The Lost Boys
We all have a picture of Victorian workhouses being bleak, heartless and cruel institutions, and indeed many of them deserved that description. Inhospitality was built into the very rationale of their existence. But at Skirlaugh Workhouse there were occasional glimpses of a less austere establishment, where normal emotions were allowed to prevail in times of great sadness. Such was the case when two little boys were lost in tragic circumstances.
One spring Saturday, the 7th April 1877, the workhouse schoolmistress took the children for a walk in nearby Benningholme Park. The children played about, no doubt enjoying a little freedom and relaxation. The Lambwath stream, which ran through the parkland, was running full, perhaps indicating previous heavy rain which could have made its banks more treacherous than normal. Seven year old Charles Southwick strayed away from the schoolmistress and was playing near the water when he fell into the stream. His friend, nine year old Henry Wiles, immediately went to his aid but both boys got into difficulties and were tragically drowned. It took a little time for help to arrive and to recover the boys from the water and although they were carried back to the workhouse and resuscitation attempted, it was far too late to save them.
Both boys had lived short, sad lives. They had both been born illegitimately and consequently suffered poverty all their short lives. Charles had been born in the Skirlaugh Workhouse, where his mother, Jane, and elder sister, Hannah, were also inmates. Jane herself was no stranger to poverty as the 1851 census shows her tailor father described as a pauper with a wife and five children. With a young daughter, another child on the way and no financial support, their mother, Jane, had taken the only option available to her by entering the Workhouse, where Charles was born. It is most likely that this was the only home that Charles had ever experienced.
It is a similar story for Henry Wiles, whose brave attempt to save his friend cost him his life. His mother, Ann, had been in the Workhouse as a child, with her father and three siblings. She had escaped into domestic service and at 16 was working in Hornsea. Her son, Henry, was baptised at Skirlaugh in 1867, although there is no indication that Ann was resident in the Workhouse at that point. However, the 1871 census places her back in the Workhouse with her four year old son. The Wiles family had a long association with the Skirlaugh Workhouse. Ann’s sister, Charlotte, who had been in the Workhouse with the family in 1851, also had an illegitimate child who had died there in 1856. Charlotte herself was buried from the Workhouse in 1863, aged 27. Sadly, Ann, followed in her sister’s footsteps and was also buried from the Workhouse, aged 28, in 1871, leaving little Henry, aged nearly 4, an orphan, although his grandfather, John, was still an inmate. Both sisters died of consumption. Both Charles and Henry came from poor, dysfunctional families. One would expect that tragic as it was, the loss of two pauper children would not have made much of an impact upon the local community, but this was far from the case. The workhouse staff and inmates, including the master and matron, Robert and Mary Catlin, were said to have been in ‘deep grief’.[1] The local people also felt the loss deeply enough to raise a subscription to provide an elaborate headstone to the boys’ memory which reads:
Here lieth / in sure and certain hope / of the resurrection to everlasting life /
through our Lord Jesus Christ / HENRY WILES / aged 9 years / and CHARLES
SOUTHWICK / aged 7 years / both inmates of Skirlaugh Union / who were
drowned in the Lambwath at Benningholme / the former in attempting to
rescue his companion / on the 7th April A.D. 1877 / “Marvel not at this: for
the hour is coming, in / which all that are in the graves shall come forth” /
St John V.28. / This stone is erected to their memory by subscription.
Most paupers who died in workhouses were buried quietly in a designated spot in the local churchyard or cemetery, without a memorial. Headstones were expensive items and out of the reach of most people on an ordinary labourer’s wage. For two pauper boys to have this headstone erected in their memory is exceptional. The monumental mason would normally charge per hand-carved letter, making this long-worded inscription very costly. It is a testament, not only to the boys but also to the people of Skirlaugh who cared enough to raise such an expensive tribute.
[1] Beverley Guardian 14 Apr 1877