Embsay with Eastby History – Alice, The Weary Housewife & Mother

By Admin on April 9, 2023

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Alice, the weary housewife and mother.

At the end of a long monotonous day, dealing with household chores, in 1921 – in the days before we all had washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and gas or electric ovens – many a housewife must have felt as though all she wanted to do was curl up in a nice cosy bed and sleep. Or perhaps enjoy a night out with friends. But if you were a 53-year-old widow, having to cook and wash and clean up after 4 grown-up children, all returning home from a hard, exhausting, and no doubt equally monotonous day, working in the cotton mills – as well as a 9-year-old schoolgirl – you may well have felt as Alice Tillotson of Embsay did on the 21^st of June 1921.

Alice had been born in 1868 in Bradford, the daughter of a former farm servant and gardener, Jeffrey Wellock, who had worked his way up to become a farmer on his own farm in Embsay. His wife was a Skipton local, Mary Jane (née Elsworth), also known as Polly. She was a shoemaker’s daughter, and former domestic servant.

Alice had been the 3^rd of 8 children, most of whom had worked in the cotton mills after leaving school, apart from one sister who died aged two, and the youngest boy, Jeffrey Lodge Wellock, who joined his father on the farm. This family’s story was fairly typical of the aspirational late-Victorian working classes. As their family grew, Jeffrey and Mary had travelled around looking for better employment opportunities – from Skipton to Cracoe, and Bradford, before settling back into Embsay, where their youngest child was born.

As a young woman in her early 20s, Alice had briefly experienced a fairly independent life – she and her older sister, Annie, were self-employed dressmakers in Colne, living with their brother Tom, who worked as an agricultural labourer.

Alice married, in 1892, to William Tillotson, a farmer from Colne, and lived several years in Lancashire where she had six children, although she continued to carry on working as a dressmaker for several years. Although all six children were born in Colne, she brought each one back to Embsay, where her parents lived, to be baptised.

Meanwhile, her siblings went their own ways: Annie, the eldest sister, married a cloth salesman and went to live in Bradford; Tom married and emigrated to New Zealand; Mary married a weaving overlooker, and lived in Bradford for a while, returning to Embsay after the First World War with her husband (now a mill manager), to build a new substantial house on Shires Lane (which is now the Vicarage); Agnes married a grocer’s carter, and stayed in Embsay until she died in 1942; Isabella married a mill overlooker, and lived in Skipton and Gargrave; The youngest, Jeffrey Lodge Wellock, worked on his father’s farm and eventually ran his own farm in Eastby.

But in 1916 Alice’s husband, who was 15 years her senior, died within weeks of the death of Alice’s mother in Embsay. So, now widowed, Alice returned home with her children, presumably to be close to her father, who died four years later, in 1920. It also meant she was closer to three of her siblings who lived nearby – Mary Peacock, Jeffrey Lodge Wellock, and Agnes Nixon.

In 1921, five of Alice’s six children were still living at home: 26-year-old Winifred, 23-year-old Wilfrid, 20-year-old Edgar, 17-year-old Albert, and 9-year-old Mary, who was still attending school.

On the 19^th June 1921, Alice filled out her census form. No doubt, she did this at the end of yet another wearisome day, perhaps after everyone else had gone to bed. Perhaps she was feeling particularly tired that day, or had been discussing her woes with her young visitor (presumably staying overnight), Elsie Binns, a 26-year-old cotton mill worker from Kelbrook, the girlfriend (and later the wife) of Alice’s son, Wilfred. Or perhaps, the addition of a guest in her little four-roomed house in Centenary Place, off Pasture Road, was the straw that broke the camel’s back. We could speculate that she was suffering a longer-term depression or general dissatisfaction with her life. Perhaps she yearned for the days she was her own woman, earning her own income as a dressmaker. Or maybe she had just had a bad day. But whatever the cause, there is no doubt many women would relate to what she boldly wrote on the census form as her occupation: “Domestic Slave”. The census enumerator disapproved – he crossed out her entry in the Occupation section and replaced it with the more formal description of “Home Duties”.