Life of Thomas Laidler and Sarah Alcock

Remembering Thomas and Sarah

The story of Thomas and Sarah Laidler is much more than a list of census entries, addresses, occupations and dates. Their records provide a window into the lives of an ordinary working family living through an extraordinary period of change.

Thomas’s life followed the path of a nineteenth-century industrial worker. From his beginnings as a young blacksmith, he moved through the many forms of labour that sustained Sunderland’s engineering and shipbuilding industries. He worked with metal, machinery and ships and spent much of his life contributing to the industries that made Sunderland famous.

Sarah’s life was centred largely around the home and family. Together they raised their children in the closely packed streets of Monkwearmouth, moving between places such as Zetland Street, Hedworth Place, Back Dundas Street, The Causeway, Barrington Street and Millum Terrace.

Behind those addresses were homes filled with the ordinary sounds and struggles of family life — children being born, growing up, going to work, marriages taking place and, sadly, funerals leaving the same streets.

Perhaps the most poignant part of their story is the number of children they lost. Of their eleven children, six had died by the time of the 1911 census. These were losses that would have touched every part of their family life.

Thomas died in 1920, followed nine years later by Sarah. Both were ultimately laid to rest at Mere Knolls Cemetery, leaving behind descendants whose family history can still be traced through the records they left behind.

Their story is therefore not simply the story of Thomas Laidler and Sarah Alcock. It is also the story of working-class Monkwearmouth, of the men who built and supported Sunderland’s ships, of the women who kept their households together, and of families who endured both the opportunities and hardships brought by industrial Britain.

Today, the addresses recorded in their records may appear simply as names on a family tree. But each one represents a place where Thomas and Sarah once lived, worked, raised their children, mourned their losses and made their lives. Through those records, the streets of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Monkwearmouth become part of their story — and part of the story of the family that came after them.