Abbott A Family History National and Local Events Date The Abbott Family George III 1760-1820 c 17th – 19th Several Abbott families living in centuries Needham Market in Suffolk c 1766 - 1769 Birth of Charles Abbott Captain James Cook sails on 1768 his first Pacific voyage aboard Endeavour. c 1771 Birth of Sarah, wife of Charles Abbott First patent for a water closet, 1775 the first modern toilet, granted to Alexander Cumming The markets in Needham 1776 Market revived A House of Industry (workhouse) built at Barham to serve the parish of Needham Market America declares Independence Joseph Bramah patented an 1778 improved version of the water closet The ‘First Fleet’ sails to 1788 Australia Mutiny on the Bounty 1789 French Revolution begins Edward Jenner discovers 1796 smallpox vaccine National and Local Events Date The Abbott Family Failed nationalist rebellion in 1798 Marriage of Elizabeth Ireland led by Wolfe Tone Wingfield’s parents, Robert Wingfield and Mary Everson, in Mickfield in Suffolk Income tax introduced 1799 Act of Union unites Britain 1801 and Ireland First National census taken 1802 -1807 5 children born to Charles Abbott and wife Sarah (Ann) in Needham Market, Suffolk C 1802 - 1841 Charles Abbott resident in Needham Market 1802 Birth of Elizabeth Wingfield in Mickfield to Robert and Mary Wingfield (née Everson) Britain declares war on 1803 France 1804 Birth of Robert Abbott in Needham Market Battle of Trafalgar 1805 Death in New York of 1809 Thomas Paine, author of The Rights of Man et al. Luddite riots 1811-1812 Battle of Waterloo - Napoleon 1815 defeated National agricultural depression Birth of Crimean War artist 1816 Samuel Read in Needham Market Agricultural depression and food riots across East Anglia Mary Shelley's Frankenstein 1818 published National and Local Events Date The Abbott Family Peterloo Massacre 1819 George IV 1820-1830 1822 Death of Sarah Abbott, wife of Charles, in Needham Market Sir Robert Peel reforms the 1823 Robert Abbott and Elizabeth criminal law and penal Wingfield marry in Mickfield, system Suffolk 1825-1840 6 children born to Robert and Elizabeth Abbott (née Wingfield) in Mickfield First passenger steam 1825 railroad from Stockton-on- Tees to Darlington Catholic Emancipation Act 1829 William IV 1830-1837 Outbreaks of machine 1830s breaking in Suffolk Cholera first arrives in 1831 England Parliamentary Reform Act 1832 Birth of Robert Abbott to Robert Cholera epidemic in Europe: and Elizabeth in Mickfield 31,000 people killed in Britain. Elgin Marbles placed in specially built gallery in London Municipal Reform Act 1834 ‘Tolpuddle Martyrs’ transported Slave trade abolished in British empire National and Local Events Date The Abbott Family 1835 Baptism of Robert Abbott junior in Mickfield with his sister Sarah Ann Tithe Commutation Act 1836 overhauls the system of giving tithes to support the church and clergy Queen Victoria 1837-1901 Smallpox epidemic 1837-1840 Tithe Maps for Needham 1837 Market and Mickfield drawn up Chartist movement 1838-1848 Penny post introduced. 1840 Vaccination against smallpox implemented within workhouses c 1841 - 1846 Charles Abbott resident in Barham Workhouse National Census taken. First 1841 Charles Abbott listed in Barham to include people’s names. Workhouse on the census Thomas Cook arranges his Robert Abbott resident in first excursion Mickfield Chartist riots 1842 Death of Elizabeth Abbott (née Lord Shaftesbury’s Mines Act Wingfield) Death of agricultural reformer ‘Coke of Norfolk’ Death of prison reformer 1845 Elizabeth Fry and anti-slavery campaigner Sir Thomas Buxton Repeal of Corn Laws 1846 Death of Charles Abbott in Barham Workhouse National and Local Events Date The Abbott Family Vanity Fair (William 1847 Thackeray), Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte), Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte), Dombey and Sons (Charles Dickens) published Year of revolution in Europe. 1848 The first Public Health Act is introduced to combat cholera A new window is installed in c 1850 Mickfield Church National Census taken. 1851 Robert Abbott senior listed in Great Exhibition at Crystal Mickfield on the census with his Palace second wife Mary Ann and sons William and Robert Crimean War 1853-1856 Smallpox vaccination 1853-1948 compulsory for all infants Second cholera epidemic 1854 1856 Death of Mary Ann, second wife of Robert Abbott senior Publication of Charles 1859 Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection 1860 Birth of son to Robert Abbott and Sarah Ann Kempling in Eye workhouse in February Marriage of Robert Abbott and Sarah Ann Kempling in December 1860-1871 5 children born to Robert Abbott junior and his wife Sarah Ann (née Kempling) National and Local Events Date The Abbott Family National Census 1861 Robert Abbott senior listed as a Great Expectations (Charles widower and living on his own in Dickens), Silas