This letter is self-explanatory. Mary Ann Slater has written to break off her relationship with John Hayes, an indolent suitor who has failed to ask the question. In reply, he has written a nasty letter which Mary Ann has shown her father, Barnard Slater, a Wesleyan Methodist minister. He takes up his pen to defend his daughter and denounces the writer, a local businessman and fellow Methodist living with his family at the Westleigh Mill.
Mary Ann
and John Hayes go their separate ways in Victorian England and cotton-mill
Lancashire but I invite you to read Barnard Slater’s letter before turning to
the continuation of their stories.
*
Transcription
Addressed
to: Mr John Hayes Leigh
Lancashire
No
dateline; postmarked from Manchester March 23 1839
Dear Sir
I feel
extremely surprised at the Letter which you addressed to my daughter on the 22nd
Inst. You must be aware that your own cold and unmeaning conduct has been the
occasion of the step which my daughter, seems by yours to have taken. You will
remember when at Macclesfield I honestly told you that you could not have a
proper affection for her, or you wd. bring matters to a close; & again I
have told her if I were in her case I wd have it ended some way; & both my
children & wife have been of the same mind. Not that we wanted to get rid
of her; no, Sir! Whenever she goes from my family I shall have cause to regret;
for a more judicious housekeeper, a more prudent young woman, a more
affectionate child, the world does not possess.
But I
appeal to you, - I appeal to any person of sound sense, whether when a person
is turned 30 years of age, it is not time & highly proper to be
married? And yet when you used to leave the house, & I with anxiety used to
ask, if the thing was yet settled the reply always was, “Nothing has been said
on that subject”! Why, Sir, most Ladies wd have put such a lover away long,
very long ere now. If you suppose no one has made an offer to Mary Ann during
your courtship, you are greatly mistaken. The girl had a slight affection for
you, I believe; and had you discovered that love to her which her affectionate
heart demanded, doubtless that flame wd have been fed, & you wd have been
happy. But you must own that you have triffled [sic]
with her heart in keeping her two or three years in suspense. I am therefore
not surprised at her giving you up; in her place, I tho in a different way, wd
have done so also; for I must own I think she has done this rather hastily; she
had better been a little more deliberate; but even that shows the
honesty of her mind; for I think her entirely honest & upright.
Besides I
appeal to you whether your language be proper in your letter? If you had
loved my darling child as you ought; had you loved her as I feel conscious I
love my first & my second ever dear wives, why, Sir, you wd
have been here in a very few hours after the receipt of the letter to which you
allude – you wd not have waited day after day to meditate a most cutting
Letter, which had you loved my child as you ought you never, no never, could
have written. The idea of her “conduct been
unprecedented in treachery, & dishonour, & baseness” [double
underlining in original] is such a
charge as, I feel fully assured, cannot be proved. I must own when I read your
letter (the only one of yours ever shown me) tho I felt deep concern that one’s
friendship for a family that one cannot but respect must, of course, be less
brought into action yet I was glad that my daughter had got quit of a person in
the character of an expected husband who, on receiving the very first letter of
objection, could write a letter so deeply cutting – so full of evil surmising –
so destitute of such feelings as wd have been excited in my mind, that it
perfectly reconciled me to a measure, of which, tho I had often recommended it
before stated, yet I as little expected as that I shd succeed to the Throne of
England.
I hope,
however, that continued prayer to God will put you in a different temper &
that you will reflect in your more cool & prayerful moments that you have
brought this mainly upon yourself.
I am
yours very truly Barnard Slater
P.S. Mary
Ann shall return your Letters &c on Tuesday next but as I am anxious for
the little dog to return, I hope Mr James Hayes [brother
of the addressee] will call in his way home & take them all; & I
hope Mr James will not take his friendship from me – as I feel nothing contrary
to loved to any one in your excellent family. And although I have always
disapproved of your shameful coldness to a girl whose heart is warm &
affectionate, yet to you as a man I feel nothing but Christian love – tho I
detest such cold lovers. It is contrary to my feelings. And as a friend
I wd in conclusion say; Should you ever at any future period think of seeking
after a wife, that you wd wait till you feel that love for her that wd make it
impossible for you to be happy without her. I speak here of my own experience
of two periods, more than 30 years asunder. Had Ms Baily, of precious memory 33
years ago, or Miss Bell one year ago, sent me such a letter I wd not have slept
till I had seen them. How did you do? Alas meditated a most cutting Letter
which shows your love to have been very slight if it at all existed. This, my
dear Sir, is my settled judgement on this case.
*
John
Hayes does well, his rise written into the decennial censuses which began in
1841 when he is recorded as living at home, aged 30, and classified as a farmer
and shopkeeper. By 1851 he has succeeded his father as head of the household at
Westleigh Mill and is listed as a cotton spinner and Clerk to the Board of
Guardians and Superintendent Registrar at Leigh. A Wesleyan Minister is staying
with him on the night of the census. He is still unmarried. But by 1861 he has
married and moved out of the Mill into a house at Church Street, Pennington
which is probably a Victorian new-build and accommodates the married couple,
their four children, aged eight downwards, and two servants. In 1871, now aged
60, he is a “Cotton spinner employing 305 hands”, has a new wife, fourteen
years his junior, and by her has two more children; his original four are
alive. They have all moved into a larger house which also accommodates a
sister-in-law, governess, and two servants. The house is in a salubrious
neighbourhood, indicated by its address in Orchard Lane, Atherton. Online photographs of the house taken in 2014
show it large, derelict and awaiting demolition.
In the
1881 census. John Hayes is described as a Master cotton spinner and Justice of
the Peace. All his children except the eldest daughter are still at home with
his son James described as a “student of medicine”. There are two servants.
Both of John Hayes’s wives were daughters of Methodist ministers and it seems
probable that the family retained Methodist connections throughout.
And now
to Mary Ann. In June 1839, less than three months after breaking off with John
Hayes, she marries a recent widower John Roberts who is a Manchester grocer.
His first wife had died in 1838, aged 31, and a child from that marriage had
died in 1837 aged seven months.
Mary Ann
married in an Anglican church in Manchester with Mary’s father Barnard as one
of the witnesses. The groom was probably an Anglican. A child is born in 1841
but dies aged seven months from what the death certificate describes as
inflammation of the lungs. Mary Ann dies aged 43 in 1852, from spinal disease
and hemoptysis (coughing blood) which suggests tuberculosis. In both cases,
it’s reasonable to suspect a link to the massively polluted air of a Northern
industrial city. Her husband does not long survive her, dying in 1854 aged 57.
*
Anne
Mealia researched for me the afterlives of Mary Ann Slater and John Hayes.
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