FRAIL HEARTS - THE ATKIN FAMILY

My great-aunt, Annie Hotchin, was born in Humberston(e) in 1886, the second eldest of the eight daughters of Christopher Hotchin, a shepherd, and his wife Mary, nee Bee. All eight daughters grew up, married and lived to pensionable age. All, except one…

When Annie was around 20 years old, she gave birth to her first child Mildred, born on 23^rd October 1906. She was unmarried at the time, but less than a year later, she tied the knot with William Robert Andrew Atkin on 1^st October 1907, at St Andrew’s Church, in Freeman Street, Grimsby. At that time, 25 year old William (pictured left, with Annie), a window cleaner, was living at 4 Fraser Street in Grimsby, whilst Annie’s address on the marriage record is given as 133 Albert Street, just down the road from William’s parents, William Atkin Sr and Harriet Jane (nee McUrich), who by then had been at number 111 for several years.

Annie must have been more than a few months pregnant at the time because son William Christopher entered the world on 16 February 1908. Regrettably he departed it again 3 days later, cause of death being given as “inanition”, or starvation, presumably because Annie was unable to feed her baby.

In the early years of their marriage, the Atkin family moved frequently but not far, from 133 Albert Street, to 36 Bridge Street South, to 130 Church Street and the back of 66 Cleethorpe Road, before settling for a number of years at 123 Park Street in Cleethorpes. In the meantime, daughter Kathleen Mary had been born on 12^th March 1909, with Harold McUrich following her fifteen months later on 15^th June 1910, both putting in their first appearance at Church Street.

The infant mortality rate in the early 1900s was high, roughly 1 in 10, so William and Annie might have realistically expected to suffer the loss of at least one child, but during the second decade of the twentieth century they were to endure far more than their fair share of suffering.

In their time at Park Street, they lost five children, beginning with Harold, at the age of 10 months, on 22^nd April 1911. Three months later, an unnamed female child was born, only to die the following day and this pattern was continued for several years, with a male child surviving for only 2 days in September 1912, another boy drawing breath for just half an hour in November 1913 and son Leslie managing to live for a whole 2 months before joining his lost siblings in April 1915. All of the Park Street children were buried in Cleethorpes Cemetery.

The following year, there was finally some respite from what must have seemed an incessant cycle of birth and death. Daughter Doris Irene Barclay was born…and lived! The photograph, left, taken in 1916, shows William, Kathleen, Mildred and Annie, who is proudly holding forth Doris, the happy ending to half a decade of maternity misery.

The family portrait also shows that William was a member of the St John’s Ambulance, but on 24^th March 1917, he was enrolled as a Trimmer in the Royal Naval Reserve (Trawler Section) and served on several vessels, including the Pekin, Colleen and War Duke, but working conditions for a trimmer, responsible for all aspects of coal handling, would have been poor and he was invalided out of the service a week before the end of the First World War. His service record shows that he was suffering from Mitral Incompetence and Myocardial degeneration, whilst pension records mention Neurasthenia, which was characterized by physical and mental exhaustion and is similar to chronic fatigue syndrome. Little surprise if a man used to outdoor work cleaning windows found that the physical demands and excessively hot and dusty conditions took their toll on his health. For a few years in the post-war period he worked as a china dealer and fruiterer, perhaps due to his disability, but William subsequently went back to his old trade as a window cleaner.

Although William’s health suffered during the war, his ability to father children showed no sign of diminishing, although sadly they continued to have the unfortunate habit of dying. In March 1917, a child of unspecified gender was lost to Jaundice at 3 days old, whilst a boy born prematurely in July 1918 clung to life for 2 days before departing this mortal coil. These last two deaths occurred at 42 Tasburgh Street but, in 1919, the family moved to 161 Hainton Avenue. Perhaps a new home and a new decade would also bring new hope for them?

If only. Sadly, the arrival of the roaring twenties brought what must surely have been the darkest few days of William and Annie’s married life. Although eight children had been lost, most of them before their parents could even begin to know them, at least Mildred, Kathleen and now little Doris seemed to have bucked the trend of dying. Mildred was now a teenager and a twelfth child was on the way.

Norman was duly born on 18^th May 1920, but any joy was short-lived, as the next day Mildred (fourth picture above, with sister Kathleen) died, followed 2 days later by the prematurely born Norman. According to the Scartho Road Cemetery records, Mildred died of heart disease. Did the family know that she was on borrowed time, or was she the victim of an undetected heart defect? Had she inherited her father’s myocardial frailty? Was Norman born too soon as a result of his mother’s grief at the knowledge of Mildred’s impending death? Whatever the truth of the matter, Mildred and Norman were buried three days apart in the same grave at Scartho Road Cemetery.

Although 13 is often regarded as an unlucky number – and it proved to be for Mildred – this was not the case for baby William Kenneth Barclay, born on 14^th July 1921, who happily joined the small band of Atkin survivors.

