The Christmas Carol: A Jayne Sinclair Genealogical Mystery
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It was a time when they still got on, before her teenage rebellion turned into outright war. Her mum always gave her five presents every Christmas, and in 1992 this book was one of them. It was a Penguin edition and the pages were slightly yellowing now. She flicked to the title page. It was a copy of the first edition she had seen that morning in the café. A couple of the pages were folded back in dog-ears where Jayne had marked the point when she had finished reading, all those years ago.
A bright twelve year old, but one who was deeply troubled by the absence of her father and the constant feeling she had somehow disappointed her mother. Luckily, Robert had been there to be her rock; she didn’t know what she would have done without him.
She went back into the kitchen to retrieve her wine. Mr Smith was lazily licking his white paws, having demolished the bowl of food.
‘No more until tomorrow,’ she announced. He ignored her, continuing with the far more important task of making sure his feet were clean before he embarked on his evening prowl down to number 9. She was sure her neighbour was also feeding him, but she wasn’t certain and Mr Smith wasn’t telling.
She returned to the living room and settled down in the armchair, opening the book to read the preface.
I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.
Their faithful Friend and Servant,
C. D.
Chapter TWELVE
Monday, December 16, 2019
Didsbury, Manchester
Three hours later, with the bottle of Sagrantino finished, she finally laid the book down.
The story had come back to her in the reading.
The meanness and greed of Ebenezer Scrooge. The arrival of Marley’s ghost to warn Scrooge about the error of his ways. Looking back with the Ghost of Christmas Past to see Scrooge’s unhappy childhood and his lost love for Belle. The Ghost of Christmas Present showing him how the Cratchits, the Fezziwigs and his nephew Fred’s family enjoyed Christmas, despite having far less money than him. Finally, the Ghost of Christmas to Come showing the awfulness of the future, with nobody mourning his demise and Tiny Tim dying a slow and painful death.
But Dickens didn’t end A Christmas Carol on a depressing note. He showed that renewal and renaissance were possible if only one treated their fellow man with dignity and humanity. Everybody, even Ebenezer Scrooge, was capable of change.
It struck Jayne that this wasn’t just a Christmas story, but one for any time of the year. A story of humanity and hope, of sharing and selflessness. Perhaps that was why it was so universally loved.
She looked at the book again. Had her mother been trying to tell her something with this present? But in her self-absorbed early teens, Jayne wouldn’t have been able to see the message let alone understand it.
She remembered the dedication on the front leaf of the edition discovered by Ronald Welsh.
To my friend, Robert Duckworth, and his son, of Manchester, a Christmas Present for showing me a Christmas Past and a Christmas yet to come.
Who was Robert Duckworth? Was he really from Manchester? How had he shown Dickens about the Ghosts of Christmas? And more importantly, did his family still exist?
If they were still alive, Jayne was sure she could find them.
She remembered her research into Vera’s ancestors from this morning. Could this Robert Duckworth be related to her stepmother? The odds would be fantastic, but still, the identical surname was a link.
She stood up, yawned, stretched and took the now empty bottle and glass back through to the kitchen.
Mr Smith was waiting patiently in front of the patio door. Outside, the rain was still beating against the glass, the wind howling as if all the Ghosts of Christmas were desperate to be let into the house.
‘Are you sure you want to go out?’ she asked the cat.
She opened the door slightly and he rushed out into the dark. ‘Rather you than me,’ she said as he vanished from view.
She stood there for a few seconds, the wind blowing through her hair, feeling the icy rain on her face, wishing for one short breath that she could share this moment with somebody, anybody.
Then she shook her head, dismissed the thought and closed the patio door. She looked at her computer and decided she would start the research early tomorrow morning.
Could she find Robert Duckworth? She hoped so.
For some reason, after reading A Christmas Carol , it mattered to her now.
It would be her gift to Christmas.
Chapter THIRTEEN
October 3, 1843
The Adelphi Hotel, Manchester
Dickens slipped beneath the sheets of his bed. The room was spartan yet comfortable, reminding him of the rooms in which he had spent much of his life as a parliamentary reporter, quickly dashing off sketches of the debates and the proceedings.
It had been a long day, too long. Beside his bed, next to the wash basin and water jug from some factory in the Potteries, a lone candle burnt, its flame flickering in the draught from the door.