Marner Mickfield (George Elliot) and Book of Robert Abbott junior living at Household Management ‘White House’ in Mickfield (Isabella Beeton) published c 1862-63 Birth of Mary Anne Talbot in Rickinghall Inferior, Suffolk Construction of London 1863 Underground begins 1864 Birth of James Abbott in Mickfield Publication of Karl Marx’s 1867 Das Kapital Transportation of criminals 1868 abolished Elementary Education Act 1870 introduces free education Smallpox epidemic 1870-1872 National Census taken 1871 Robert Abbott senior living next door to his son John in Mickfield Secret Ballot Act 1872 Robert Abbott senior marries for the third time to widow, Sophia Cullum 1873 Death of Robert Abbott junior in Barham Workhouse, buried in Mickfield Factory Act limits working 1874 week to 56.5 hours Discovery of the comma- 1876 shaped baccilus of cholera by Dr. Robert Koch Black Beauty by Anna Sewell 1877 published National and Local Events Date The Abbott Family 1879 Death of Robert Abbott senior in Mickfield Elementary education 1880 becomes compulsory up to age 12 1881 Remarriage of Sophia, the third wife of Robert Abbott senior, to Samuel Smith The box pews in Mickfield 1882 church are replaced National Census taken 1881 Married Women’s Property 1882 Act allows women to own property in their own right after marriage Electoral franchise extended 1884 to all male householders and lodgers paying rent of over £10 per year 1885 Marriage of James George Abbott to Mary Anne Talbot in Rickinghall Inferior, Suffolk 1887 Birth of Jeannie Gray Penman. 1888 Birth of William George Abbott in Botesdale, Suffolk. National Census taken 1891 James and Mary Anne Abbott The Adventures of Sherlock living at Back Hills in Botesdale Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle published James working as a fishmonger. 2nd Boer War 1899-1901 First transmission of human 1900 speech by radio waves End of the Needham Market Annual Fair in around 1900 Map of Suffolk from Pigot’s Suffolk Trade Directory, 1839 The Abbott Family Introduction The story of the Abbott family can be taken back to Needham Market in Suffolk in the 1760s to a Charles Abbott born in around 1766-69. The next generation begins with Robert Abbott who was born in Needham Market in 1804. By the time of his first marriage to Elizabeth Wingfield in 1823 Robert had moved to Mickfield, also in Suffolk. The Abbott family were to remain in Mickfield for most of the nineteenth century. The tale continues with another Robert, born in Mickfield in 1832. Subsequent generations moved to Botesdale and Grays in Essex, Monton in Lancaster, then Bedfordshire. Throughout the majority of this time the Abbotts worked as agricultural labourers. Agricultural Labourers Life as an agricultural labourer or farm hand in eighteenth century Suffolk involved long hours and little reward. It was not uncommon for children as young as six to work on the farm, doing tasks such as scaring rooks or sorting potatoes, or leading the horses that drew the ploughs. Many children never went to school as their presence was needed on the farms. For their labour they would have been paid about a shilling (five pence) a week. Writing in 1939, R. C. Gaut noted that the annual wages of a grown man working full time might be about £15, with a day labourer earning ten pence for his day’s work. Even for the times those wages were low, and they did not rise as the costs of living did. As a result, labourers lived very close to the edge. Any disability or misfortune befalling the wage-earner could result in his whole family becoming destitute. Each parish had to support its own poor through local rates. The ‘Poor Rate’ was just one of many local taxes, but it went specifically towards supporting the poor. Between 1776 and 1803 the Poor Rate collected across England had more than doubled, rising from one and a half million pounds to four million pounds. As many labourers lived in tied cottages, accommodation owned by a landlord who provided it for the use of his workers, loss of employment also frequently meant the loss of a home as well, with no right to protest. Agricultural labour was physically demanding, with long hours in the summer. Harvesting, mowing and reaping would be carried out with a scythe or sickle. Hay would be bound up into bundles called stooks, and then piled into haystacks. During harvest the wives and mothers would join the men in the early evenings to glean the field. This was backbreaking work as it entailed stooping to gather any ears of corn or whichever crop was being harvested, to take home for flour making or chicken feed. At the start of the eighteenth century most tasks were accomplished by hand. However, as the century progressed more machines came into use. Previously farmers had worked strips of land in common fields, growing different crops and sharing them out. Farm machines required more space than the strip fields.