Sarah Jane Gillyon (nee Roden) Sarah Jane was born in Tindall Lane Beverley on 6^th August 1851, the daughter of an Irish Immigrant and a local girl. At the age of 18 she was living in Paragon Street in Hull when, on 23 July 1870, she married Henry Park Gillyon, also born in Tindall Lane Beverley on 8^th February 1851 and also living in Paragon Street in Hull. They must have known each other all their lives, gone to school together. At the time of the marriage Sarah Jane was about 5-6 months pregnant. Eight months later during the 1870 census Henry Park and Sarah Jane were back in Beverley with their 5 month old daughter Jane. By the time their second child was born they had moved to Grovehill just east of Beverley. For a time Sarah Jane’s younger brothers, William and George, boarded with them there. In total Henry and Sarah had nine children, including Sarah who died in February 1882 aged 7 months. On 2^nd October 1887 Henry Park died of Hepatitis aged 36. Presumably this is when Sarah Jane and the children moved from Grovehill to Dyer Lane in the centre of Beverley. Perhaps they had been living in a workers cottage that they were no longer entitled to or perhaps the

rent was too expensive for a widow with 8 children to feed. In those days the earning potential of a widow was very low and welfare consisted of the workhouse or the goodwill of charities. Although Sarah Jane worked in a variety of menial jobs (sick nurse in 1891, charwoman in 1894) it evidently wasn’t enough to provide for herself and the children. In 1889 she admitted the twin boys, Thomas and Henry, to Hull Seaman’s and General Orphan Asylum on Spring Bank. She may even have been ‘persuaded’ towards this painful decision by any charitable organisations she was reliant on. In 1894 Sarah Jane gave birth to Albert in Dyer Lane and must have moved to Hull shortly afterwards. The move to Hull may have been prompted by Albert’s illegitimacy. In a new place she could say her husband had just died and no-one would know, and she was familiar with Hull. Or would she have moved there anyway, the twins may still have been in Hull, and her two eldest girls had married and were living there. It would have been a way of re-uniting the family. Following her death from pleurisy and bronchitis in Hull on 21^st May 1897 in her daughter Jane’s home Sarah Jane was interred with her husband in the grounds of St Nicholas church in Beverley.

What don’t I know?

· When exactly did she move to Hull and where did she live. With one of her children?

· Who looked after Mary Jane, William and Isabella after Sarah Jane died?

Tindall Lane, from Wednesday Market Place (left) and looking to Wednesday Market place (right), 2007		Dyer Lane looking towards Saturday Market Place, 2006

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