Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 713, August 25, 1877
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Various
Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 713, August 25, 1877
A STRANGE FAMILY HISTORY
For the following curious episode of family history we are indebted to a descendant of one of the chief personages involved; his story runs as follows.
Somewhat less than one hundred years ago, a large schooner, laden with oranges from Spain, and bound for Liverpool, was driven by stress of weather into the Solway Firth, and after beating about for some time, ran at last into the small port of Workington, on the Cumberland coast. For several previous days some of the crew had felt themselves strangely 'out of sorts,' as they termed it; were depressed and languid, and greatly inclined to sleep; but the excitement of the storm and the instinct of self-preservation had kept them to their duties on deck. No sooner, however, had the vessel been safely moored in the harbour than a reaction set in; the disease which had lurked within them proclaimed its power, and three of them betook themselves to their hammocks more dead than alive. The working-power of the ship being thus reduced and the storm continuing, the master determined to discharge and sell his cargo on the spot. This was done. But his men did not recover; he too was seized with the same disease; and before many days were past most of them were in the grave. Ere long several of the inhabitants of the village were similarly affected, and some died; by-and-by others were smitten down; and in less than three weeks after the arrival of the schooner it became evident that a fatal fever or plague had broken out amongst the inhabitants of the village.
The authorities of the township took alarm; and under the guidance of Squire Curwen of Workington Hall, all likely measures were taken to arrest or mitigate the fatal malady. Among other arrangements, a band of men was formed whose duties were to wait upon the sick, to visit such houses as were reported or supposed to contain victims of the malady, and to carry the dead to their last home.
Among the first who fell under this visitation was a man named John Pearson, who, with his wife and a daughter, lived in a cottage in the outskirts of the village. He was employed as a labourer in an iron foundry close by. For some weeks his widow and child escaped the contagion; but ere long it was observed that their cottage window was not opened; and a passer-by stopping to look at the house, thought he heard a feeble moan as from a young girl. He at once made known his fears to the proper parties, who sent two of the 'plague-band' to examine the case. On entering the abode it was seen that poor Mrs Pearson was a corpse; and her little girl, about ten years old, was lying on her bosom dreadfully ill, but able to cry: 'Mammy, mammy!' The poor child was removed to the fever hospital, and the mother to where her husband had been recently taken. How long the plague continued to ravage the village, I am not able to say; but as it is about the Pearson family, and not about the plague I am going to write, such information may be dispensed with.
The child, Isabella Pearson, did not die; she conquered the foe, and was left to pass through a more eventful life than that which generally falls to the lot of a poor girl. Although an orphan, she was not without friends; an only and elder sister was with relatives in Dublin, and her father's friends were well-to-do farmers in Westmoreland. Nor was she without powerful interest in the village of her birth: Lady Curwen, of the Hall, paid her marked attention, as she had done her mother, because that mother was of noble descent, as I shall now proceed to shew.
Isabella Pearson (mother of the child we have just spoken of), whose maiden name was Day, was a daughter of the Honourable Elkanah Day and of his wife Lady Letitia, daughter of the Earl of Annesley. How she came to marry John Pearson forms one of the many chapters in human history which come under the head of Romance in Real Life, o