Happily Ever After...

Season 5, episode 11. 1890 to 1893. Janie and Fred move to the seaside in Redcar, North Yorkshire, we get to have rather a lovely snapshot of their life together with  financial security, social mobility and even some balls and banquets. However back in Sheffield, Tuberculosis rears its ugly head. 

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[Intro]
Welcome back to My Love Letter Time Machine, Hi, I’m Ingrid Birchell Hughes, and I’ve been serialising the love letters of my great great Grandparents, Fred Shepherd and Janie Warburton. Travel 140 years back in time with me now where we take a look at Victorian history through their eyes and today, we get rather a lovely snap shot of Fred and Janie’s social life in the early 1890s.

[Happily Ever After]
“Dear Uncle Fred and Aunt Jannie [sic]
I hope you are quite well as it leaves me at present. I hope you will come for when we get hold of you we shall keep you and not let you go home to Middlesborough again. If you don’t we shall come and fetch you!”
Lily Merill to Affectionate Uncle Fred and Aunt Jannie”

That was a letter from Lily, the daughter of Fred’s sister Louisa. It’s in beautiful but methodical copperplate and I guess she may have been around 8 or 9 when she wrote it. There’s no date, and no address, and no way of knowing what planned visit she’s referring to, but the adoration in it is just lovely. Janie and Fred obviously knew how to connect with the kids in the rest of their family as well as their own. It’s also evidence that they regularly went back to Sheffield to visit family.

At some point between the birth of their first daughter Agnes, in September 1888 and their second daughter Edith (my great grandmother) in November 1890, Jannie and Fred had moved once again. It’s wonderful to see that they finally realised their dream of living by the sea in Redcar. 

Fred was particularly taken with the Redcar and Saltburn area from the moment he clapped eyes on it and I think it’s worth sharing again this excerpt from one of his letters that we first heard back in Season 3 of the podcast for 14th of May 1882

“…I went down to Redcar again yesterday afternoon, to look after our secretary’s new house. It was a beautiful day, being perfectly cloudless. I got down to the house just after three and stayed there until five, making arrangements with the builder for connecting the water, and sundry other business. Mr McCrie (the secretary) has left it all in my hands, to make the best arrangements I can for him. I hope he will be satisfied with what I have done, for I have done the best I could under the circumstances. The rent of the house is £35 per year, which I do not think is very heavy seeing that there are three rooms downstairs, five bedrooms and one attic. Besides there is half an acre of land attached to the house.

The paper looks very nice now it is put on, and I feel quite gratified at my choice. It is very good experience love. 

After I had finished looking after the house, I set off to walk to Saltburn on the sand. Saltburn is 5 miles from Redcar. It is a magnificent walk – the sands are so firm, and being by myself, I had plenty of time to think, and I thunk so deeply that I did not notice that the tide had come in so much that I was surrounded by water. That being the case of course I had to get across it the best way I could. So I pulled my shoes and stockings off and walked through it.

You would have smoled if you could've seen me paddling through the water, with my shoes in one hand + stockings in the other, and my trousers turned up not very dignified was it love?

I've got to Saltburn at a quarter past six, + of course being hungry had tea first thing to keep up the British constitution. After tea and took a walk around the town, + of all the lovely places I think Saltburn is the loveliest.

The town is built on the top of a cliff, and you get onto the pier down the lift. There is no promenade, and almost all the houses are built towards the hills, and they seem to be almost all gentleman’s houses.

From the street the ground slopes down to a stream and then up again on the other side. On the slope of the celebrated Gardens which is something like the spa at Scarborough. Father on from these gardens are some woods belonging to the Earl of Zetland, but which are open to the public, and for loveliness I have seen nothing to equal them not even Roche Abbey though it is something like it.

The hillsides are quite as steep as that we climbed at Matlock, with a stream at the bottom, spanned by rustic bridges. The trees seem quite as big as those that Roche Abbey, and yesterday looked beautiful. You could imagine you were 100 miles from the sea. The Hawthorne was all in bloom, and the bluebells and the primroses in flower. Oh darling, if you had been there it would've been an Eden. But never mind darling, I should be able to show it to you when we are married I'm sure you feel resigned to Middlesbro wifie, when you have seen Redcar and Saltburn.