Dickens lay back and tried to sleep but his thoughts crowded in his mind. What should he do about Chuzzlewit ? How could he make the serial more enjoyable for his readers? A twist in the tail? A long-lost orphan or a forgotten sister?
Perhaps, but it all seemed so contrived, so melodramatic.
And what about his finances? The statement from Coutts had disturbed him greatly. Catherine was no use in these matters and since she had become pregnant with their fifth child, even less involved in day-to-day affairs, neglecting their existing family. She left all the finances to him, rightfully so. It was a man’s job to provide for his family. A duty in which his father had singularly failed throughout his life.
His father. Another begging letter and more money needed to redeem his debts. Where did the man spend the money? It wasn’t on anything tangible – Dickens had seen his clothes, they looked as if they belonged more in the tatter’s yard than on his father’s back.
More expense.
Perhaps he should take Somerfield’s advice and find another publisher. Chapman & Hall had not publicised Chuzzlewit at all; no wonder the serial was failing. They seemed to take so much money for doing far too little. Should he take his solicitor’s advice and change publishers? The contract was execrable, he knew that, signed when he was a young whippersnapper desperate to have a book in print. But now he was famous, selling well and worth a lot more.
His dinner with Ainsworth had been revealing. The Athenaeum speech was more important than he thought. The great and good of Manchester society would be there to greet the ‘famous author’, as his friend had described him with more than a touch of irony, or was it jealousy?
‘It’s more than a soiree in support of a library, Charles, it’s a focus away from their obsession with facts, facts, facts as the source of everything that is good and true. I believe it’s the beginning of an understanding that there is more to life than toil and labour and profit. That art and learning may be just as essential in modern life.’
Dickens had re-read his speech before retiring. It was anodyne at best and patronising at worst, saying nothing except the expected. It would have to be re-written yet again. When would he find the time?
A creak of the floorboards. The candle flickered briefly and went out.
Dickens listened for a while.
Another creak.
‘Who’s there?’ he shouted. ‘Show yourself.’
He stared into the dark, waiting for a response. Was somebody here to rob him? Or worse, murder him in his bed?
‘Who’s there?’ he shouted again.
No answer.
Outside, in the far distance, he could hear the steady throb of the steam engines pounding away in the mills. Did they never stop working?
He thought about going for a walk. It was his habi
t in London to walk the streets late at night, looking for inspiration in the lanes and alleys of his youth. Sometimes, he would walk fifteen or even twenty miles if the muse guided him. He enjoyed walking alone, his thoughts and ideas as his only company, the streets, courts and alleys his theatre, the inhabitants the cast of players.
But here, he knew nowhere to go. The dark satanic mills scared him. Perhaps he could ask Ainsworth to guide him? Not tonight then, but perhaps tomorrow, when he had summoned up enough courage, he would walk.
He lay half awake for the rest of the night, waiting for the ghost or whoever it was who had made the noise.
But nobody came.
Not that night.
Chapter FOURTEEN
Tuesday, December 17, 2019
Didsbury, Manchester
Jayne woke up early the following morning with a slight headache. Inwardly she criticised herself for finishing a whole bottle of wine the previous evening. She always believed wine should be for enjoyment, not merely getting drunk. But sitting in the living room, in front of a fire and reading the book, she had drunk far more than she intended.
It was a very pleasant evening, but she resolved to lay off the booze that day. It would be good for her liver and kidneys and even better for her soul.
She dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt and tottered downstairs. Mr Smith was sitting in the corner, licking his paws again, a contented purr shaking his body.
‘And what time did you come in last night?’ she asked him as she switched on her Nespresso machine and selected the strongest capsule she had.
There was no answer. He simply stopped what he was doing and strolled over to his empty bowl and stared at it mournfully.
‘Whatever it was, you’re obviously starving.’ Then Jayne remembered there was no wet cat food left. She took out the dry food from the cupboard and emptied a good cupful into Mr Smith’s bowl. ‘This will have to do until I get to the supermarket.’
The cat looked at his bowl, sniffed twice, then looked back at her, before strolling off to his favourite windowsill in the hall, tail erect.
‘Please yourself.’ The aroma of coffee filled the kitchen. Jayne took the cup and switched on her computer.
‘Where to begin?’ she asked herself, deciding almost immediately to dive right in. She opened the Findmypast website and selected the 1841 Census for England and Wales. She typed in ‘Robert Duckworth’ with no filters. She didn’t know his birth date or even how old he was.
