During the 19th century, countless Irish people fleeing hardship and famine were forced to make their home amid the back alleys of London’s slums. Desperately poor, they lodged in overcrowded, dilapidated and frequently filthy dwellings with little to live off but hope.
This is the world that Helen McKee’s ancestors faced when they emigrated from Ireland in the 1830s. Helen lives in Egham in Surrey, and teaches medieval languages at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has been interested in family history since she was a teenager.
“I was delighted when Findmypast released a tranche of Roman Catholic records from the Diocese of Westminster in 2017,” she explains. “These revealed the exact area where my 3x great grandfather Patrick Curtain was born, which was Castleisland in County Kerry.
“In 1840, Patrick married Ellen Latch at the Roman Catholic Sardinian Embassy Chapel in Lincoln’s Inn. They had four surviving children including my great great grandfather, Bartholomew. I’ve had a wonderful time researching their lives. I’ve known about Bartholomew for as long as I can remember, because we have a photo of him that was passed down from my grandmother. He had such an unusual name.
“Granny had written on the back that Bartholomew was Irish and had emigrated to Canada. However, when I began researching his life I realised that both these assumptions were wrong. He was born in June 1849 in Holborn, and was baptised at the Sardinian Chapel.
“Patrick worked as a general labourer, and the family grew up in horrible poverty. Sadly, their eldest son John died of water on the brain when he was three.
“Bartholomew must have had some education, because he could sign his name on documents. After leaving school he became a cigar-maker, which was the one constant in his life.”
Cigar-making was a flourishing industry in Victorian London. It was a skilled job that was done by hand before mechanisation, and apprentices would have to train for two to three years before they could become proficient.
“Workers sat in rows at long tables, rolling loose ‘filler’ tobacco into a binder leaf, then adding an outer wrapper and neatening the edges. They were paid by the number of cigars they produced.”
Bartholomew married Helen Tinnock in 1870, and they had seven children. Infant mortality rates were high in London in that era, and the family must have been grief-stricken when three of their daughters died in infancy.
The family must have been grief-stricken when three of their daughters died in infancy
The last bereavement came in 1887 when their daughter Catherine passed away after suffering from diarrhoea and convulsions. Perhaps this sadness influenced the radical decision that Bartholomew took in 1889.
“All of a sudden, he emigrated to the USA – rather than Canada – leaving Helen and the rest of the family behind. He was almost 40, which seems late in the day to venture overseas. I don’t know what was going on in Bartholomew’s marriage at that time. Before he emigrated, they moved from Holborn to Nottingham which I assume was work-related.”
By the 1880s, it was becoming harder for men to find work in factories because it was cheaper to employ women. Often a man would emigrate first, then his wife and children would follow. That wasn’t the case with Helen, who stayed on in Nottinghamshire working as a charwoman.
Bartholomew worked in cigar-making factories in Virginia and Pennsylvania. He also crossed the border to Canada several times, which Helen found listed on Ancestry.
“The next big reveal was his elopement. During the spring 2020 lockdown, I took out a subscription to Newspapers.com, which includes US publications. I entered his name and an old newspaper article appeared from an 1895 edition of a Pennsylvania newspaper called The Allentown Leader.
“The article said that ‘the little village of Tylersport, Bucks County, is all agog over the elopement of Miss Gussie Bandle, a well-known young woman of that neighborhood, and Bartholomew Curtain, a cigarmaker. The pair disappeared from Tylersport last Tuesday morning, and were seen to board a train at Telford. Nothing is known of their whereabouts. Miss Bandle is a bright young lady of 16. Curtain is 40 years of age.’
“In fact Bartholomew would have been 46, and I was appalled to read that he had eloped with a teenager. Gussie gave birth to a daughter six months later in December 1895. You can guess who the father was. The relationship with Bartholomew didn’t last, and Gussie and the baby returned to live with her parents in Tylersport.”
"I was appalled to read that he had eloped with a teenager"
Bartholomew lived in the USA for over 30 years. “He seems to have had problems with alcohol, because newspaper reports listed him as being arrested for drunkenness.”
He returned to Britain in 1919, a sick and elderly man. A year later he was admitted to the St Pancras Workhouse, where he died in 1922.
“I find Bartholomew a fascinating character. I’m sure that he worked hard, and I feel sympathy for the struggles he endured, but the elopement challenged my opinion of him.”
Bartholomew's siblings
Bartholomew’s brother Thomas, who was born in 1843, also crossed paths with the law, and he became a repeat offender.
“Criminal registers on Ancestry revealed that most of Thomas’ convictions were for petty theft. At the age of 18 he stole a pair of boots, and received a six-month gaol sentence. He also stole fabric, skirts, jackets, a ham and tea.”
Thomas married Mary Ann Brown in 1869, and they had two children. “It’s sad because Thomas’ son Patrick died aged 12 weeks while he was in prison for larceny. They must have been desperately poor, because when Thomas wasn’t in prison he also entered the workhouse.”
Thomas’ actions took a darker turn as he got older. “I was amazed to find an illustration of one of his crimes in an 1899 issue of the Illustrated Police Budget on Findmypast. He was sentenced to 12 months’ hard labour for maliciously wounding a barmaid whom he threw a glass at.”
Thomas’ brother Daniel followed a very different path. In 1858, he enlisted for 10 years’ continuous service in the Royal Navy and was based on vessels in Woolwich and Malta.
After his service, he became a constable in the meat-market police at Smithfield. “Daniel also appears in old newspapers, but for better reasons. In 1876, he apprehended a woman who stole a brisket of beef at the New Meat Market. He also arrested a man who stole four butchers’ smocks.
“Daniel must have been embarrassed by Thomas’ crimes. This may be why he changed his surname from Curtain to Curtian on official documents in the 1870s.”
Daniel’s first wife Frances Stanton died in 1882. He then married 20-year-old Maria Cribbett when he was aged 45.
“A fascinating story emerged when I began to research them. Maria and Daniel were married for 13 years before their son Daniel Patrick was born in 1898.
“In the 1901 census, the family was living together in Seething Lane, near the Tower of London. However, six weeks later, Maria was an inmate of the City of London Union Workhouse. What had happened? Did she leave Daniel or was she kicked out?
“I’ll probably never solve this mystery, because there are no descendants on that line. Daniel Curtian senior died in 1902, and there was no mention of Maria in his will. Young Daniel Patrick was brought up in a children’s home and died in Flanders, Belgium, during the First World War.”
"Young Daniel Patrick was brought up in a children’s home and died in Flanders, Belgium, during the First World War"
Bartholomew, Thomas and Daniel had a sister Ellen, who also had a remarkable life story. “In 1874 she gave birth to an illegitimate daughter, who was also called Ellen. Sadly, she died of convulsions in Clerkenwell Workhouse when she was two years old. Following this tragedy, Ellen entered the Convent of the Good Shepherd in Hammersmith, which was a ‘refuge for penitent fallen women’. She took the religious name ‘Petronella’, and lived there for five years.”
After the convent, Ellen’s life became chaotic. She stayed with Daniel in Seething Lane, then was homeless. She entered Homerton Workhouse, and died of cancer in 1894 at the age of 48.
Despite the tragedies, Helen has found it a positive experience to research the Curtains. “Paying them the respect of finding out about their lives has been so satisfying. That’s the magic of genealogy. These people have almost been forgotten, but I’m keeping their memory alive.”