I was so interested in the scenery that I missed the train, and had to walk back to Redcar and then ride home. It was very nice but I always feel as though I only half enjoyed it with you not being there. Without you darling, I feel so lonely but I shall soon see you and get a fresh stock of courage to help me live a little longer. Only 13 days love to our blissful meeting, but that includes another Sunday after today.

I enclose you a little Hawthorne I got from Saltburn I have not been able to give you any other flowers this year love, but will give you myself instead. I remain your loving true and faithful husband Fred.”

I said before didn’t I that I thought that was one of Fred’s most beautiful letters and I think it’s a good reminder that however much he was a product of the cities of Sheffield and Middlesbrough, he yearned for beautiful landscapes.

The name Redcar is probably derived from a combination of old norse and anglo saxon for reed marsh or red marsh on account of it occupying a low-lying area by the sea on the north Yorkshire coast. Like many costal towns it originated as a fishing village, and also followed the well worn path of developing in the Victorian era as a seaside resort — particularly after the railway arrived in 1846. Middlesbrough’s prosperity became Recar’s too as the newly industrialised ‘ironoplis’ grew in population and Redcar being only one railway stop and a few miles away was the obvious place for tourists and weekenders to come for enjoyment. Although the Redcar Pier no longer survives, it was built in the late 1870s and while it existed was a primary attraction. 

Janie and Fred chose a three storey property on the High Street which backed onto the area of the sea front right by the Redcar pier. There were views of the sea from the rear windows, and the washing of the waves would have been a soothing sound in the background. Redcar Station was less than half a mile, and only a 10 minute walk away. Our Fred now joined the ranks of the commuter. But given Middlesbrough was only the next stop, it was a very easy commute. 

The 1891 census records the shape of the family there as follows

Frederick Shepherd, Head, age 31, Accountant. Jane, Wife, 30, Frederick, Son, age 7, Scholar, Alfred J. son, 6, Arthur, son, 4, Agnes J, daughter, age 2, Edith M, daughter, 5 months.

There is something rather charming about the thought of the kids having the run of the beach as their playground. I’m also amused to think that Janie would have had a battle on her hands to prevent large quantities of sand being walked into the house. Demanding that small boys remove their footwear before coming inside must surely have been a tiresome litany then as now. And knowing small boys, probably not very successful. 

Edith once mentioned to my mother that at some point Janie had a maid of all work to help her, although her name is not recorded on the 1891 census. Perhaps this came later or perhaps she lived out and only came during the day. But help to keep the clothes of five and then later six children, as well a husband, in a tolerable state of cleanliness would have been very welcome. 

Feeding them must have taken some effort too and I have here an invoice from J.J Wilson, family butcher for the month of June [1894] which records a total of seven visits where Janie bought 4 pounds of mutton on four separate occasions, followed by 12 pounds of beef split over 2 occasions, and 2 and a half pounds of lamb. The total for which came to £4 1/ and 3.5d. The beef and the lamb were bought on Saturdays but the mutton was bought mid-week. This to me looks like the tradition of a good joint for a traditional roast Sunday lunch, which would yield left overs for meals at the beginning of the week, and then the mutton was to carry the family along until the following Sunday. This means that Fred and Janie had a budget of around £50 a year to spend just on meat. When you consider Fred had been on a starting salary of £152 a year before they got married, and now they are renting a 3 story house, have a maid and can afford roast dinners every week, Fred must have been on at least double that now. They were definately doing alright.

