On the front page of the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, Monday 26 November 1860, between a notice about a Full Dress Assembly at the Bath Saloon and an invitation from the new landlord of the Newcastle Arms comes this notice from my great, great, great uncle Joseph Truelove that from that date forward he’s not going to be responsible for his wife Mary’s debts.
Joseph had a colourful life. He had married Mary Tinker twelve years earlier on Christmas Eve 1848 at Sheffield Parish Church. By 1860 they were both in their early thirties and evidently the marriage wasn’t going smoothly. Unfortunately things were going to get worse.
I don’t have a photograph of Joseph and Mary but here’s his elder brother, William, born 1825, my great, great grandfather.
A ‘Curious Charge of Assault’
By 1868 Joseph was away in America and Mary was, according to the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, living with George Baxter, a beerhouse keeper in Attercliffe. Bringing a charge of assault against him, Mary claimed that Baxter had assaulted her and had threatened to shoot her. A servant girl from the beerhouse and a woman who Mary called as a witness denied that George had ever used violence towards Mary.
As Mary had called the unnamed woman as a witness, presumably to back up her claims, I can’t help wondering if someone had persuaded the woman to change her story.
Attempted Murder
By Wednesday 26 October 1870 we know that Mary was back with Joseph in Allen Street near the centre of Sheffield. They were both ‘the worse for liquor’ and after a quarrel she attempted to murder him, stabbing him in the neck with a pair of decorator’s scissors. Pleading guilty, she was sentenced to penal servitude for life.
A condition of her release on 19 January 1881 was that she should remain in Lincolnshire but she immediately started to make her way back to Sheffield.
George had remarried, again to a woman called Mary. I’d love to know what happened next.
Joseph died in 1883, the same year that his new wife Mary gave birth to a daughter.
I’m hoping that some day I might come across a photograph of Joseph’s first wife, Mary Tinker, amongst her prison records.