Mix ups and muddles turn nasty in the 1890s
Jane Betsy spent the final decades of her life in a crowded terraced house in Stoke Newington. Her three surviving sisters lived out their days in St George's Road and Marine Parade, Great Yarmouth.
The close affectionate families of the Skinner brothers, James and John Pollard Skinner became estranged, split apart and even aggressively confrontational in the mid-1890s. Was Jane Betsy aware of any of this? The evidence I have, carefully kept by our branch of the family, is that she was not.
Letters show Jane Betsy's daughters and their husbands have agreed Harry had lost or spent the Skinner bequest set aside to top up Jane Betsy's annuity. I have no evidence Jane Betsy ever saw her only surviving son again when she moved from Norwich.
Alfred Neave and Sherwood William Page have become Trustees of James Pollard Skinners will. For Jane Betsy's own will made with Yarmouth Solicitors in February 1893, Alfred Neave will dispose of her remaining freeholds after her death. She has stipulated Edward Dennis Ballinger does not inherit if his wife, her daughter Rosa May dies. At the end of 1893, Rosa May does die. The evidence I have from the probate department of Somerset House is neither Emma Jane nor her mother were ever given the bad news.
They know cousin and nephew Stephen Skinner of Corporation Farm Thrigby has married Rebecca Fabb of nearby Runham in November the following year, 1894. That winter, trustee of Jane Betsy's late husband's will, Sherwood William Page, caught a chill, when attending an evening meeting, and died. He left everything to Louisa Bately, his second wife. Page's second marriage, in London, had been kept a secret.
Within months of Stephen and Rebecca's marriage, which took place on 24th November 1894, in Stoke Newington, the couple face raids at their home, Corporation farm, Thrigby.
Over several days in early September 1895, Stephen's younger brother, Arthur brings men, horses and carts, harvests some corn at Corporation farm and takes it away. Simulaneousely, Stephen and Rebecca are served with levies imposed by aggressive Norfolk authorities.
Why? Who has instigated it? The Allards had suffered something similar in 1873 at Moulton St Mary.
In these decades of agricultural decline, are the raids instigated by the trustees of the Bately bequests to Jane Betsy and her sisters? Is this what the London marriages, Sherwood William Page with Louisa Bately and Stephen Skinner to Rebecca Fabb are all about? Are the families involved attempting to ensure competent farmers will cultivate the land to maintain the expected annuities for the Bately sisters for the rest of their lives? Is this more difficult since the Skinners are no longer running the late Stephen Bately's farm at Tunstall?
The record I have of the aggression at Corporation farm in early September 1895, which carried on for several days, is in Stephen and Rebecca's letter to Emma Jane and Joe Joyce. The action taken is extreme. The under sheriff and bailiffs arrive at the farm and use bullying tactics to claim live-stock, furniture and produce from the farm. "The girls" his sisters, as Stephen puts it in his letter, has his brother Arthur working with them, who has been 'deceitful' against him and is taking the law into his own hands.
The Skinner freeholds are mixed up, either through negligence, or deliberately, with the Bately ones. Thrigby is not far from Clippesby, where the brothers, John Pollard and James Pollard were born. Runham, where Rebecca Fabb and her family come from, is walking distance from Thrigby. Burgh St Margaret, where Arthur Skinner is farming is in the area as well.
Until they die and the land freeholds are sold, Jane Betsy and her sisters are heiresses. In some ways Jane Betsy is like the eccentric Miss Flight in Bleak House, hoping for a judgement on a case which never ends and lines the pockets of the lawyers. The Skinner affairs are not resolved for years, if ever, by which time the family is estranged and nothing is left.
According to Stephen's 1895 letter, it is the lawyers who benefit from the raids. The Yarmouth solicitors will put a claim against his brother for the value of the crops he has raided. The Yarmouth solicitors also attempt to sort it out and call off the actions of the sheriff and his officers. As Stephen's letter states, by the time the high sheriff, under sheriff, sheriff's officer, two bailiffs, the part for the trustees and lawyers are all paid, 'they will get the oyster,' his family will get 'the shell.'
Jane Betsy's will drafted by the Yarmouth solicitors costs 10/6d (£70 in today's money.) After doing a couple of subtractions in pounds shillings and pence, I discovered, in 1887, the Norwich solicitors took £62.2s.4d from the Skinner trust fund left to Jane Betsy (£8,232) in today's money. I could have headed this up "one wedding and three funerals" At the end of 1893, Rosa May Ballinger died. At the end of 1894 Stephen Bately Skinner married Rebecca Fabb. Two days after their wedding Sherwood William Page died. In the summer of 1896, Stephen Bately Skinner died.
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