As well as enjoying a good salary and position at work, Fred was also enjoying an active social life, particularly in terms of some of the organisations he became a member of, one of which was the Redcar and Kirkleatham Unionist Association: 

Following the ‘Representation of the People Act 1884’, men who paid an annual rent of £10 or whose land holding was valued at least £10 now could now exercise their vote, when meant that our Fred was now able to vote in general elections. The growth of the number of Unionist Associations in Great Britain were in part a way to organise newly enfranchised working-class men and came loosely under the umbrella of the ‘National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations’. At the time of Fred’s participation, the big political question of the day was regarding the governance of Ireland. The current Prime Minister, Gladstone, was espousing the policy of Irish Home Rule. Between 1870 and the first world war, it was the main vehicle for Irish Nationalism.

In reaction to Gladstone supporting it, a faction of his Liberal party, broke away and formed the Liberal-Unionist Party. They in turn formed a political alliance with the Conservative Party in opposition to Irish Home Rule. I’m so sorry to all my Irish listeners to reveal to you that Fred was a Unionist. However for all the seriousness of the issue, and I know that Fred was v considered in his views, I think in part, joining the association was probably also about social standing, enjoying a few jollies and having a bit of a sing as illustrated in this article in the Redcar and Saltburn News for Saturday 03 December 1892:

“Another smoking Concert was held at the Red Lion Hotel on Thursday, in connection with the Unionist Association. Dr. Day presided, and there was a good attendance. Mr. Sadler the Secretary in a speech said they had already 205 members and several vice-presidents. Mr. Wallace in a capital speech urged that everyone present would try and induce others to join the association. Mr. Parry in a spirited speech enforced the duty of all true patriots to maintain intact the glorious constitution handed to us by our forefathers. There was some capital singing by Mr. Watson, Mr. Andrews, Mr. Shepherd, Mr. Scarth, Mr. Boagey, and others, and a violin solo by Mr. Coverdale. The meeting was a great success in every way.”


I’ve noticed since I’ve been doing this without the letters, that the hard facts that remain to us are going to be newsworthy more often for distressing reasons rather than positive one and it’s really hard to create a true picture. I’m sure there were many more happy children playing in the sand moments and things of that ilk that we will never know about - and it is often the little details in which a life is lived. However there is no escaping that while the early 1890s were definitely looking positive for Janie and Fred in Redcar, back in Sheffield there was a run of tragedy that would have broken both of their hearts. 

Once known as consumption, or the white death or phithsis - a term meaning ‘wasting’, Tuberculosis was and in fact remains the most common form of death caused by infectious disease in the world.

It was actually only in 1882, the year that Fred and Janie married, that it was finally understood that TB was caused by bacteria. Up until this point it was considered a disease of the constitution, or inherited, rather than an infectious one. It even gave rise to TB-chique beauty standards, as the disease became associated with artists and poets due to the belief that creative and melancholic people were more likely to suffer. Consumptive individuals were often thin and pale, with pink cheeks indicative of the hectic fevers they suffered. Lord Byron, the Britsh poet once wrote “I should like to die of from consumption” and as George Sand was nursing the pianist Chopin during his illness she wrote in a letter “Chopin coughs with infinite grace." 

It’s hard to understand why it was thought to be a beautiful way to die because the reality is beyond unpleasant. Although it can infect other parts of the body, TB most often lodges in the lungs and eventually starts to multiply, inflaming and damaging the tissue, and patients develop a chronic cough often producing blood-laden mucus. Fevers and weight loss is common. Towards the end, patients lose the battle with their lungs filling up, and become unable to draw breath. A slow, lingering and horrible death. 

By the late 19th century, the infection rate was as high as between 70 and 90% in Europe and North America. This didn’t mean active disease, it means that it was in your system. So basically nearly everyone contracted the tuberculosis bacillus. However if you did develop active tuberculosis, usually due to a challenged immune system, there was an 80% chance it would kill you. It was particularly lethal in the 20-30 year old age group, which in part contributed to the myth of it being a disease of the beautiful. Between 1851 and 1910, four million people in England and Wales died from Tuberculosis, and a third of them were aged between 15 and 34. It became known as ‘the robber of youth’.

You might recall that Janie and Fred often talked about their friend Emma Gill, who they knew was ill with the disease and they fully understood that it was only a matter of time. If I’ve got the correct record it looks as if  the poor woman struggled along until 1888, when she was admitted to the South Yorkshire Asylum for treatment and then finally succumbed to the disease at the age of 29. 

