, Mary and her young daughter Bridget appear to check in and out over the next few years. Mary was probably trying her very best to make a better life for herself and her daughter. However, in 1861 Bridget is no longer with her mother. She is found at 12 years old living with her dad’s sister, Bridget who is married to John Roche, a shoemaker. It is definitely our Bridget, as I have a DNA match with a descendant of Bridget and John Roche’s daughter. Bridget’s mother Mary has now also disappeared; I suspect that the toll of her existence had got the better of her and she has died, but I have been unable to find her death registration.
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[Pic: extract from 1861 census showing Bridget living with her aunt and uncle in Stingo Lane, which would have been a poorer area nestled between the more respectable streets of Marylebone - both her aunt and uncle state that they were born in Ireland]
So, her dad’s gone, her baby sister has died, her mum is no longer around, and Bridget has been taken in by her aunt and uncle. Unfortunately, by the end of the 1860’s she is checking herself back into the workhouse as a young woman. Her aunt and uncle are still alive, so something has obviously gone wrong there. A year or so later though, in her early 20s, she is living 40 miles away from the East End of London and hopefully she felt her fortunes had changed for the better. In the 1871 census she is in the countryside of Surrey, living in Lingfield with her soon to be husband George Chatfield. She is calling herself Elizabeth, and is listed as his wife, though they don’t actually marry for another 3 years.
I strongly suspect that George Chatfield was not a Catholic. Would it have been frowned upon for a catholic girl to live in sin with a non-Catholic in the middle of the 19th century? I suspect it might have been. Did she start using her dead sister’s name perhaps? Had she run off with George and was hiding from her Catholic relatives? Is this where the runaway love story had arisen? After the life she had so far, I can not imagine she cared much about religion and that she just wanted to be happy and I really do hope she was!
We will never know for certain what happened to Michael or Mary, or why Bridget ended up living in Surrey calling herself Elizabeth; but what we do know is that George and Bridget’s first child who is born in 1872 (2 years before their marriage) is named Mary Elizabeth, and I can only suspect that she was named for Bridget’s mum and her baby sister (though possibly for George’s mum who was also Elizabeth). The fact she named her first child after her mum shows that she must have loved her very much. What is interesting is that Bridget and George go on to have 11 children, at least 5 of whom are boys, and not one of them are named Michael.
My great-great grandmother was baptised with the name Birgitta, the Catholic form of Bridget. She used the name Elizabeth Chatfield, Bridget Chatfield and for several decades Frances (Fanny) Smith. She was even called Beatrice on one of her children’s birth certificates, but I suspect that was an error on the registrar’s part. There is no way of knowing for certain why she changed her name, or whether she was happy to do so. Maybe her early life made her feel that she did not want to be that Bridget anymore, or maybe she changed her name to protect her husband from the law and herself from the degradation of the workhouse. She would not have wanted her children to experience the workhouse life she had suffered herself. I suspect she would have done anything to prevent this from happening, and if doing a moonlight flit and changing her name was the only answer, then that is what she did!
When looking into the lives of your ancestors, you can only be reliant on the written records that have been preserved and historical facts regarding what life was like in the past. If you want to bring those past lives to life then you must use supposition and your imagination, so bear this in mind when reading the above account. If you have any of your own thoughts or ideas on Bridget’s life and what might have happened to Michael then please get in touch and let me know.
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If you haven't already read about Bridget's life with George, click on the following links to find out more ...
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