The Life of John Alcock and Sarah Broom

John Alcock and Sarah Broom

John Alcock’s story begins in 1825 in the small County Durham town of Wolsingham, where he was born to George Alcock and Barbara Guy. We know little about John’s earliest childhood, but by the time he was a teenager he had made his way towards Sunderland, a town that was changing rapidly and where the River Wear was beginning to shape the future of thousands of working families.

When John appears in the 1841 Census, he was living on Bridge Road, Monkwearmouth. He was only about sixteen years old and was already described as an apprentice carpenter. His training in carpentry would eventually lead him into Sunderland’s great shipbuilding industry, giving him a skilled occupation that would support him and his family for most of his adult life.

Learning a Trade on the River Wear

Sunderland was an exciting but demanding place in which to grow up. The River Wear dominated the town, and its banks were lined with shipyards, workshops, timber yards and businesses connected with the coal trade. Ships were being built and repaired along the river, and men with practical skills were in demand.

During John’s lifetime, Sunderland’s shipbuilding industry underwent enormous changes, moving increasingly from traditional wooden vessels towards iron and composite construction. John belonged to a generation of craftsmen who experienced this transformation first-hand.

As a young apprentice carpenter, John was learning skills that would eventually make him a shipwright. His work required strength, precision and a good understanding of timber and construction. Shipwrights played an essential role in the shipbuilding industry, helping to construct and repair the vessels that left the River Wear for ports around Britain and the wider world.

John was not simply earning a living in Sunderland’s shipyards. His working life was becoming part of the industrial history of the town.

John Meets Sarah

It was in this busy industrial community that John met Sarah Broom.

Sarah had been born in Monkwearmouth on 22 February 1824, the daughter of James Broom and Isabella Lister. She was baptised at St Peter’s Church, Monkwearmouth, on 11 August 1826.

St Peter’s was already an ancient landmark by the time Sarah was baptised there, its history stretching back many centuries. For Sarah, however, it was not simply an historic building; it was part of the community in which she had grown up.

On 9 September 1844, when John was nineteen and Sarah was twenty, they married in Monkwearmouth. They were still very young, and like many newly married couples of the time, they would have been beginning their life together without knowing what the future would bring.

Building a Family

John and Sarah went on to have a very large family. Their children were John, Edward, Isabella, another Edward, Barbara, James Broom, George, Sarah, Thomas, Mary Ann, Elizabeth, William Guy and another Elizabeth – thirteen children in total.

Behind those thirteen names lies a lifetime of family experiences: births, christenings, illness, work, growing children, family celebrations and, sadly, the deaths of several of their children.

Their first Edward died when he was only a small child. Their daughter Elizabeth died at about a year old, their son William Guy lived for less than a year, and their second daughter Elizabeth also died when she was very young.

These losses would have been a painful reality for John and Sarah. Victorian records often reduce such tragedies to a few words – a name, an age and a date – but for the parents there would have been much more behind each entry. Sarah would have held these babies, cared for them when they were ill and mourned them when they died. The family then had to continue living with their absence while caring for the children who remained.

Life on Golden Alley

By the 1851 Census, John and Sarah were living at 13 Golden Alley, Monkwearmouth. John was twenty-six and described as a ship carpenter, while Sarah was twenty-seven. Their household contained five people.

Life in a working-class area of nineteenth-century Sunderland was unlikely to have been comfortable by today’s standards. Houses could be small and closely packed together, with families living near their neighbours and close to the industries that provided their income.

For John, the working day would have been centred around the shipyards. As a ship carpenter, his work involved much more than simply cutting pieces of wood. Shipbuilding demanded accuracy and skill, with timber having to be shaped and fitted to form the structure of a vessel. His work was physically demanding, and his livelihood depended upon the continuing success of Sunderland’s shipbuilding industry.

A Growing Household at Hedworth Place

By 1857, the family had moved to 18 Hedworth Place, and by the 1861 Census they were living at 19 Hedworth Place.

The census records eleven people in the household. Eleven people under one roof gives us some idea of just how busy their home must have been. The older children would have been growing up while younger brothers and sisters were arriving, and the house would have been filled with the ordinary sounds of family life.

There would have been cooking, washing, cleaning and mending, along with the constant demands of caring for children of different ages. Sarah’s work inside the home would have been relentless, while John continued to earn the family’s income as a ship carpenter.

Sunderland – A Town Built Around Ships

The Sunderland surrounding John and Sarah was very different from the city we know today.

The River Wear was at the centre of an industrial world. Shipyards stretched along its banks, and the town was filled with men whose livelihoods depended upon shipbuilding and related trades.

