By the beginning of 1827, Alice and her four children had moved north of Manchester to the fresh air and pleasant surroundings of semi-rural Cheetwood in the southern part of the township of Cheetham. Was John Lomax living with them now? We don't know. Alice would be 40 years old on 15 January and she now thought she might be expecting her fifth child.
John Lomax had various business ventures:
- he had been buying property in Manchester, which will have been a profitable trade as the town grew ever bigger and busier. He owned warehouses, land and houses. We know he had bought the London Road Inn because when it was advertised to let in 1825, interested persons were to enquire at the Mathers, Lomax & Co warehouse or at 11 George Street, which was John Lomax's address. (It was a "large and commodious" inn with two kitchens, five parlours on the first floor, dining room, 21 other rooms, stabling for 20 horses and "convenience for Carriages")
- he was still engaged in the affairs of Messrs Mathers, Lomax & Company. His partners were now his 56 year old nephew Richard Hampson and the 33 year old John Philips Mather, presumably the son of John's old partner John Mather and his wife Susanna Philips. John Philips Mather lived in Everton and must have run the port of Liverpool end of the firm's business.
John Lomax was close to his family and particularly to three of his nephews: Richard Hampson (son of his sister Hannah), John Bentley (son of his sister Ellen) and his brother's son Robert Lomax. Richard Hampson was of much the same age as John and had evidently been his friend and partner for a long while.
John Lomax probably felt a rather fatherly protectiveness towards the other two nephews. John Bentley had lost his father when he was a baby. Robert Lomax lost his father when he was nearly 16 and then, when he was 24 and busy building up a business of his own, he had lost his mother and one of his unmarried sisters within six days of each other. His sisters Ellen and Margaret were still at home with him.
On 10 January 1827 John Lomax made his Will – or perhaps he was driven to make a new Will so as provide for the unborn child. It seems to have been made in something of a hurry, which suggests that he was anxious for it to be executed as soon as possible:
- the clerk at one point uses a standard abbreviation rather than the word in full
- the handwriting is poor, evidently written in haste
- there is an omission in the terms of the Will and the solicitor had to draw up a Codicil immediately after the Will was executed
- spaces were left for some names, which were then squeezed in by the clerk
- the order of the legacies suggests some afterthoughts
He had reached the age of 63 in the striving, urgent merchant world of Georgian Manchester. Perhaps his health had now failed and he was putting his affairs in order in case he didn't recover.
His Will covers 23 pages (of A3 paper) and most of it is taken up with the trusts he set up for Alice and the children
- Alice is described as the "Daughter of the late John Hopkinson Stone Mason of Bury or of Birch near Bury" and the children as "the three Daughters (Ellen Lomax Hopkinson Elizabeth Lomax Hopkinson and Mary Lomax Hopkinson) of the said Alice Hopkinson and John Lomax Hopkinson the son"
- his executors were his solicitor Samuel Kay and his three nephews Robert Lomax, John Bentley and Richard Hampson
- the trustees for Alice and the children were both young men – chosen, no doubt, because they would be most likely to see the children through to adulthood. They were John's partner John Philips Mather and the Manchester solicitor Samuel Dukinfield Darbishire.
- Darbishire was a young man of 28 whose family owned slate mines in Wales. He was a Unitarian and he and his wife later became great friends of the writer Mrs Gaskell – whose husband was a Unitarian minister – and her family
- the nephews and the trustees obviously knew all about Alice
Mather and Darbishire were to raise £25,000 from the estate
- £5,000 each was allocated for Ellen, Elizabeth, Mary and John. The maintenance, education and expenses of each child were to be paid from his or her share
- by way of comparison, John Lomax's brother Robert had left his daughters £2,500 each and had allowed £80 a year per child for maintenance, education etc
- each daughter, when she reached 21, was to get the income on her share. It was to be paid into her own hands, free from control by her husband. This was long before the Married Women's Property Act of 1882 and John Lomax was ensuring no husband could deprive them of their money. But the daughters only received the income, not the capital – they could dispose of that by Will, and if they didn't leave a Will it would go to their children, if any
- but so that Alice would still have funds, a daughter wouldn't receive her income in full while her mother was still alive because Alice was to be paid £100 of the income first (unless she had married)
- John was to receive £1,000 of his share outright, as a capital sum, at the age of 21 and the remainder due to him at the age of 23 – but again, to provide for Alice, when John reached 21, the trustees were to invest £2,000 of his money and pay the interest to his mother
- the income from the last £5,000 was to be paid to Alice unless she married (in which case, she was assumed to be provided for by her husband). If she died or married the income was to be used for the upbringing of "the child with which I apprehend the said Alice Hopkinson may be now enceinte [pregnant]" and would be that child's share
John Lomax intended to provide handsomely for Alice and the children. The usual rate of interest through the 19th century was 4% or 5%, although railway investments could bring in 8%. His son would have a good start in life and his daughters' income – say £200 or £250 – was very comfortable. Some literary comparisons:
- Miss Bates and her mother in Jane Austen's Emma lived together on £100 a year
- Mrs Dashwood and her three daughters in Sense and Sensibility found themselves sharing an income of £500 and went to live for free in a cottage in Devonshire as a result
- Sir Walter Elliot of Persuasion had a fortune of £10,000 to be divided between his three daughters
- Mr Darcy of Pride and Prejudice had £10,000 a year (no wonder Mrs Bennet was quite overcome)
- the Revd Patrick Brontë's yearly income at Haworth (where he lived from 1820 to 1861) was £170; as governesses, his daughters might earn £25 a year
(We normally think in terms of inflation when comparing money, but since 1810, which is roughly when Jane Austen's novels were published, there had been deflation – which was to recur during the 19th century)
John Lomax left legacies to his family
- 10 guineas each to his sisters Jane Orrell and Betty Stepford, his seventeen nieces and his nephews George Stopford and Richard Orrell
- £100 to his cousin Edmund Pilkington, the son of his mother's sister Mary Knowles
- "my small silver Teapot which I now use" to his niece Ellen Lomax – it must have held a sentimental meaning for her
- his three nephews Robert Lomax, Richard Hampson and John Bentley were left all his "Madeira Port and Hock wines" apart from
- 10 dozen bottles of Madeira and 10 dozen bottles of Port which were to go to Alice. She was also to have "all my other foreign and homemade wines and all my spiritous liquors for her own use"
- Alice was also to have the sum of £500
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| Ainsworth Unitarian Chapel by Alexander P Kapp |
On the 5th inst. in the 64th year of his age, John Lomax, Esq. of the firm of Messrs Mather, Lomax, and Co. of Manchester
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