Aged 61, Horse Man, while engaged removing two trucks he got his foot fast in crossing points and the trucks went over him, Buried: Skelton in Cleveland, All Saints on 14 May 1883
Parish records image by kind permission of Teesside Archives.
Aged 61, Horse Man, while engaged removing two trucks he got his foot fast in crossing points and the trucks went over him, Buried: Skelton in Cleveland, All Saints on 14 May 1883
Parish records image by kind permission of Teesside Archives.
In the 1881 census, the nearest in time to Robert’s death, there are 41 Robert Watsons who were born between 1820 and 1824 inclusive. Of these, only 11 were living in Yorkshire. Unfortunately none of them was living in the Cleveland area. There was, however, one individual who seemed a likely candidate to be this Robert Watson. He was a 60-year old Ironstone Miner, born in Durham, and an inmate of the Pickering Union Workhouse. I hypothesise that he had previously worked in the ironstone mines in Rosedale, had become unemployed and been given a place in the Workhouse. As he was not born in any of the parishes which formed the Pickering Union, they would have moved him on so that he didn’t become a drain upon the Union. I suspect he made his way to our part of the world and took employment at South Skelton, probably living as a lodger with a family at Magra.
There’s a fair amount of supposition in the foregoing but it’s the best I’ve been able to come up with.