16/52 Negative: Mary Rickman: 1770 - 1851

 

16/52 Negative: Mary Rickman  

This week’s prompt is ‘Negative’. It was difficult to choose an ancestor to ascribe as ‘negative’ but I have chosen Mary Rickman, my third great grandmother, partly on the strength of this silhouette portrait of her, which is reminiscent of a photographic negative.  Other negatives were events in her life and her attitude to her son, my second great grandfather, John, the member of this family who broke away and formed the Australian branch. 

She was born in 1770, a handy date because it is easy to tell her age at any other date. And, for an Australian, a memorable date because in April that year, as she lay cradled in her mother’s arms, James Cook first saw the east coast of Australia. So much happened from that but Mary Rickman would never have imagined how it might connect with her. 

She was born in Lewes, Sussex, into a solid eighteenth century Quaker family who had  lived as Quakers around Lewes since 1700.  In David Hitchin's,  Quakers in Lewes he says :

…..the period 1690 to 1760 was in many ways one of decline. As the first generation of Friends passed away the Meeting increasingly consisted of birth-right members rather than those converted by a life- changing experience. John Stephenson Rowntree wrote in 1859 of the period as one of the ‘diminished effusion of the Holy Spirit’, while William Braithwaite considered that the Society ‘established a strong organisation and lost something of its soul.’ 

 

And David Hitchin continues, in perhaps a negative vein: 

It is a shock to read Quaker theological or devotional works of the time, since they appear to have much more in common with modern fundamentalists than with modern Friends. It may be even harder to accept that the pious, other- worldly attitudes were not a momentary aberration, but were the mainstream of the Society’s thought and worship for nearly two centuries. 

The Rickmans were in the business of brewing, alcoholic drinks not at this stage prohibited by Quakers. Perhaps one of the most depressing aspects of Quakerism in this period was their negative attitude to the arts, music and drama especially. It’s encouraging to know that in 1780, at the Bear Inn, Mary’s grandfather’s business, there was a performance of The Beggars Opera.

Mary’s father and mother, Richard Peters Rickman and Mary née Verrall, got into trouble for marrying in a church, a ‘steeple house’, without the permission of the meeting. The date of the wedding, 5th of June, and the birth of their first son on the 27th of June in 1767, might explain why they didn’t wait to take it to the Meeting. Further more, Mary Verrall was not a member of the Society of Friends. He was disowned but the Meeting minutes record: 

In May 1768 the Friends appointed to wait on Richard Peters Rickman having given a satisfactory account of his behaviour which together with his Steady and Consistent deportment and also his paper of Condemnation, Friends hath restored him in fellowship and Communion and he is himself reinstated as a Member of our Society. 

Richard Peters Rickman followed his father’s trade and was an inn-keeper and a brewer and also became a banker. He and Mary were key figures in the Lewes Meeting, busy with the business of disowning Friends as they had been disowned themselves! They were also involved in things like signing petitions against slavery, caring for the poor members of the Society, building and extending the new meeting house.  

Mary Verrall was to have seventeen births. Our Mary was her third, although the baby born in 1767 did not survive the year. Before Mary turned 10 years old she had eight younger siblings in 1771, ’72, ’74, ’75, ’76, ’77, ’78 and ’80. Three of those infants had died. Between the age of 11 and when she married at age 25, her mother gave birth to seven more in  “82, ’83, ’85. ’86, ’88, ’91, three of whom died in infancy. Mary Verrall had ten surviving children. She was 18 when she had her first and 42 when she had her final son. There were six girls and four boys. It is hard for a twenty-first century person, a mother of two, to appreciate what that must have been like, both as a mother and as a sister. Constant pregnancy, constantly shifting between joyful birth and grieving another lost baby. 

Mary and her older sister, Elizabeth, one year older than Mary, could have played a big role in child care although I have a note in my computer that says that all of the children, except the youngest, went to Ackworth Quaker School. I don’t know where I collected that information. For how long did Mary go to school? Quakers took education,  of girls as well as boys, very seriously. So perhaps Mary and Elizabeth were at school, away from home when many of these deaths occurred and not engaged in continual child care as I had imagined. 

Nevertheless, in spite of their mothers experience,  all the six Rickman girls married and continued the lifestyle she had exemplified.  

Mary married John Godlee who worked for her father. After an adventurous career as a mariner, he had left the sea when wages were cut in half after the end of the Napoleonic War. He had been born in 1762 in Wapping, just near the home of James Cook. He was working as a clerk in London, attending Quaker Meetings, when a workmate introduced him to Lewes. In the words of David Hitchin: 

..it was there that he met the Rickman family, joined Lewes Meeting, and worked for the Rickman family for ten years until he was taken into partnership just before marrying Mary Rickman. He managed the Rickman business for many years, but later became a banker and importer, especially of coal.