168 results.
Not great. She added the filter for Lancashire, as that was the county for Manchester in the 1840s.
136 results.
A sinking feeling struck Jayne. This wasn’t going to be easy. She checked on the Forebears website. Duckworth was the 20,722nd most common surname in the world.
Not bad, but not great either. Surname regularity always affected every search. Luckily, the man she was looking for wasn’t called Smith or Davies or Evans.
She dug a little further. In England, the surname was ranked 1274th and had an incidence of 6338. She scrolled down to check the name’s origin. Duckworth was derived from a geographical locality – ‘of Duckworth’ – an estate in Oswaldtwistle, a township in the parish of Whalley, Lancashire.
The name actually originated only thirty miles north of Manchester. But given there was far less mobility back in 1841, she hoped the number of people with that combination of surname and Christian name in Manchester was low. Perhaps even Vera’s ancestors had come from the same locality.
Jayne added the filter for Manchester and just 15 results came back. She heaved a sigh of relief. At least that number was manageable, with the big proviso that when Dickens wrote ‘of Manchester’ in 1843, he was referring to Robert Duckworth living there.
She scanned down the list. Of the fifteen Robert Duckworths, four were born after 1828. In his dedication, Dickens had referred to his ‘good friend’. Would one refer to a child like that?
Probably not.
She was then left with eleven names, with births ranging from 1801 to 1826. She checked the 1841 Census again, bringing out her notebook to create a list of possibilities.
She clicked on the first name and saw the Census listing.
Birth
Address
Family
Job
Residence
1801
Minshull St
Mary, 5 children
Twister
St James Ward
She opened another website to check the job. The cotton industry in Manchester had many strange job names and titles. A ‘twister’ was somebody who ‘joins the ends of a fresh beam of threads on to the warp already on the loom. A sitting-down job, sometimes done by people who were crippled’.
Interesting, the job could have been done by somebody who was handicapped. She thought back to Tiny Tim in the novel. Was this the link?
She checked with the Census. There was no mention of a disability but that wasn’t unusual. Such notes weren’t added to the Census until 1851, and even then it was limited to deafness, blindness, the inability to speak or whether or not the person was a lunatic or an inmate at an asylum. It was up to the individual enumerator exactly what he wrote.
Jayne made a note and decided to carry on researching all the rest. She knew it would take her a long time, but it had to be done properly if it was done at all. Now was the time to dig deep.
Birth
Address
Family
Job
Residence
1801
Minshull St
Mary, 5 children
Twister
St James Ward
1806
Adam Rd
Elizabeth, 4 children
Calico Printer
Angel Meadow
1807
????
Mary, 2 children
Tailor
Collegiate Ward
1811
Mill St
Sarah, 2 children
Cotton Weaver
Ancoats
1816
Howard’s Lane
Sarah, no children
Power Loom Operator
Stockport
1816
Ardwick Green
Helen, 5 children
Block Printer
Ardwick
1819
Newberry St
Mary, 2 children
Clerk
St Annes
1826
Tickle Lane
Single
Back Tender
St John
1826
Dover St
Single
None
Chorlton-on-M
1826
St John’s St
Single
None
Crumpsall
1826
Hanging Ditch
Single
None
Deansgate
By three o’ clock, she had written down all the Robert Duckworths; their birth date, address, family, job and area of residence.
Jayne glanced over her notes. Nothing stood out as strikingly obvious that they were the person to whom Dickens had dedicated the book. She recognised the names of the suburbs and districts of Manchester. Like Stockport, Ardwick and Deansgate. Chorlton-on-M was the short form for Chorlton-on-Medlock, an area closest to the city centre, just south of Oxford Road.
She checked out the inscription in the book again. It mentioned Robert Duckworth and a son. Did that mean she could eliminate the single men? She felt that was an acceptable assumption given the lack of time to investigate everybody.
After that, her list was now just seven possibilities.
Birth
Address
Family
Job
Residence
1801
Minshull St
Mary, 5 children
Twister
St James Ward
1806
<
br /> Adam Rd
Elizabeth, 4 children
Calico Printer
Angel Meadow
1807
????
Mary, 2 children
Tailor
Collegiate Ward
1811
Mill St
Sarah, 2 children
Cotton Weaver
Ancoats
1816
Howard’s Lane
Sarah, no children
Power Loom Operator
Stockport
1816
Ardwick Green
Helen, 5 children