One Life

Sometimes, quite by accident, I stumble across lives that aren’t closely related enough to the family I’m researching to include, but are so full of juice that I can’t just leave them be. Pattie Robinson had one such life.

She was born Martha Lewis, probably in 1877, but was always known as Pattie. Her father, Edward Lewis, was a miner. He died in early 1881, leaving her mother – Ann Priscilla – widowed with six children. In 1883, Ann married a Belarussian Jewish immigrant named Solomon Robinson. Solomon was born in Minsk in approximately 1850, and his birth surname is unknown.

Pattie adopted the surname Robinson when her mother remarried. They lived in Clydach, where Solomon worked as a furniture dealer. In the 1890s, he began to build a life in Canada and was regularly away from home. Ann moved to Builth Wells, where she was born, and took her children with her.

In early 1898, in Builth Wells, Pattie gave birth to her first child, the exotically named Desdemona. About eighteen months later, aged twenty-two, Pattie married John Lewis Lionel Whislay. John was a solicitor’s clerk, born in Liverpool to a tailor from London and a Welshwoman. His father had abandoned the family in the 1870s, and his mother had run a grocery store in Builth. They had a son together six months after their marriage, and then separated.

In March 1901, when the census was taken, Pattie and her two children was living with her mother near Builth Castle. John Whislay had moved to Brecon. He had been ordered to pay separation maintenance, but stopped in the summer of 1904. He was consequently summoned to court, and testified that he had stopped paying maintenance because Pattie was seeing other men (maintenance to wives was only paid while they remained single, which did not include living in sin). He called several witnesses who agreed that a man named Isaac Thomas had been visiting Pattie, but Isaac and Pattie vehemently denied it. John Whislay was sent to prison for three weeks for defaulting on payment.

After he was released from prison, John moved to Newport. He married, bigamously, twice more, and died in Leeds in 1931.

Pattie’s mother died in Builth in 1904. Her stepfather, Solomon, her children, and several of her siblings emigrated to Canada where Solomon had a successful ice cream company. Her son eventually returned to England, but her eldest daughter did not. Pattie remained in Wales, and met a man called William Frederick Cox. William was a chimney sweep from Reading, born in 1875.

By May 1907, Pattie and William were living on Southampton Street in Reading. On the 23rd of that month, when eight months pregnant, Pattie tried to kill herself. She took hydrochloric acid, widely available as a cleaning product at the time, after an argument about money. Pattie was arrested, as attempted suicide was still a criminal offence, but discharged into her husband’s care: her gravid state was not mentioned in the newspapers. She gave birth to an apparently healthy girl on 25th June.

In April 1911, William and Pattie were living as Mr and Mrs Cox on Katesgrove Lane in Reading. Another daughter had been born in May 1910, and given the unusual name Lemburg. Three other couples lived in the house, and two of them had children. Pattie was again pregnant at this time.

The baby boy was born in mid-September 1911, and died from want of care at birth, according to the inquest. A midwife was not sent for until after the child was born, and she described the birth as ‘sordid’. It is unclear whether the baby died because Pattie deliberately had him without help, or whether he was born too quickly to summon help. What is interesting is that she claimed her husband, John Whisley, was an American barrister!

They moved to Crane Wharf, and married bigamously in late 1913.

In February 1921, William was arrested and charged with having a revolver without a license, after threatening to shoot Pattie after an argument. In September 1921, William was sentenced to four months hard labour for pimping out Pattie. Pattie does not appear to have been given any punishment.

However, knowing that Pattie had been working as a prostitute throws light on much of her life. It seems her first husband’s accusations may have been true. Perhaps the argument about money which sparked her suicide attempt in 1907 was because she no longer wished to work at an advanced stage of pregnancy. If the baby boy who died was not William’s, perhaps he did not want to pay for the midwife to deliver it. It seems their relationship was abusive and coercive throughout.

Pattie died in 1936, aged fifty-nine. Her death was registered as Patricia Cox, born in 1881. William Frederick Cox died in 1940.

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