The industry was also changing rapidly. During John’s lifetime, Sunderland moved increasingly from wooden ship construction towards iron and composite vessels.

John had begun his working life as a carpenter, but he lived through a period when traditional shipbuilding skills were being adapted to a new industrial age. He was not simply watching history happen; he was part of it.

Every morning that John walked towards his work, he was walking into one of the industries that had helped make Sunderland famous. Every evening he returned to a family waiting for him.

At least, for many years, that appears to have been their life.

Dundas Street – A Family Still Together?

By 1871, John and Sarah had moved again, this time to 59 Dundas Street, Monkwearmouth.

John was forty-eight and described as a carpenter, while Sarah was recorded as his wife. On the surface, the census appears to show another stage in the life of an ordinary working family.

But there was something else in the 1871 Census that changes the story completely.

John also appears at 21 Burleigh Street, Sunderland, where he was recorded as an unmarried boarder, aged forty-six, and working as a shipwright.

It is one of those extraordinary discoveries that makes family history so compelling. Two addresses, one man, one wife – and another woman.

The records that follow suggest that John had left Sarah and had begun a relationship with Jemima, whose surname appears in the surviving records as Haugh and who later used the surname Alcock.

John and Jemima never appear to have married, but they went on to establish a household together and had two sons, Robert and Andrew.

We can trace this new family through the census records. In 1871 Jemima was living at 21 Burleigh Street, and by 1881 she and John were at 43 Burleigh Street, where seven people were recorded in the household.

John was still working as a shipwright at the age of fifty-seven. Jemima was described as his wife, although the information available suggests that there was no legal marriage between them.

This is where I had to pause and acknowledge what we simply do not know. The census tells us where John was living, but it cannot tell us why he left Sarah, whether Sarah knew about Jemima beforehand, or whether there were other circumstances within the family that have disappeared from the historical record.

It would be easy, more than a century later, to look at these records and pass judgement. But John, Sarah and Jemima were living in a very different world from ours.

What we can say with confidence is that by 1871 John’s life had divided into two households, and that this must have had consequences for everyone involved.

What Might Sarah Have Felt?

For Sarah, John’s departure would potentially have been devastating.

She had married him as a young woman and had spent years raising their children. By this point she had already experienced the deaths of several of them. If John was no longer providing the same support to the household, Sarah would have faced the difficult task of continuing to care for her family in an era when opportunities for women to earn a secure independent income were limited.

Perhaps she was angry. Perhaps she was heartbroken. Perhaps the marriage had been troubled for years and John’s departure was not entirely unexpected.

We simply cannot know.

The census does not record emotions. It simply records people at particular addresses on one particular night. But somewhere behind the census entry for 59 Dundas Street was a woman living through a very personal upheaval.

She still had her children, she still had a home to maintain, and she had to carry on.

Jemima and a New Branch of the Family

John’s life with Jemima continued.

Their two sons, Robert Alcock, born about 1873, and Andrew Alcock, born about 1875, created another branch of the Alcock family.

Jemima took John’s surname, and in later records she appears as Jemima Alcock. Although they were never legally married, the records show that they remained together for many years.

By 1881 they were living at 43 Burleigh Street, and John was still working as a shipwright. For Robert and Andrew, this was simply their family life. They would have grown up knowing John as their father and Jemima as their mother, surrounded by the people and streets of industrial Sunderland.

The Streets That Tell Their Story

Following John and Sarah through the records gives us a remarkable journey through nineteenth-century Sunderland.

John’s early adult life took him to Bridge Road, where he was learning his trade. His married life with Sarah included Golden Alley and Hedworth Place, before the family moved to Dundas Street.

Then came the change.

John’s connection with Jemima brought Burleigh Street into the story, followed later by George Street. Sarah’s later life took her to Ditchburn Terrace and eventually Barrington Street.

These were not simply addresses written on census forms. They were the places where their lives happened – where their children were born and raised, where meals were prepared, where clothes were washed, where illnesses were cared for and where family memories were created.

What Life May Have Been Like for John, Sarah and Their Children

It is easy when looking at a family tree to imagine Victorian life as little more than dates, names and addresses. But John, Sarah and their children would have experienced their world through all their senses.

Their home may have been small and busy, with several family members sharing limited space. Coal would have been essential for cooking and heating, while water and sanitation arrangements were far less convenient than those we take for granted today.

The children would have played in the streets and yards around their home, growing up surrounded by the sights and sounds of industrial Sunderland. They would have heard the noise of shipbuilding and industry, seen working men making their way towards the yards and lived alongside neighbours whose lives were similarly shaped by the River Wear.

