This post was prompted by the comment from @CaptainMyCaptain
"Love it! I wonder what that child went on to do in life."
A quick recap:
In the 1911 Census, the Rigby family of Birkenhead had two children and a maid. Mr Rigby ran a decorating and plumbing business. The family cat was then added by another person (I suspect it was the daughter):
Name: Tobit Crackitt
Relation to head: Tom Cat
Marital Status: Married
No of children: 16
Occupation: Mouse Catcher Soloist & Thief
Birthplace: Birkenhead
Nationality: Cheshire Cat [I think that somebody may have been reading Alice in Wonderland]
Infirmity: Speechless.
Now, of course, no one can say for sure who actually wrote that. I think it unlikely that the live-in maid would have written that or, at least, not on her own initiative.
I think that it was very likely the daughter, Margery, rather than her brother Harold who was then an apprentice wireman (a Post Office employee maintaining the telegraph wires).
I also believe it was her who added “sufferagette” as the occupation for her aunt and the maid. I think it must have been quite an interesting household to live in at that time.
So, what became of Margery?
Margery was born in April 1899 and by the time of the 1901 census her mother was still alive and they were living in the same house.
It is a three storey end of terrace. Just have a look at the house (google street map image below), that had two adults and two children as a family, a brother in law and a domestic servant all living there in that one house.
When people hear the term “domestic service” they often think of something like “Downton Abbey”. But, for most girls and young women, this was much more the reality of being a domestic servant; a single woman working in a relatively modest household.
Her mother died in Q1 (Jan to March) 1909 at the age of 40 a short time before Margery was 10. Then, a few months later, she is reported as having received a First-Class Pass in the primary section of a music exam.
It was reported by The Birkenhead News on 11 Aug 1909:
College of Music
Higher and Local Examination Results
The list has been issued of candidates who were successful in gaining professional diplomas and local certificates at the examinations recently held at the Philharmonic Hall in connection with the London College of Music (Liverpool Centre)
[…]
The following are amongst the results, teachers names being given in parenthesis:
and then under the Primary Section it says:
First Class Pass – Margery Rigby (Miss S Cole, ALCM, Birkenhead)
[ALCM stands for Associate of the London College of Music]
So, in a house that was quite full of people anyway, Margery practising the piano must have added quite a bit to the noise levels.
To be able to employ a domestic servant and to provide his daughter with piano lessons to a suitably high standard, suggests that the father, William, had a business that was doing quite well.
That brings us up to 1911. So what happened afterwards?
Well, by the time of the 1921 Census (see image below), things had changed quite a bit. William has remarried and Margery has moved out – but the story seems rather odd.
William married a woman named Margaret Gall in 1913 near Dundee, Scotland (I’m sure that this is the correct William Rigby as the Dundee Courier of 4 Sept 1913 reported that a “William Rigby of Birkenhead” married a Margaret Webster Gall)
At the time of the 1901 Census Margaret was working as a domestic servant near Dundee but I can find no record of her anywhere in the 1911 census. Did she move down from Dundee to Birkenhead in search of work and there met William?
Or did William spend some time up in Dundee and happen to meet her up there? And if so, where was Margery?
Eight months after the wedding, Margaret gave birth to their first child, still up near Dundee (Monifieth).
So it appears that William just upped sticks and moved to near Dundee for at least a year. What happened to Margery? Did he drag her along with him up to Scotland to live with her new, pregnant, stepmother? Or did he leave her behind with her aunt in the Birkenhead house?
Neither of those two options seem particularly appealing. You’re 14 and your dad drags you off to Scotland to live with his new wife. She gives birth just after your 15th birthday and your stepmother is perhaps a lot more concerned about her new daughter rather than a stepdaughter from a previous relationship.
(Of course, nobody will ever really know how things were – she may well have been an absolutely fantastic step mother who adored her step daughter, we’ll never know)
On the other hand, William may have gone off to Scotland to be with his new wife and left Margery behind in the Birkenhead house with her aunt. Being abandoned like that isn’t great either.
So we get to 1921. William and Margaret have returned to the Birkenhead house and also have a second daughter together by now.
Margery has moved out. It was not common at all for young unmarried women to move out of home at this time unless maybe they were working in domestic service or perhaps had a job a very long way from home.
Neither of these situations applied to Margery, she was living as a boarder in a house that was literally less than 5 mins walk away from the family home, just around the corner.
It seems as though maybe there was a push for her to leave the family home.
Anyway, by 1921 Margery was working as a Clerk at the Inland Revenue (HMRC nowadays) at 35 Hamilton Sq, Birkenhead. About a mile from her home.
Back in those days, civil service appointments were announced in The Gazette (this is the official newspaper to place announcements in eg probate or bankruptcy etc). Margery was first appointed as a typist and then was appointed “after open competition” to the position of “Clerical Class (Women)” for the Inland Revenue.
After 1921 she seems to disappear. I can find no record of her death or emigration. Neither can I find any record of a marriage.
Also, I can find no record of her in the 1939 Register.
There is a record of a Margery Rigby marrying in 1942 in Liverpool North but I have no idea if that is her or not. I would need to purchase a copy of the marriage certificate to confirm if it was her or not.
So, rather disappointingly, the trail dies out. But I do hope that she lived happily whatever she did.
ps With the two women described as suffragettes, I could find no record of them on Ancestry or FindMyPast in connection with suffragette activities so it looks like they were never arrested or reported on in connection with this.