william thomas mallandaine + margaret wood
William was born in Chatham, Kent in the early months of 1867 but within two years, his family left England for the Bahamas where they lived for the next 3 ½ years while William’s father served in the Army Hospital Corps. Not long after their arrival in Nassau, William’s mother died of Yellow Fever and several months later, his father married again and went on to have five more children with his third wife. The family returned to England about 1872 settling first in Hampshire before returning to Kent and finally when William was 9, settling permanently in Salford.
The family settled on Bigland Street near the docks in the Ordsall area of Salford and by the time he was fourteen, William had left school and was selling newspapers on the street. He was 17 years old when his father died in 1884 and 22 when he married Margaret Wood at St Bartholomew in Salford on 26 December 1889. His brother Walter and sister Mary both appeared as witnesses.
When they married, William was working as a Clerk and living at 21 Derby Street in Manchester while Margaret was living at the opposite end of the city at 2 Cavendish Street in Hulme. She was born on Branson Street in the Miles Platting area of Manchester on 22 December 1866 to George and Sarah Shaw. The family later moved to Newton Heath where George Shaw worked in one of the cotton mills, first as a Spinner and then as a Watchman, and when Margaret left school, she also started working in the cotton mill as a Jack Tenter. The Jack Frame was a machine that wound the cotton onto bobbins and the Tenter’s job was to monitor the machine. Margaret was still working as a Jack Tenter when she married.
In 1891, William and Margaret were living in a four room house at 68 Sanderson Street in Monsall just north of Miles Platting and William was working as a Mattrass Maker. Five months later, on 21 September, Margaret gave birth to their first child, Lily. She was baptised at St Luke in Miles Platting on 22 February 1893 and at the time, they were living at 30 Sycamore Street near Philips Park Cemetery and William was working as an Upholsterer.
George was born on 22 May 1893 and baptised at St Luke on 7 June 1893. The family had moved from Sycamore Street to nearby Lime Street, at number 74 Lime Street. At the time, Miles Platting was a busy factory district filled with densely packed terraced housing for its many workers and their families.
Sarah was born on 28 July 1894 and one month later, she too was baptised at St Luke. Margaret was born on 20 December 1895 and baptised on January 22 at St Luke but she died three weeks later and was buried at Philips Park Cemetery.
They lost a second child when William Victor, who was born on 13 June 1897, died at 4 months of age; he too was buried at Philips Park Cemetery on 30 October 1897. Two years later, their six year old son George died and was buried on 31 August at Philips Park but he was not buried in the same grave as either of his siblings; all three were buried in separate public graves in different parts of the cemetery.
In 1901, Margaret and her eldest daughter, 9 year old Lily were living at 37, Aked Street in south Manchester where she worked as a General Servant for the Whitehead family while William was a patient at the Salford Union Infirmary. He was described as a Pauper with a debility of paralysis but there are no other details as to the cause or whether it was an accident or illness. Their only other surviving child, 7 year old Sarah, has not been found in the census and does not appear in the records again until her marriage in 1919. At present, there is no information on who was caring for her or if she ever returned to live with her mother.
Several months after the census was taken, William died, aged only 34 years, and was buried at Philips Park Cemetery on 23 July 1901. One year after William’s death, Margaret married John Prestage who was twelve years her junior. They had four children between 1903 and 1907 but only one, Ellen who was born on 30 June 1904, survived infancy. John worked as a Fireman in Miles Platting and later in Preston but by 1911, they were back in Miles Platting and living at 28 Sandal Street and John was working as Boiler Flue Cleaner. Also in the household was their 6 year old daughter Ellen, also known as Nellie, Margaret’s father, George Wood, and her sister, Ellen, and her two children — in all, seven people occupied just three rooms.
Margaret’s 20 year old daughter Lily was employed as a Domestic Servant for Harry Duncan Locket, the vicar of Weaste, and his wife and young daughter at The Vicarage at St Luke’s in Seedley. But once again, there is no record of her youngest daughter Sarah.
John Prestage enlisted in the army and served in France with the 2nd/5th Batallion of the Royal Lancashire Fusiliers but like so many other young men, he did not survive the war. He was killed in action at the Battle of the Somme on 20 November 1917 and is one of the 72 000 missing British and Commonwealth soldiers memorialized at the Thiepval Memorial between Arras and Amien.
In 1919, Margaret’s daughter Sarah reappears in the public records when she married William Westby in Prestwich. As she married under the name Mallandaine, she wasn’t adopted out to another family so she must have been cared for by relatives or placed in care with the local authority. Sarah and William had one son, Walter Mallandaine, on 28 July 1920.
Ellen Prestage married John Winney in Manchester in 1926 and they had one son. Two years later, Margaret died in north Manchester.
In 1939, Lily was living in Hertingfordbury just outside Hertford and was once again working for a clergyman, Roland Smith, the vicar of St Mary’s. Her younger sister Sarah and her husband were living at 9 Royalthorn Avenue in Manchester where William worked as an Engineer’s Storeman and Sarah as a School Caretaker. Sarah died in Manchester in 1959 and William in Blackpool in 1970. Their son Walter died in Cheshire in 2001.
Ellen Prestage died in Manchester in 1979; she was predeceased by her husband John in 1975. Lily died in Blackpool in 1981.