Six years after Mary's death, in July 1872, Charles remarried. His second wife was Isabella Thompson from Workington in Cumberland. She had been with Mary when she died and had registered the death for Charles. We don't know why she was living with the Tubbs family at the time. She was 26 years old and must have been a visitor, governess or possibly even a nurse. She was 23 years younger than Charles and they had a daughter together in 1874.
By 1881 the family had moved to a rather smaller house called 'Beechfield', which seems to have been newly built in the fields between Charles Tubbs' house 'Mount Athos' and the Rookers at 'Mount View'.
Charles obviously made a comfortable living, but not enough to stretch to keeping eight daughters for the rest of their lives. Unsurprisingly they – unlike the Hopkinson sisters – had to go out to work. At least five of them were teachers: Mary, Eva, Dora, Lilian and Alice. Their brother Charles Ernest disappears from the records. I think he probably emigrated.
Mary, the eldest, was a couple of years older than her cousin John Hopkinson. She was particularly beloved by her aunt Alice Hopkinson, who would have liked her to marry young John if only they hadn't been cousins [1]. Mary Tubbs became a well-known and formidable headmistress. She ran, first with a colleague and then with her sisters, a successful prep school for boys on the edge of Plymouth. We don't know how many boys from the family passed through her hands, but the 1901 census shows that among the 27 boys boarding at 'Mount House' were John and Alice's 10 year old grandson Keith Wilberforce Tribe and Mary's 11 year old nephew Eric Foulger Wills, the son of her sister Eva.
When the school building was closed after a serious diphtheria epidemic, she moved it to her old home, 'Mount Athos' and renamed the house to 'Mount House'. It was evacuated from Plymouth in the Second World War and Mary's school now a co-educational prep school in Tavistock. The old building, which had been the Tubbs' home, is part of the Plymouth College Preparatory School.
Mary retired with her younger sister and assistant Lilian to live at 'Byfield' in Mannamead on the outskirts of Plymouth. There Mary devoted herself to a great many philanthropic organisations, makaing her large garden available for many a meeting and event, until her sudden death at the age of 74. She had always loved to hear from old boys of her school.
Many of these kept up a regular correspondence with her, among them being some who had achieved success and distinction in high places
wrote her obituarist in the Western Morning News of 31 December 1921, which described her as
A woman of very strong character, she combined this trait with the possession of a kind heart, and although bogus appeals to her charitable nature were speedily found out, genuine cases of distress were never turned away.
Eleven years after Mary's death and long after John and Alice Hopkinson had died, Lilian made the most unexpected marriage in a heart-warming story which attracted the eager attention of the press.
"After a courtship lasting more than 50 years," wrote the Daily Mirror on 26 March 1932. "Rumoured to be the outcome of a boy and girl affection," wrote the Western Morning News two days earlier. Lilian was very well known in Plymouth as an active member of the Sherwell Congregational Church – her formidable sister Mary had become an Anglican – and as a teacher, so it was hardly surprising that the romantic story meant that the church was packed and the police were kept busy outside preventing the crowds from falling under the wheels of passing traffic.
Friends of the bride told the Western Morning News that 71 year old Lilian was "radiantly happy, and had exercised the greatest care in the choice of her trousseau". The bridegroom was 69 year old Mr Harold Spencer.
Miss Tubbs, a frail, white-haired figure, was attractively gowned in a two-piece ensemble of soft blue cloth, the collar of the coat finished with ermine fur and tails. Her black hat was trimmed with a black ostrich plume, which fell gracefully over the crown, and she carried a bouquet of lilies of the valley and white heather, tied with white satin ribbons. The bridegroom also wore a spray of white heather in his buttonhole.
Harold, according to the reporter, came from Chester and was a lineal descendant of the famous Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser. They had, I think, six years together which I hope made up for the long years apart. Lilian outlived Harold, dying in August 1944 at a nursing home in Clevedon in Somerset.
By the time Lilian married in 1932, she had outlived all but one of her sisters.
Her sister Edith Annie had died long before. She had gone out to northern India to marry a missionary, the Revd Thomas Insell, in the Mission Church at Mirzapur on 14 December 1876. She died there four months later. Dora Tubbs had died aged 42 in 1900. Alice Tubbs had married at the age of 37 in the church of St Andrew's, Plymouth, where her new husband the Revd Douglas Perceval Hatchard had been a curate for 7 years. At last he had a wife and a living, becoming the vicar of Keynsham in Someset – but after 8 years of marriage Alice died in the vicarage in 1909.
Angelina Maria Tubbs had died in 1915 in her early 40s. Kathleen, the baby of the family, had died in 1923 in France at the Pension Rioadet in Hyères. She was 49. She and her husband Dr Walter Kenneth Wills had a son and daughter, both in their early twenties. Ellen Tubbs – who seems to have been the sister who stayed at home – had died in 1928 aged 75.
Only Lilian and Eva Blanche were left by then. Eva had married in 1887 when she was 33 years old.
 |
Samuel Day Wills
(1837-1909) |
She became the second wife of Samuel Day Wills, the younger brother of Henry Overton Wills III – and Henry was married to Eva's aunt, the youngest Hopkinson sister.
Alice (née Dewhurst) had not been much taken with the 28 year old Samuel when she stayed with the Wills family in 1865, writing to John, "The young Wills's – Edward and William Henry – never know me, and Samuel very slightly acknowledges the acquaintance." [2]
This was the third of five marriages between the Wills family and the extended family around Alice and John Hopkinson. The convoluted tale goes like this:
First John's youngest sister Alice had married Henry Overton Wills III in 1853. Then Alice and Henry's son Henry Herbert Wills married Mary Monica Cunliffe-Owen in 1886 – Albert Hopkinson married her younger sister Olga in 1891. Thirdly came Eva's marriage to 50 year old Samuel Day Wills. Fourthly, Hilda Dewhurst married Alice and Henry's son Arthur Stanley Wills in 1890. Lastly in 1899, Dr Walter Kenneth Wills, a son of Samuel Day Wills from his first marriage, married Kathleen Isabella, the daughter of Charles Foulger Tubbs and his second wife Isabella Thompson.
Samuel and his first wife had seven children, but their third son William had died aged 14 in a fall from a cliff eighteen months before his mother died on Christmas Day at the age of 44. Eva and Samuel had one son together, Eric Foulger Wills, a schoolmaster, who married and had five children. Eric was very keen on finding traces of Ancient Egyptian lore and the Osiris cult in the landscape around Bristol and his Egypt in Bristol: A Prehistoric Study embracing the Mendips, South Gloucestershire and Bristol was published in 1937 by St Stephen's Bristol Press Ltd (under the name E F Wills). Second-hand copies are sometimes to be found but the only description I have seen of the book online simply describes it as "crazy".
Eva outlived Lilian, dying at the age of 91 in February 1946.
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. 58
[2] ibid., p. 47
No comments:
Post a Comment