40. "Filled with longing for her baby": the babies who died

 Alice (1856-1858)

Alice was their fifth child and second daughter.  She was born on 27 April 1856 and was always rather delicate.  On 16 July 1856, when she was nearly three months old, her mother wrote 

Baby Alice looks so sweet so gentle and lamblike; it makes my heart ache to see her so pallid and thin [1]

She never grew strong – a friend writing to Alice in early 1858 asked after the "fair, pale Alice" – and on 8 May 1858, soon after her second birthday, she died of hydrocephalus, a build up of fluid in the brain.  John, who was with his little daughter at the end, wrote to his sister Ellen Tubbs

Our sweet lamb is safely gathered to the fold of the Good Shepherd – within His arms she rests forever … Dearest Alice was spared the last sight, and now all that remains of our sweet one is so beautiful in death that we can hardly cease to gaze and feel that indeed that there must be some connecting link between earth and heaven.  We shall have treasure now in heaven. [2]

The boys and Ellen were old enough – young John was nearly 9, Alfred nearly 7, Ellen 4½ and Charles 3½ – to feel the loss of their little sister.  Alice's grief never left her.  She wrote on 8 July 1859 as she was resting and recovering from the birth of Edward on 28 May,

Now that I am so much alone I seem to have my darling Ally in constant remembrance.  Those lustrous loving eyes are ever before me [3]

And Ellen Ewing described Alice many years later when she "spoke of the death of her little daughter, her voice still shaken with grief and her beautiful eyes still filled with longing for her baby". [4]

William Henry (1866)

No letters survive to tell us of the birth and death of little William Henry on 30 September 1866.  He died five minutes after he was born.  The doctor certified that the death was from Debility – he was too weak to survive.  His father was there at his death and registered the death and the birth at the same time.

Harry (1868-77)

Harry in 1870 with Lily,
Albert, Gertrude & May

Harry was the youngest of the family, born on 23 February 1868.  He was always delicate and was very much treasured by his older sisters.  His eldest sister Ellen was nearly fifteen when he was born and was already her mother's right hand at childcare and housework.  She cared for him devotedly until her untimely death of scarlet fever in 1875.  Her younger sister Mary felt that Harry was "a precious charge bequeathed to me by my beloved sister."  She had begun teaching him his first lessons when he was five and she was 16 – fitting it in with her schoolwork, it seems.  She and Ellen loved him like mothers; as she said nearly 80 years later

I loved him with a love beyond words [5]

Soon after his death she wrote an account of his short life, remembering

Reading was a task for him for, with his active nature, he found it wearisome to sit still.  History and geography, however, always went pleasantly and he more and more exhibited great intelligence.  The freshness and originality of his mind showed itself most of all, I think, in the remarks he made and the thoughtful questions he asked during the Scripture reading … We always read to him the simple Bible – he loved it almost from babyhood and greatly preferred it to any of the forms in which it is put for children. [6]

At New Year 1876 Mary took him along to begin at Miss Jackson's school.  He was there for two terms, leaving in the Michaelmas of 1876, and Mary taught him for a few weeks until the end of November when he started going with his big brother Albert to Mr Jones' school.  Each day Mary looked forward to him coming back from school, and she helped him with his lessons in the evenings.  She was sure he would have a bright future and was very ambitious for him.  

But in January 1877 14 year old Albert began to feel ill.  The next day the doctor diagnosed scarlet fever.  This was a fearsome scourge in the middle of the 19th century, causing an enormous number of deaths.  In the 1880s it was recognised to be a bacterial infection; effective treatment came at last with penicillin after the Second World War.

 

Mary went to the school to fetch Harry home and she spent the next ten days looking after him.  They were both kept rigorously out of Albert's sickroom and at nights Harry slept with his father.  When John was away, Charley – by then a 23 year old engineer – slept with his little brother.  The next morning, just as they must have been hoping he had escaped infection, Harry had a sore throat, then violent sickness.  John and Alice nursed him devotedly, coaxing him to take some food in spite of the painful soreness of his mouth and throat and mouth.  On Saturday 17 February they thought he had turned the corner and Alice wrote to Ellen Tubbs

My dearly loved Sister

I know you are rejoicing in our joy that our darling Harry is given back to us.  We have been passing through deep waters during this month – days and nights of interest and anxiety.  But God has not forgotten us; there has been daily strength for daily need.  Truly the Lord does give strength to His people [7]

But on the Monday he was suddenly worse.  Mary wrote in her record of Harry that  "acute rheumatism" set in – this would be rheumatic fever, which is one of the complications of scarlet fever.  He died peacefully at about half past nine at night on Wednesday 21 February 1877, two days before his ninth birthday.

Names of Harry, Alice & William Henry on family grave in Southern Cemetery, Manchester
(courtesy of Bob the Greenacre Cat at findagrave.com)

Two of John and Alice's daughters died before they were 35.

(The poor quality of the photograph is because my only source is the photograph in John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910)

Notes

[1] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. 26

[2] ibid., p. 29

[3] ibid., p. 30

[4] ibid., p. 29

[5] ibid., p. 70

[6] ibid., p. 70

[7] ibid., p. 69