In 1892 Tuberculosis went through Janie and Fred’s family and friends like a runaway truck. First was Janie’s brother John Warburton. He the brother closest to our Fred, one time suitor to Janie’s friend Carrie, and had no doubt stepped into his father’s footsteps to help Maria run the Cross Keys. He died at the age of xx on the 4th of February 1882. Then in July that year another brother of Janie’s, Frederick died. You might remember we learned all about his wedding to the fashionable Polly, along with the drama of the carriage crash. He was only xx years old. And then we come to our Fred’s friend Tommy Hughes. Who had been a groomsman at Janie and Fred’s wedding and had married Mary Ellen xxx. I have his memorial card here, it reads 

In affectionate remembrance of Thomas, the beloved husband of Mary Ellen Hughes, who departed this life August 17th 1892, aged 33 years, and was interred at Tinsley Park Cemetery aug 19th.

Tuberculosis as a killer of the young writ large and inescapable. It must have been utterly unbearable to lose so many people in such a short space of time. 



At some point during this time, Fred became a member of the North York Lodge of Free masons. There are some significant name overlaps between his compatriots in the Unionist Association and those in his newly adopted lodge but which came first is going to be hard to say. 

North York Lodge 
Middlesborough 29th Nov 1893. Received of Brother F. Shepherd the sum of one pound, his subscription to 31st of December 1893. Subscriptions due 1st January. Only 11 months late then Fred.


For some reason, we have a couple of copies of the masonic credentials of a Mr William Watson, (also one of Fred’s unionist singing partners) and I wonder if Mr Watson was the one that proposed Fred’s entry into the masons. Whatever your opinions of the Free Masons are in our modern world, their reputation in Victorian England was very much that of a gentleman’s club committed to charitable works and local civic development, with the added attraction of secrecy and ritual. Given the late Victorian love of high gothic drama associated with the seances, spiritualism and the occult, the traditions of the Freemasons would have been considered fairly tame in comparison. But still, the idea of Fred joining is something I find a bit of a challenge to wrap my modern head around. 

I have his masonic certificate, an extraordinarily ornate document printing on a large sheet of velum, complete with a seal. It reads:

“United grand Lodge of Ancient, Free, and Accepted Masons of England. His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales RG grand master.

To all whom it may concern these are to certify that our brother Frederick Shepherd who has signed his name in the margin heretoforth was regularly received into freemasonry the 28th March […] 1891 and admitted to the 3rd on the 27th day of June 5 1891 in the North York Lodge no 602 Middlesbrough, and that he is duly registered in the books of this grand Lodge accordingly. In testimony whereof I have here by subscribed my name and afixed the seal of the grand Lodge at London this 17th day of March […] AD 1891. This certificate shall not entitle a brother to admission to any lodge without due examination.”

The statement is repeated in a second column in latin, and Fred is recorded in that as Fredericum Shepherd. 

The Masonic Hall in Middlesbrough that Fred would have known was demolished in the 1970s to make way for the A66. It was neatly proportioned regency-revival styled building built of brick, with marble details and topped with a statue of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and metal working —  a very suitable mascot for the industries in Middlesbrough. The details on the frontage included a star of david, and a five pointed star and a huge rondel above the door with an eye in the centre - to represent the all-seeing-high and a the belief in a higher power. As well as being a home to the meetings and rituals it was also where North York Lodge held their charitable balls and banquets - that Fred and Janie would have attended on many occasions. Invitations to events at other lodges in the area were also common and I have a couple of the banquet cards from those. 

For example I have here a menu and toast list for a banquet that took place 1891 hosted by the Zetland Lodge at the Back Hotel, Guisbrough (a village to the south west of Middlesbrough). 