Mary was 26 when she married John in the cold days of February, 1796. They married in the Lewes Meeting House, witnessed by her parents, her sister, Elizabeth and brother-in-law, and John Godlee’s two sisters. The marriage of Mary to her father’s business partner brings up questions in my mind about whether this was a business deal. Did she do her duty for the family business? Handed over as part of the deal? Were they in love?  Or in those days, was that even considered? 

What followed was a string of pregnancies and births. By December she had her first baby: Mary Ann. Sarah was born two years later, 1798, and Caroline in 1800. I note that she allowed two years between pregnancies, unlike her mother who had one practically every year. Does that suggest that Mary Rickman was breast feeding, so the babies were healthier, less likely to die and also providing a contraceptive advantage? At that time it was considered proper for middle class women to employ wet nurses, but Margaret Fell’s daughters, (the 'Mother of Quakerism',) were public advocates of breast feeding. The yearly pregnancies of Mary’s mother suggest she may not have followed their ministry. Hopefully Mary did. 

Here is their house at Bear Yard. As explained, we see Mary Ann and Sarah with a nurse maid and the woman standing isn John’s sister, Sarah Godlee. 

In 1802 Mary had Burwood, the first son, and in 1804 another son, Rickman. It was a common practice to name children with their mother’s maiden name. Burwood was a Godlee family name, going back to John’s great grandmother, Margaret Burwood, the name having passed down in that family as a Christian name for generations and John’s Uncle Burwood had helped him in his career.  The name 'Rickman' continues into modern times and is a marker for me that I am related to that man!  

In 1805 Mary had Rebecca and in 1808 she had Lucy. In 1810 she had twin girls, Margaret and Susan. Margaret did not survive. In March 1812 Caroline died and a month later, so did the remaining twin, Susan. Perhaps there was an infectious disease? The next year Mary had another girl who she also called Caroline, but that baby did not survive. So in three years Mary had lost four children, one of them twelve years old. In 1814 she had her last baby. He was John, my two times great grandfather. He survived and grew up. 

In 1826 Mary, now aged in her fifties and past child bearing years, and her two eldest daughters, opened a school at Dial House. This building had been owned by her great uncle Thomas Rickman.

This photo, taken in 2019, shows the building where the Rickman sisters moved their school when they left Dial House. Mary Ann, Sarah and her other sisters, Lucy and Rebecca, probably also worked at the school. 

Sarah, the second child, married her cousin in 1828 and had two children but her husband died after seven years and she moved back home with her  children. She was the only one of Mary’s daughters who married. Maybe Mary had tried to guide them away from it after her own tragic experience, and that of her own mother. Motherhood didn’t look like an attractive option. If you had choices, and they did, because they had access to wealth through their father, you could lead a happy life as a single woman.  Clearly running a school brought in some independent means. 

While Mary’s two older boys made good, Burwood in business, and Rickman in law, John was an unsettled youth. He was moved from a number of Quaker schools and didn’t settle to a clear career path. In 1838, exasperated with him, the family decided migration to Australia was the go. It would make a man of him. He was sent to Adelaide in South Australia where there was a community of Quakers. His mother was relieved to see him go. 

This is very sad. Perhaps she was too grief struck when he was born, as a result of losing four of her children, no doubt triggering her childhood experiences of losing her infant siblings. How could she bond with him, not trusting him to live? Was all her love spent? Did she had any left to give?

John did make good in Australia but he never went home to see his mother again. 

John Godlee, Mary’s husband, died in 1841. In the 1841 census we find Mary, aged 70 living in the High Street with her unmarried daughters, Mary Ann, Rebecca, Lucy, her widowed daughter, Sarah with her two children. They had four servants. Mary Ann and Sarah continued to send letters and gifts to  their baby brother in Australia.  

In 1850  Mary may well have dandled her granddaughter, Mary Jane, on her knee. When she grew up this woman was probably present at the 1895 Manchester Conference which did so much to shake Quakers into the modern era, leaving behind conservative Quakerism of Mary Rickman's lifetime.

Mary died in the early spring of the following year, aged 81. She was buried in the Lewes Friends Burial ground.

England & Wales, Quaker Birth, Marriages and Death Registers 1578 -1837

Hitchin David, Quakers in Lewes, an informal history. 

AMS 6380/1 East Sussex Record Office, List of descendants of Richard and Isobel Rickman of Wadleham, Harts, traced through 12 generations, 1559, Compiled by Sarah Godlee