Mary Ann Lawrence

Mary Ann Lawrence is an enigma. Of all the people I've tried to trace, Mary Ann has been the most difficult, as you will see. In the Mackay family tree a Mackay married a Mackay (not as uncommon as it may sound as we have Ross, Fyffe and Binnie pairs as well) but this wasn't quite as it seemed.

Daniel Mackay married Alice Mackay in Edinburgh in 1877 and because this was the modern era we have full details of their parentage. Alice's parents are Thomas Mackay, a seaman in the merchant service, and Mary Ann Lawrence and at the time of this marriage Thomas is no longer alive but Mary Ann still is. A search for their own marriage finds nothing but that's not unusual as it could have been before compulsory registration came in on January 1st 1855.  Alice's birth is estimated, by her age in other documents, to be around 1855 or 1856, just inside that line but sadly her birth record can't be found either.

To compound matters, neither Mary Ann or Alice could be located in the 1861 census and by 1871 Alice had branched out on her own, soon to marry Daniel and form a conventional tree from that point. So we have some big gaps to fill in Mary Ann's past but since all Alice's records point to having been born in Aberdeen we are able to look there and Mary Ann's own birth and first census aged 7 can be found fairly easily. The parents given here, George Lawrence and Christina Mason, were confirmed later from other records so we know we have the right person. To summarise, all we knew about Mary Ann was that she was born in 1834 in Aberdeen and was still there in 1841 but her daughter married in Edinburgh in 1977 under the name Alice Mackay.

The key to unlocking a bit more of the puzzle was that in William Mackay's marriage record his mother is recorded as Alice Mackay, maiden surname Johnston! How could this be? Had Mary Ann married a Mr Johnston along the way? It looked unlikely as Alice was definitely maiden surname Mackay in her own marriage record. If you're following this, it means that I didn't know if I was looking for a Mary Ann Mackay, Lawrence or Johnston and given the possible variations of those names (her dad was George Laurance at his marriage) and the possibility that she was noted as Maryann or just Mary, the permutations seemed insurmountable.

However, through perseverance and luck, the following snippets have been uncovered. In the 1901 census she was found as a nurse at the City Hospital of Infectious Diseases in Infirmary Street, Edinburgh. She is listed as a widow named Mary Ann Johnstone born in Aberdeen. This breakthrough led to a 1911 census find as a lodger in a house in Leith where she was noted as a Monthly Nurse, now an Old Age Pensioner. Finally her death in the Poorhouse at Seafield tied this all together as her parents are just as we predicted and she is noted as being the widow of Fred Johnstone, Seaman. She obviously liked the sailors.

It was certainly a sad end to be in the poorhouse but there was more bad news. My investigation of the 1851 census eventually uncovered her in Aberdeen Penitentiary!  This was a sign that she had been a bad girl as the notes below will show. Her brother is also found in that census but noted as an "orphant" lodging with an old lady and a miscellaneous bunch of others. A subsequent search did indeed confirm that both parents had been dead for four years. The Penitentiary wasn't just an orphanage; it definitely was for girls who needed reforming.

The lack of any sign of Mary Ann from 1851 to 1901 (there was no indication she was present at Alice's wedding) led me to believe that she had sailed away with Thomas Mackay and/or Fred Johnstone and could have been anywhere, only returning when Fred had died. Searches in England proved fruitless.

Clutching at straws one day I came across her marriage to Fred in 1871. It was in Edinburgh, well inland in the Viewforth and Fountainbridge region, not down at the port of Leith as I would have expected. The next surprise was that he wasn't Fred Johnstone but Johan Fredrik Johansen, a Norwegian sailor whose parents' details allowed me to place his home as at the entrance to the inlet which leads to Olso. She admitted to being six years older than him but not the nine she really was! She is also noted as a spinster so there never was a marriage to Thomas Mackay even though Alice took his name.

She wasn't to be found in Brandfield Place in the 1871 census even although she gave that as her address in her 1871 marriage.  I decided, as she had later been noted as a former nurse and that she should still be in Edinburgh, to look in Chalmers Hospital where her daughter Alice was working and there she was. The reason I hadn't found her before was that someone had noted the wrong first name, wrong second name and wrong age! This could easily be explained as whoever gave the info probably didn't really know the staff well and anyway Mary Ann had a tendency to underestimate her age. The marriage took place in 17 Viewforth Terrace and this turned out to be the Minister's house. The couple weren't to be found in 4 Brandfield Street at the census but 3 out of the 10 flats of that address had an Aberdonian as the head of the household, suggesting that Johan and Mary Ann had been staying with friends.

I thought I'd traced her back in Aberdeen with new children in the 1881 and 1891 censuses but it was a near-miss.  This Mary Ann Johnston was about the right age and remarkably also married a Norwegian sailor named Johansen, in this case a Charles but you never know. After much searching I eventually found a birth record for one of the children and the mother turned out to be maiden surname Fraser so she was not our Mary Ann.

There is still a lot to find but there is an indication that she may have been in Edinburgh for longer than I thought. All I have to do is find what name variant she is listed under! Another possibility is that she moved to Norway for a few years.

 

The Penitentiary in Mount Street went under the alternative name of the Industrial Asylum and Reformatory for Girls or even the Industrial Asylum and Reformatory School for Protestant Girls and was set up by William Harvey, a public benefactor.

A report from the William Harvey's Trust in the possession of Aberdeen University says -

The Girls' Penitentiary was founded before 1851, and the trustees took over direct management in 1852. It was well established by 1859 as an 'Industrial Asylum for the Rescue and Reformation of Females of dissolute habits'. Francis Edmond, advocate, feued the trustees land in Mount Street, Aberdeen, and they fitted up a building there for 60 inmates, for 'the reception and detention as a middle place between the prison and Society for young girls who have fallen into or are verging towards crime'. Application was made to H.M. Inspector of Reformatories for a licence, which he agreed was appropriate but recommended that there should be segregation between 'the Vicious Class ... and the merely Criminal Class'.

A further report is entitled "William Harvey's Trust: papers relating to Aberdeen Girls' Penitentiary: correspondence: Letter asking for continuance of aid to The Home for Fallen Females". The term "fallen females" in those days related to promiscuous girls or those involved in prostitution as indicated in the Wikipedia article on the Magdalene Asylums. As a Protestant school it wouldn't have been run by nuns but it would nevertheless have been a harsh regime.