This may be a picture of Elizabeth Fishwick Blinkhorn

My grandmother was a Blinkhorn. Her mother was a Fishwick. I believe my grandmother economically married up into the Moore family. The Moore’s were not the wealthiest inhabitants of Aspull. The Moore’s were basically coal miners. However, they did have enough capital to start a small store and support their church. The Blinkhorn on the other hand were just plain poor… very poor.

My grandmother’s father was Henry Blinkhorn. He was the son of Robert Blinkhorn and Alice Richardson. At the time of Henry’s birth, the Blinkhorn’s lived in area of Wigan called Scholes. It was one poorest areas of Wigan.

Martin Cruz Smith in his novel, Rose, described the area quite well. One thing I remember about his description was that the miners would get drunk at the local pub. They would strip down except for their wooden clogs that had a metal tip on them. They would tie their leg to an opponent. They would fight by kicking trying to inflict injury with the metal tips on their clogs.

Later George Orwell would describe the poverty in the Scholes area in his book, The Road To Wigan Pier. Although his book describes the poverty some 30 years after the Blinkhorns left Wigan, we can still make generalizations of the poverty there in 1900.

Henry Blinkhorn married Elizabeth Fishwick on 18 Mar 1872. (I believe Elizabeth Fishwick was even poorer than the Blinkhorns when she was born and through the first 11 or so years of her life. I am not sure if her condition improved after 1861. I do know it could not have gotten much worse.)

Henry and Elizabeth move from Scholes to nearby Ince. Henry is coal Miner. Their children were: James (June 1873), Jane (1875), William (1877), John (1879), Phoebe (1882), Robert (1885), Henry (1887), Thomas (1890), Arthur (1892), Catherine (1891).

Sometime around 1907 Henry and Elizabeth immigrated to Sydney Mines. With them came Francis and Phoebe Blinkhorn Moore. Others that came were Arthur, and James. (James married Mary Moore Francis Moore’s sister.) They may have been other Blinkhorns that immigrated as well.

Henry died in Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia on 14 Apr 1918. Elizabeth died in Sydney Mines on 05 Jan 1926. She is buried in Brookside Cemetery. I assume Henry is there with her.

Copyright: Paul Moore Sep 2011