For John, work meant long hours of skilled physical labour. His hands and knowledge were his livelihood. For Sarah, running a household with thirteen children was itself a demanding occupation. Her days would have been filled with cooking, cleaning, washing, mending and caring for children.

There would have been little protection against illness. When a child became seriously ill, a mother often had very few options beyond nursing them herself. When death came, there was no modern medicine to offer reassurance.

Perhaps the most striking thing about their lives is how much they had to endure while simply carrying on.

John the Shipwright

John’s occupation deserves a place of its own in his story.

He began as an apprentice carpenter and developed into a skilled shipwright, an occupation that placed him firmly within Sunderland’s shipbuilding community.

A shipwright’s work required practical knowledge and considerable physical strength. He would have worked with timber, tools and the developing techniques of ship construction, helping create vessels that would eventually leave the River Wear and travel far beyond Sunderland.

His working life spanned an important period of technological change. He began his career in an industry dominated by wooden ships, but during his lifetime iron and composite construction became increasingly important.

John therefore witnessed the transformation of his trade as well as the transformation of the town around him.

The Death of John

John’s working life continued well into later adulthood. By 1881, at fifty-seven, he was still recorded as a shipwright.

Then, on 16 June 1889, John died at 6 George Street, aged sixty-four.

His cause of death was recorded as acute bronchopneumonia. Pneumonia was a serious illness in the nineteenth century, and there were none of the antibiotics or modern treatments available today.

John was buried at Sunderland Cemetery, Grangetown, on 19 June 1889, in Section A, Grave 9139.

After more than six decades of life, the young apprentice from Wolsingham had come to rest in the town whose industrial growth had shaped most of his adult life.

Sarah’s Final Years

Sarah survived John by almost four years.

By 1881 she was living at 16 Ditchburn Terrace, Bishopwearmouth, and by the 1891 Census she was at 12 Barrington Street, recorded as a sixty-seven-year-old widow. Nine people were recorded in the household.

It is poignant to think about Sarah at this stage of her life. She had begun as a young woman marrying John in 1844. She had raised a large family and endured the deaths of several children. She had seen her husband’s working life develop and had lived through the dramatic changes taking place in Sunderland.

She had also experienced the breakdown of her marriage and the creation of another branch of the family.

Yet she remained.

Sarah died at 12 Barrington Street on 18 June 1893, aged sixty-nine. Her cause of death was recorded as senile decay and exhaustion.

She was buried at Mere Knolls Cemetery, Fulwell, on 21 June 1893.

The Daughter Who Carries the Story Forward

Among John and Sarah’s thirteen children was their daughter Sarah Alcock, born in 1857. Her life provides an important link between this chapter of the Alcock family and the next generation of our family history.

Sarah’s story continues with her marriage to Thomas Laidler, born in 1856. Through Sarah and Thomas, the family story moves forward once again, carrying the Alcock name and the memories of John and Sarah Broom into another generation.

This is where the family tree begins to feel less like a collection of separate branches and more like a continuous story. John and Sarah’s lives, with all their joys, hardships and unanswered questions, did not end with their deaths. Their children carried pieces of their story forward, and Sarah became one of the links through which the next chapter of our family history can be followed.

Her marriage to Thomas Laidler takes us away from the story of John and Sarah and into the lives of another generation – a story that continues with Thomas Laidler and Sarah Alcock, and eventually leads us further into the family history we are following today.

Remembering John and Sarah

When we look back over John and Sarah’s lives, it is tempting to focus on the difficult part of their story – the separation, the second relationship and the two households.

But their story was much more than that.

They were once a young couple beginning their married life in Monkwearmouth. They built a family together. They knew the joy of children arriving and the terrible pain of losing some of them.

John worked for decades as a skilled shipwright in one of the great industrial centres of Victorian Britain. Sarah devoted much of her life to raising their children and maintaining a household in a world where everyday life was physically demanding and uncertain.

Their story was complicated, and there are questions that will probably never be answered. Why did John leave? What did Sarah know? How did the children feel? What did Jemima think about becoming part of John’s life?

These questions belong to the private part of their story, and the records have not preserved the answers.

What they have preserved are the traces: a census entry, a baptism, a marriage, a birth, a death certificate, a cemetery record and a series of streets running through Sunderland.

But their story remains – and through their daughter Sarah and her marriage to Thomas Laidler, their story continues into the next generation of our family.

And with every small step we take into genealogy, we bring a little more of that story back to life.