Maria Bayston

Baptised at Bubwith — "illegitimate D.r of Ann Bayston"

14 February 1798 at Bubwith

Maria | Bayston | illegitimate D.r of Ann Bayston | of Bubwith | [Born: blank] | 14th. The father's column — "Name, Profession, Descent, and Abode", filled freely for other families on the page — holds nothing for Maria; there is no marginal note. Ann's abode, in the mother's own column: Bubwith township.

— Baptism — the Bubwith parish register, 1798 (read at the image)

Maria illegitimate D. of Ann Bayston of Bubwith Feb: 14 — 1798. One of five illegitimate baptisms at Bubwith within twelve months, in the parish's even hand.— Baptism — the Bishop's Transcript of the same entry (read at the image)

Married Christopher Oates

5 September 1819 at Holy Trinity

No. 636 — Christopher Oates of this Parish, Sail-maker, and Maria Baistin of this Parish, Spinster, were married in this Church by Banns with Consent of [the printed clause's blank left unfilled — on this entry and on all six across the opening; no consenting parent is named, and Maria at twenty-one needed none] this fifth Day of

September in the Year One Thousand Eight Hundred and nineteen. By me J. H. Bromby, Vicar. Solemnized between us: Christopher ✕ Oates, his Mark — Maria Baistin [signed]. In the Presence of: Ruth [Guyinne?] — John Norris.

— Marriage — Maria Baiston, Holy Trinity, Hull (5 September 1819)

Census · 1841

1841

Living in Scawby, Brigg, Lincolnshire Maria Oats (sic), 1806 William Oats , 1826 Henry Oats 1831 Maria Oats 1832 Emma Oats 1834 born Lincolnshire Edwin Oats, 1835, born Lincolnshire Charles Oats, 1837, born Lincolnshire Address: Bridge Street No occupations recorded— From Janet Brock’s research

In 1841

1841

Returns to Hull— From Janet Brock’s research

Census · 1851

1851

Living in West Sculcoates Marga (sic) B Oates, Head, Married, born 1801 Bubwith Chrstopher J Oates Son, born 1822, Hull, Medical Dispenser Betsey A Oates, Daughter in Law, born 1821, Hull Chush (sic) Oates, Son, born 1838, Brigg Emma Oates, Daughter, born 1832, Brigg Frederick H Oates, Grandson, born 1850, Hull Address: Pardew Building near Tynemouth and Neville Streets Occupation: Dressmaker

— From Janet Brock’s research

Census · 1861

1861

Living in West Sculcoates Maria B Oates, Head, Married, born 1800, Bubwith Charles A Oates, Son, born 1831, Brigg, Grocery Assistant Maria A Oates, Daughter, born 1831, Hull, Dressmaker Frederick H Oates, Grandson, born 1850, Hull Address: 3 Sophia's Place, Percy Street, Hull Occupation: Non recorded for Maria

— From Janet Brock’s research

The Sculcoates workhouse — a pauper inmate

1871

Maria Oates — Pauper — 72 — born Bubwith, Yorkshire — Sculcoates Union Workhouse.— 1871 census — Sculcoates Union Workhouse

The workhouse — and the long death of the Poor Law

Three times in this family's records the Poor Law's walls close around someone: Sarah Drewery, a labourer's widow on the Drewery side, in the Spalding Union workhouse in 1841; Maria Oates, a Hull sailmaker's widow — the Oates side, whose granddaughter Mary Elizabeth married into the Richmond keel family — a "pauper inmate" of the Sculcoates Union workhouse in 1871, who never left it: she died there, and was buried from the Workhouse in January 1875; and John Henry Frith in Hull's Anlaby Road workhouse, two decades after that. The institution both met was made by the New Poor Law of 1834. The old parish relief — bread, coal, a few shillings paid to the poor in their own homes, under a system as old as Queen Elizabeth — was swept away, the parishes grouped into Unions, and each Union set to build a workhouse run on the principle of "less eligibility": life inside was made deliberately bleaker than the meanest labourer's life outside, so that no one would ask for help who could possibly do without it. Families were separated at the door — husbands from wives, mothers from children — the able-bodied were set to task-work, and the scandal at Andover in the 1840s, where paupers crushing old bones for fertiliser fought over the marrow, showed the country what "deterrence" could come to mean. Yet by the century's end the workhouse was quietly becoming something else: its infirmary was the only hospital the poor possessed, and most of those inside were not the idle of the pamphlets but the old, the sick and the alone. The unwinding then came within one lifetime. Old-age pensions, from 1908, began to empty the wards of the aged; the boards of guardians were abolished in 1929; and in 1948 the National Assistance Act opened with a sentence three centuries in the making — "the existing poor law shall cease to have effect" — as the new National Health Service took over the infirmaries themselves. The ground where Hull's workhouse stood carries Hull Royal Infirmary today. Joan Frith, whose grandfather died under the Poor Law, lived more than fifty years into the world that abolished it.

In 1875

1875

Dies in the Sculcoates workhouse; buried from it 11 January 1875, aged seventy-six (the register and the index write 75; Mum's page 77)— From Janet Brock’s research

Buried

11 January 1875 at Sculcoates, Hull

No. 1516 — Maria Oates | Workhouse | Jany 11 | 75 y.rs | John Watson, Curate.— Burial — from the Workhouse, Sculcoates, 11 January 1875 (read at the image)

Died

5 March 1875

OATES, MARIA — Age at Death: 75 — 1875 M Quarter in SCULCOATES, Volume 09D Page 138. She was in fact seventy-six — baptised 14

February 1798, buried 11

January 1875, a month short of her seventy-seventh birthday; Mum's "aged 77" was her own arithmetic from the baptism, and every age Maria ever gave ran young.

— Death — the GRO index, Q1 1875, Sculcoates, aged 75