Timothy Brettle - 8

Timothy Brettell – 8

On the marriage certificate of Timothy Brettell to Lucy Shilvock, Timothy’s father’s name is absent and the name Brettell was taken from his mother Maria Brettell.   Timothy was born in 1846, in Mincing Lane Rowley, when his mother Maria was only 16, three years before she married Thomas Cooper.   No record of Timothy’s birth can be found in either civil or parish records: this was a time when civil registration of births was available but not compulsory.  Although he is referred to as Timothy Cooper in early census returns when a child, he appears as Timothy Brettell (and later Timothy Brettle) in later returns when he was an adult and presumably able to decide how his name was recorded: possibly when older Timothy knew that Thomas Cooper was not his real father and chose to be called Brettell after his mother, Maria.  Illegitimate births were about 7% of the total in the 1840s and about 30% of women were pregnant when they married so Timothy’s beginnings would not have been so out of the ordinary.

Thomas Cooper died in 1850 aged 23 in  Allahabad Bengal India where he was a private in HM 32nd regiment and so in the 1851 census 5 year old Timothy found himself with his mother as Timothy Cooper in the household of Nancy Tromans, his maternal grandmother: there were 11 people in the household altogether, 3 female nail makers, 1 male and 1 female chain maker, 1 coalminer and 5 young children.  By 1861 grandmother Nancy Tromans had died but Timothy was at the same address with Josiah Brettle, the younger brother of Maria, the head of the household.  Timothy, aged 14 was listed as a coal miner. In 1865 Timothy, now calling himself Timothy Brettell, married Lucy Shilvock, he was 19 and she 20.  By 1871 they were living at 77 Cockshed Lane Blackheath.  Interestingly at 81 Cockshed Lane was a Benjamin Brettle with his wife Selina, I suspect that this Benjamin may have been Timothy’s uncle i.e. Maria Brettell’s brother.  By 1881 Timothy and Lucy had moved a short distance from Cockshed Lane to Olive Lane and had two children, Mary Ann and Edward, three other children, Anna, Timothy Jnr. and Benjamin having died before their first birthdays. 1891 saw the family, joined by younger brother Arthur, at 14 Short St. which is in the centre of Blackheath.  Timothy is listed as Brettell in the 1881 census but Brettle in the 1891 and 1901 censuses which is an example of how the Brettle and Brettell names my interchange. 

By 1901 Timothy with his wife and children were now living at Long Lane which is close to their previous homes in Cockshed Lane, Olive Lane and Short Street. Throughout his life Timothy was recorded on census records variously as a collier, miner or coal hewer, he died in 1906 aged 59.  The image below shows the nearby colliery at Haden Hill where he may well have worked.  If not this particular colliery it would have been at one of the very many similar coal mines in the area.                        

All in all Timothy appears to have had a childhood which would be called “troubled” by current day standards, but not perhaps by Victorian working class standards; this was followed by a life of hard work down the pit.  He and Lucy had a family of six but sadly three died in infancy, again not that uncommon at the time.