Jane Betsy's youngest daughter leaves Norfolk
It is under these circumstances I begin to speculate why the marriage was in London. Whether Rosa May had moved from Norwich as soon as she was 21 and if she met Edward Ballinger when staying with her sister in Gloucester, which is the most likely explanation.
Out of all Jane Betsy's daughters, Rosa May is the only one to marry a farmer. This farmer is not trying to make a farm in Norfolk pay the bills, but he has one in Gloucestershire near the Forest of Dean. In the later decades of the 19th century the livestock and dairy aspect of farming, which suited the damper climate found in the west of the British Isles, gave better returns than the cropping which was most suited to the dryer, flatter terrain in East Anglia.
The sampler above is a symbol of the changing options and roles of women in the 19th century. My sister has supplied the picture. The sampler was worked by Henrietta Louisa Skinner, known as Louisa in the family, when she was a 16-year-old girl growing up in Tunstall. It is indicative of a more leisured life-style than her sisters were to have. Louisa died at the age of 31 in Norwich.
By 1887 Emma Jane was looking after her young family in London and making meals for them and her lodgers perhaps, in Harry's words, "in a red hot hurry". Polly was working as a stationer with her husband Frank in Lowestoft. Laura found time, between looking after her young family and helping Job with the ironmongers in Gloucester, to write to her sister in London.
The events of 1887/1888, including Rosa May's wedding are significant and follow fast on each other. In September John Pollard Skinner and Eliza Charlotte's oldest son James Thomas died in Yarmouth at the age of 42. Thanks to research by some friends, I have found out he had taken over the farm at Tunstall in 1876 with the help of his sisters Eleanor and Alice Skinner. In view of his death a few years later and the fact there were only three of them living there, it does suggest the farmhouse at this time was neither a healthy nor particularly habitable place.
In November 1887 Jane Betsy received a letter from the Norwich solicitors to say her daughter's calculations about the shortfall in her annuity is wrong according to the accounts of her son. It is followed up by a summons dated the 12th December 1887 for Jane Betsy and Rosa May to appear in chancery for the case, about the lump sum put aside to pay the top up of her annuity. It was to be heard on 12th January 1888. Rosa May married and got out of it. My guess is one or both of the plaintiffs in the summons, Sherwood William Page or Alfred Neave, sorted the case out for Jane Betsy, so she didn't have to appear in court. One of them, Alfred Neave, probably made sure her annuity was paid in full for the rest of her life. As far as I can make out Harry, who had previously been topping up his mother's annuity, was still farming at Burlingham St Edmund at this time as his youngest daughter Winnie Annie was born there. Sadly his daughter Mildred died in March 1888.
Rosa May had three children, the oldest Kathleen Gertrude worked in retail and married. She and her husband William Hancock, who previously worked for the Great Western Railway, emigrated to America.
Rosa May's oldest son Fitz Albert became a successful ironmonger in the Liverpool area. He volunteered for the naval reserves in WWl, and survived to continue a successful trade.
MacArthur cost Rosa May her life. She died after he was born in December 1893. MacArthur also volunteered for the naval reserves, but was killed in action on 21st August 1918. He is buried at Achiet-le-Grand Communal Cemetery, Pas-de-Calais, France.
The widower Edward Ballinger married again, Alice Skinner, who had helped her brother James Thomas at the Tunstall farm. She moved to live with FitzAlbert and his family to Litherland, Liverpool.
I have the idea Laura and Job Sharpe are running a sort of marriage bureau from their ironmongery in Gloucester. There is Rosa May's marriage to Gloucestershire farmer, Edward Ballinger, Alice Skinner's marriage to him when he becomes a widower and then Eleanor Skinner's marriage to Job Sharpe's younger brother Samuel, who works as a greengrocer in Great Yarmouth.
Even in 1887 there were few options apart from marriage or living with family for women, although legislation had made it possible for women to own property and run a business by then.
I have a picture of the cousins, Laura Sharpe (she's on the left) and Alice Skinner taken by my aunt Nancy which I will put below.
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