The banquet started with oysters then the soups were Hare soup, and Clear soup. The fish course was boiled turbot and lobster sauce. Releves were roast turkey, sausages, roast goose, boiled fowls, boiled ham, tongues, and roast beef. Next is listed ‘game’ of pheasants, black cocks, and partridges. The sweets were Tipsy Cake, Goosberry Tart, Wine Jelly, Cassell’s puddings (this might have been what we know as summer pudding) and mince pies. Then was served cheese and celery, followed by dessert, which was a fruit course including English grapes, Pine Apple (two words not one) oranges, apples, almonds and raisins, as well as cob nuts, walnuts and Spanish nuts.

The wines were listed with a price list, there were two sorts of champagne available, sparkling moselle and hock, claret, port and sherry. Prices ranged from 5 shillings for a bottle of sherry to 8 shillings for a bottle of champagne. So a rather fine evening but not so fine in that you had to buy your own alcohol separately. 

The toast list number 14 starting with ‘The Queen, and the Craft, working down through the royal family and the gentry, finishing with the masonic charities, neighbouring lodges and finally at number 14 ‘All poor and distressed masons’. 

Among the balls and banquet cards I also have a tiny dance card that Janie must have used and it’s from a social evening held on the Wednesday of 25th of January 1893 for the Middlesbrough Music Society. It’s about the size of a modern business card that has then subsequently been folded in half — lengthways — on one side is listed all the music and on the other are the corresponding spaces to write down the names of dance partners.

There are 19 dances listed including Waltzes, quadrilles, polkas etc, and Janie has had her card filled for 11 of them. The handwritings are all different, so it would appear that the etiquette was that the gentleman in question would write his name or initials in the corresponding slot. For example she danced a quadrille and a waltz with someone called Jack, someone with the initials D.S. engaged her for a Waltz and then a scottish, and she danced a Waltz to the tune of Lady Linda with a Mr Simmons. The other names are pretty illegible and I assume that your husband didn’t have to write his name in your dance card. You might remember that Fred exhibited a fair amount of jealousy in the past concerning Janie dancing with other men, so it kind of a relief to see that Janie got to continue enjoy dancing and that Fred apparently was fine with it now they were married and it was socially acceptable. 

I had a little look at the fashions for evening dresses of the early 1890s and was relieved to see that the bustles and straight skirts were at last giving way to a softer silhouette. Necklines for evening wear were quite low, showing quite a lot of decolletage, sleeves were just on the edge of the shoulders, puffed and flared, but then gathered at the elbow, waists were still trim but the skirts now flowed softly from the hips into a gentle a-line and evening gowns often had a short train. Hair was worn up with softly curled fringe (or bangs), and the outfit would be completed with long white gloves and a fan. We know how much Janie was interest in fashion and exercising her creative talents in dressmaking, and I love that she got to have so many occasions in which to enjoy it. 

So the snapshot we have of Fred and Janie’s lives in the early 1890s is a mostly settled one, of prosperity, a happy couple with their children. Fred enjoying his rise both socially, and as the company accountant at North Eastern Steel. We can also perhaps infer that Janie is enjoying being a wife and mother, with enough financial and practical support to take some of the drudgery out of it, and she gets to go to balls and banquets on the arm of her loving and successful husband, enjoying a varied social life. I’m sure she’d have been enormously proud of Fred. I’m so happy that they got to build a lovely live together. 

Now I need you to be prepared, I’m so sorry to tell you that this wonderful time didn’t, couldn’t, last forever. Next time it’s going to be a difficult. You’ve probably picked up enough hints over the course of the five seasons to know that while Janie and Fred go their happy ever after, it wasn’t particularly long. Remember what I said about up to 90% of the population being infected with Tuberculosis at this time? Well, it was about to destroy all of Fred and Janie’s dreams.

[outro]
Thank you so much for listening to My Love Letter Time Machine. Would you consider showing the podcast some love by clicking on the ratings, leaving a review or sharing it with someone who you think might enjoy it. You can also find excerpts of Fred and Janie’s letters on instagram at my love letter time machine all one word and you can write to me at my love letter time machine at gmail dot com.

Until next time, take care.
© Ingrid Birchell Hughes 2023