Writing about my maternal line always brought into focus how different the lives of women in the 19th century were from mine today: so many advances in technology, medicine and science, and politics have meant that sacrifices and losses of our forebears are almost forgotten, until we come to examine their lives closely, and try to imagine what it must have been like to live then – corsets and crinolines hampering our steps, laws that denied us a voice in the world, and the general precarious nature of life without antibiotics.
In writing my family history I decided to use have my 3 x great grandmother Dinah Nathan as the central individual in which to build my multi-layered family story. I drew on my university studies of History and Women’s studies as inspiration: I am only too aware that women did not always feature in official accounts history. But as the family matriarch, Dinah was the one person that ensured her family survived and grew and prospered in New Zealand, and I believe she was looked upon with respect in her community of the West Coast of New Zealand – if not with a little fear. I once was relayed a story that a young girl growing up in Greymouth (when Dinah was still a force to be reckoned with in the community) was admonished by her parents for not applying herself to her school work – the alternative (oh horror!) was to be sent off to work for Mrs Hansen!
Dinah Hansen (nee Nathan, formerly Hart) in 1915
Image: (cropped) pg 339 P. Caigou
But before Dinah became a formidible matron, straight-laced and no-nonsense, she was a young wife and mother, with youthful passions and emotions. She learned, like many of her Victorian counterparts, the hard way, that grief was a private and personal thing, to be held close to one’s heart.
In my initial research for my family history To live a Long and Prosperous Life, I was shocked to discover that Dinah had lost a child when living in Christchurch in 1867 – a ‘forgotten’ child, born and died [just over 1 year old] while Dinah and her children were left behind while her husband Nathaniel Hart went first to the West Coast with the gold rush, and then to Melbourne ‘to seek better prospects’.
I wrote with an ache of sadness for Dinah’s predicament:
Little Barnett Hart succumbed on March 13 1867 to that most common killer of Victorian children; diarrhea. The water quality in Christchurch was poor and raw milk easily spoilt. A newly weaned child was particularly vulnerable, no longer enjoying the benefit of mother’s milk. [p 165] . . .
. . . It seems especially sad that memory of this little boy was suppressed, probably because of the intense grief that Dinah suffered. Discovering his short existence through birth and death records late one night brought tears to my eyes, and I wept for Dinah and her grief that had remained so private all these years. [p166]
A genealogist’s work is never done, and so it was that when I learned in early 2017 that it was possible to search UK birth records at the GRO using the mother’s maiden name and death records are now shown with the individual’s age, I decided to check for any new information and was immediately confronted with a HART birth for Pymouth, Devon. A quick look at the deaths for the same year – 1859 – gave me that sick, sad feeling again. Here was another child of Dinah and Nathaniel Hart – born between their eldest child, Sarah in 1857 and their next daughter Rachel in 1860.
GRO ref: J Quarter in PLYMOUTH Volume 05B Page 247
GRO ref: J Quarter in PLYMOUTH Volume 05B Page 183
Immediately I saw the little boy’s name I realised the answer to my puzzle why Nathaniel’s father, Eleazer Hart, who had died in 1857 was not ‘remembered’ as was the common Jewish naming practise when their son Benjamin was born – the answer was of course because he already had been remembered – along with, most probably, Dinah’s brother Joseph Nathan who had died aged 25 just four weeks after Dinah and Nathaniel had wed in 1856.
So here was another ‘forgotten’ baby, another son – their first son, who did not survive.
Little Joseph Eleazer died of the same common illness that was to end his brother’s life ten years later in New Zealand. Returning to my records, I realised that this birth and death occured for Dinah and Nathaniel in a year of turmoil, with Nathaniel being brought before the local magistrate in Reading, in January 1859 charged with footpath obstruction. His resulting conviction, along with the feeling that somehow he was singled out as a scapegoat, almost certainly precipitated their move to Plymouth to start afresh [p98]. Add to this that now, from the birth registration, we know that Dinah was pregnant at the time of Nathaniel’s being in court, and that they moved south not long after that in time for Joseph to arrive in June.
This sad little episode in Dinah and Nathaniel’s life was the first personal tragedy of their marriage, and a lesson in the perils and pain of motherhood for young Dinah, still in her early twenties. A few months later, Dinah was pregnant again, with her second daughter, Rachel, my great, great grandmother. Little ‘Rachel Lizzie’ appeared with her family on the 1861 UK census and the little baby who lived just seven weeks seems to have been quietly ‘forgotten’ for 158 years.
I suspect that there are now many family historians looking with astonishment at these previously unknown family members – some not even named – and realising that their forebears carried always with them a particular, private grief, one that thankfully, most mothers in the 21st century will never know.
Written in Ink and Stone 