The whole BHC thing sounds cruel; but look at Amelia’s life. I choose to belive she had a happy ending with Martin.Amelia becomes what the Victorians labled a “fallen woman” (plot spoiler – she eventually outlives the rest of them in what I really hope was relative comfort and a happy relationship.)

Amelia is the youngest of Sarah Elizabeth’s full siblings; she was born in St Albans on 6th December 1859 and baptised there on 29th January at St Peters. Before she was 2 the family had moved to Birmingham and her mother, Hannah, had died. Her father Charles quickly remarried and by her 12th birthday she has three half-siblings and all her full siblings have left home.

The details:

Birth: born in St Albans on 6th December 1859 and baptised there on 29th January at St Peters. Before she was 2 the family had moved to Birmingham and her mother, Hannah, had died.

Her father married Emily Dawson on 22nd June 1863; on the 25^th August 1863 he was drunk on duty and by 25^th August 1864 he was dismissed from the police force but “allowed to resign”.

1871 census: only child from first marriage still at home.vvv

She is 21 at the time of the 1881 census, and an “Inmate” at a “womens Refuge” at 37 Tindal Street, Kings Norton. This was the Tindal House Refuge run by the Birmingham Town Mission to give “fallen women a chance to redeem their character”…

1891 Laundress at an Institution for Friendless Girls in St Vincent St (?)

1901 Laundress at Cobden Hotel, Cherry St. This is around the time that Marj says “my grandmother fell out with her husband and walked form Blackburn to Birmingham with my mother and worked at the Arden temperance hotel she stayed with her sister in City Road” (this must be Amelia – The Arden and the Cobden were linked; SE’s only other sister had her hands full with step and own children plus a husband.)

1911 census Amelia’s future husband Martin David Tovey is living 2 Bk 41 Garbett Street – Ralph Payne is 2Bk 28. Is this part of the connection that brings Hannah to Birmingham and to Ralph?

1911 Inmate at “Mony Hall Colony For Feeble Minded and Sane Epileptics Birmingham Aston and King’s Norton Joint Poor Law Committee, Mony Hall Colony Near King’s Heath, Birmingham” – aged 51 and “Formerly Laundress”.

1918 Marries Martin David Tovey

1921 census Alma Mater, College Street – Martin is 74 but in work as a tool maker

1939 register still there, both retired. Martin died 26th October 1939 aged 93.

Amelia died 6th February 1941 and is buried in Witton cemetery.

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