The Family Histories Podcast

In this Series Five bonus episode host Andrew Martin has chosen to tell the life story of his maternal 5x Great Grandfather John Goltrip, who was born around 1771/1772 in the fenland village of Witcham, Cambridgeshire, England. 

After marrying Elizabeth Paget in 1798 and starting his family of an eventual six children, a series of world events would eventually lead to John taking a stand against authority and poverty and take part in the Littleport Riots.

This act exposed him to a potentially life changing or life threatening outcome in a nation engulfed by the impact of the Corn Law, the Napoleonic Wars, and the erupting Indonesian volcano Mount Tambora thousands of miles away.

In his brick wall segment Andrew discusses a case that has been haunting him for years – it’s his 4x Gt Grandmother Mary Clarke (later Bailey), who was born to non-Conformists William Clarke and Susanna Rolf on 19th January 1810 in the village of Wattisfield, in Suffolk, England.

Whilst Andrew knows a little of Mary’s parents, and Mary’s descendants, he is desperate to ‘kill her off’, and there’s a very good reason – she was the archetypal wicked step-mother.

Having married widower William Bailey in 1838, Andrew eventually found them, and with their combined brood of children in 1841, after posting a plea on RootsChat.com. Help soon pointed him to a court report in a newspaper from 1840. His 4x Great Grandmother and her husband were both charged and sentenced for neglecting his children, and Mary was also charged with their physical abuse.

After finding her in jail with hard labour in 1841, and tracing her in and out of the workhouse in subsequent censuses, he loses her after the 1881 census. Her last known location is the Hartismere Union Workhouse at Eye in Suffolk, England. She’s there as an inmate, noted as a 68 year old widow (William died there in 1869), and she is noted as ‘housekeeper’.

Attempts to find her on the 1891 census have proven fruitless.  Where did she go after the 1881 census?  When did she die? Can you help Andrew to kill her off?