Every Ticket Tells a Story

Pawnbroker’s tickets from the shop of Francis W. Campbell, High Street, Clay Cross, 1910.

Mr Payne pawned a silver Albert chain and a medal on the 24 May 1910.

Mr Frederick Payne’s parents David and Fanny moved to Clay Cross in the mid 1850s, and he was their third child, and the first of their ten children to be born at Clay Cross. He was born in 1856, and probably had a typical upbringing for the times, his family flitting between Clay Cross, Holmgate and Tupton. In 1877 both his mother and his younger brother Matthew died (aged 17) within the space of two months, which must have been devastating for the family.

Mr Payne married Mary Stevenson at North Wingfield the following year, and they were living with their two children at Bircumshaw’s Houses, Waterloo Street Clay Cross in 1881. Meanwhile, his 18 year old brother Alfred, perhaps reluctant to become a coal miner like the rest of the men in the family, signed up for 6 years service in the 57th Brigade and departed for Scotland for training in May 1881. He was severely wounded in Egypt in 1882, and received an Egyptian Campaign medal.

Frederick Payne’s wife Mary died aged just 29 in January 1889, and his father died in Chesterfield Workhouse less than a month later. Mr Payne and his children were boarding with a family on Eyre Street in 1891, and the following year he remarried. By 1901 he and his second wife Sarah had a 3-roomed home on Eyre Street, and four children all under eight years of age. His two children by his first wife had gone to live with relatives.

In February 1898 Mr Payne’s son by his first marriage, James, enlisted and served in the army for 12 years. In that time he went to Malta, South Africa, and China, and was awarded the Queen’s South African medal.

Frederick Payne and another of his sons (also Frederick) both worked at Pilsley Colliery. Frederick Payne junior was injured there in March 1910 (though perhaps not too badly as he survived only to be killed in action in April 1917). Worse was to follow, as Mr Payne’s wife Sarah died in childbirth in December 1910 (due to lack of proper care), and he died at Eyre Street in November 1912. He left six children ranging in ages from 8 to 18.

When Mr Payne pawned the medal in 1910, was it his brother’s Egypt Campaign medal, his son James’s South Africa Campaign medal, or some other medal? We can’t know for sure, but we can be certain that the five shillings would have been very useful for his family in those difficult times.

Mrs Hearn pawned a pair of trousers on 18 August 1910.

Mrs Constance Jane Hearn (known as Jane) was born in Little Eaton in 1880, and grew up in Breadsall where her father, Robert Hazlegrove, was an engine driver at the waterworks. She was six years old when her mother died in 1886, and her father was clearly unable to look after all four children left to his care. In 1891 Jane and two of her brothers were in Shardlow Workhouse. In later years the Hazlegrove family appear to have been reunited, and her father was living at Trowell with her brothers on the census returns of 1901 and 1911. He died there in September 1911.

How Jane Hazlegrove came to meet Charles Hearn is unknown. he was a Londoner, but had come to the East Midlands work as a coal miner before 1890. and can be found living at Alton (Ashover parish) with his first wife Elizabeth in 1891 (they married at Ashover in 1890). Mrs Elizabeth Hearn died the following year aged just 24. Jane was living with Charles Hearn at Ripley by 1901, and in 1911 they were the parents of six children. The family had moved to Church Row on Church Lane, North Wingfield, circa 1906. At North Wingfield, Mr and Mrs Hearn lived next door to Mr Cornelius Corbett and his wife Emmie, a couple in their 30s with four young children. I believe the note on the bottom of the redemption slip refers to this family.

It appears that Mrs Hearn took a pair of trousers to the pawn shop to raise 2/6 for her next door neighbours. The Corbetts may have been raising funds to pay for a doctor. I venture to guess that Mrs Emmie Corbett was very ill. She died less than a month later, and was buried at North Wingfield on 13 September 1910.