Sister Joyce, born in January 1923, wasn’t so fortunate, convulsions seeing her off at 2 days old, thus completing the heavenly Atkin family football team. Two years later, there must have been fears that child number 15 would take its place on the subs’ bench, but Norma Mildred Barclay clearly wasn’t interested in ethereal ball games and chose life instead.

Norma was the last Atkin child to be born. Surely, after so much loss, it was now time for William and Annie to enjoy watching their surviving children grow to adulthood? Sadly, this was not to be the fate of the family whose ill fortune was such that they must have run over, not just one black cat, but a whole litter of them and on Monday 5^th November 1928 there would have been no bonfire or fireworks in the Atkin household, for this was the day that Annie died.

Although a death certificate confirmed the cause of her demise, an educated guess might have brought us to the same conclusion. After fifteen pregnancies and births, Annie not surprisingly succumbed to Cancer of the Uterus and Haemorrhage at the age of 42, leaving William as sole parent to Kathleen (19), Doris (12), William (7) and Norma (3). One would imagine that Kathleen stepped into her mother’s shoes in terms of household duties, with Doris helping out, or perhaps she went out to work to supplement her father William’s income from his window cleaning business.

Bad enough then that the children had to adjust to the loss of their mother, but a little over 18 months later, they were having to get used to the death of their father as well. The circumstances of William’s death were unfortunate to say the least; but given the bad luck that had dogged his family for so many years, perhaps he should have known better than to tempt fate. A newspaper report describes the accident that led to William’s death:

“While trying to board a trolley bus in motion in Freeman Street, Grimsby, William Robert Atkin, window cleaner, of 161 Hainton Avenue, met with a nasty accident. He had run across the front of the bus just as it was starting off from a stopping place and though he succeeded in catching hold of the handrail, he failed to spring on to the footboard and was dragged several yards before he finally fell with his left arm beneath a wheel. His arm was badly crushed and he was detained in hospital.”

William died on 24^th May 1930, a week after the report was printed in the paper, and he was laid to rest with Annie at Scartho Road Cemetery 4 days later. The inquest report warned of the dangers of attempting to board a moving vehicle, but Wiliam’s fault was more one of attempting to push his luck when he had none to push in the first place.

So, what became of the orphaned Atkin children? Well, by the time her father died, Kathleen was already a married woman, William having given her away on 5^th April 1930 at Grimsby Register Office to Frederick White, son of deceased foreman baker John Samuel White, and described on the marriage certificate as a 26 year old farmer, living at 79 Burke Street in Scunthorpe. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find out what happened to Kathleen after that.

William Kenneth Barclay Atkin survived not only childhood and a milk delivery round in Grimsby as a teenager whilst lodging with the Baldwin family in Wintringham Road, but also serving with the Royal Artillery in World War Two. In 1944, he married Winifred Woodland at Woolwich and went on to have four children, remaining in the London area. He passed away on 16^th June 1979 and although dying in your late fifties may seem premature, it was a ripe old age compared to most of his brothers and sisters.

As for Doris, she married Joseph Michael Harris, a builder’s labourer and son of deceased ship’s fireman Joseph Harris, at Marylebone Register Office on 27^th May 1939. Brother William was a witness at the ceremony. Later that year the couple were living at 100 Acklam Road in Kensington, with Joseph described as a “heavy worker”. As with her sister, the curse of a relatively common surname means that I have so far been unable to trace her beyond the outbreak of World War Two.

Lastly, what of Norma? Sadly, records show that she died on 12^th November 1946 at the age of 21 and her death certificate reveals that her life ended at 20 St Peter’s Road, Bourne, which was the former workhouse and a Mental Hospital at the time Norma found herself there. Three causes of death are given, namely heart failure, acute mania and idiocy. The term idiocy suggests the possibility that Norma may have born with Down Syndrome, which was once called Mongoloid Idiocy, whilst congenital heart defects are common in people with this condition. 21 would have been a good age for a person with Down Syndrome to reach in the 1940s, given that many were confined to mental hospitals and their associated medical conditions not treated. Under rank or profession on the death certificate, as well as “spinster”, “no occupation” and “daughter of ______ Atkin (deceased)”, 161 Hainton Avenue is listed as her home address, which would suggest that she had been institutionalized for some years, as the family ceased to live there after William’s unfortunate encounter with the trolley bus.

The idea that any parent could lose eleven children in infancy seems unfathomable today in a world where the prospect of losing one child is unbearable. Add to the equation the loss of both parents within a year and a half and four orphaned children, one of whom ended her days in an asylum, and it reads more like a script of a particularly bleak television drama that some would think far-fetched. Yet, this was reality for the Atkin family, an ordinary family rendered extraordinary by tragedy.

Rachel Branson

June 2019