The Walmsley Family of Liverpool

The Children of John Walmsley (ii)

William (b 1830) was perhaps the most talented (or at least best educated) of John Walmsley's children. Despite his father’s death in 1838 and the expectation that he would not receive the lengthy schooling accorded to his elder brother James and might perhaps follow John Head into the tough working world, in fact his mother Mary Ann applied to have him admitted to the Blue Coat Hospital school in Liverpool. This was a charitable foundation, whose function Picton colourfully described in Memorials of Liverpool as “godlike work of rescuing orphans from destitution and vice, and educating them to be useful members of society”.

Blue Coat Hospital School

In the mid-19^th century by no means all the pupils were orphans but the vast majority of those who were not were fatherless. William was accepted and took up his place in 1841 at the age of 10. His school uniform was a blue Tudor frock coat with yellow stockings and white bands. He has the rare distinction of having been recorded twice in the 1841 census – at home and at school! Like his cousin (Sir) Joshua, William did not go straight from school into employment but stayed on as a teacher. In 1851 he was one of seven young men and women aged between 14 and 20, classed as apprentices, who acted as assistant teachers to the Master and Schoolmistress. Aside from the principal disciplines of reading, writing and arithmetic, the Blue Coat seems to have encouraged music, which became a key feature of William’s life.

At some point in the 1850s William gave up teaching and, like his father, became a book keeper, seemingly on his way to becoming a merchant. Perhaps this was under the influence of his future in-laws. For In 1857, at the age of 26, William married Annie Mullin (b 1832), the daughter of James Mullin, a book keeper born in Ireland but settled in Liverpool, and Anne Newall, who was born in Liverpool. (Once again William confused the record keepers: the entry in the marriage register at St Augustine’s in Everton originally gave his father’s name as William Derby, evidently through confusion with his address of W (West) Derby!) William and Annie lived in Sandstone Road in the Old Swan area of West Derby. For a while William’s mother Mary Ann was living with them but in the late 1850s she moved back to Liverpool. In 1858 the first child arrived and was christened Annie Newall. A second child, rather exotically named James Ulric, followed in 1860. (The name James is clearly in honour of Annie’s father; the origin of Ulric is unclear but it was not a Walmsley name and its predominantly Irish distribution suggests it too was inspired by James Mullin.) However, in late 1861, at the age of just three, Annie Newall died. Meanwhile, in addition to his work as a book keeper, William was also the organist at St Anne’s in Stanley (West Derby), just a few streets away from his home.

Then in the early 1860s William and Annie abandoned Liverpool and went off to live in North Wales. The choice of Flintshire is easily explained, given the earlier presence there of William’s sister Margaret but the other circumstances are baffling.The 1871 census shows William living in Spon Green in Buckley with his unmarried eldest sister Elizabeth and working as a schoolmaster. Annie meanwhile was living in nearby Hartsheath, with their son Ulric and her older widowed sister Eliza, running a lodging house. In 1881 William was still living with Elizabeth and is described as a professor of music (ie. music teacher). Annie’s whereabouts are unknown but Ulric was back in Liverpool. One can only speculate that William consciously chose (or was obliged as a result of financial difficulties such as bankruptcy) to give up his work as a book keeper and return to his former occupation as a teacher but specialising in music. Perhaps his older sisters were able to find him a position in Buckley and also provide accommodation near to his school. The apparent separation from Annie is difficult to explain in terms other than a breakdown in their marriage. What became of William and Annie is not clear.

Ulric went on to find a degree of fame as an artist and lived until 1954. An account of his life and that of his son Leo Walmsley the novelist by Frances Wilson is to be found at The Walmsley Society. One unresolved issue is how Ulric, the son of a talented musician, came to be an artist. In 1881 at the age of just 20 he was already styling himself a landscape painter and living in lodgings in Everton. One possible explanation may be found in his older cousin Alice Walmsley, the unmarried daughter of his uncle Joshua. Alice was an art teacher living with her family a few miles away in Toxteth Park. With so many Walmsley uncles, aunts and cousins having died and with his father still absent in Wales, Ulric may well have become close to Joshua’s family. Conceivably it was Alice who nurtured and tutored the young talent.