Isabella Kelly

J There is no trace of Isabella on the 1881 census when she would have been 3.  We don’t hear of her until the snowy March of 1888 when she was found  with her half-sister Ruth wandering the streets of Stockport in a starving and ill-clothed condition having been sent out by their father to beg.  The two girls were sent to an Industrial School by the Police Court until they were fourteen.  The 1891 census finds Isabella at the Liverpool Certified Girls’ Industrial School, Northumberland Terrace, Everton.  She would have been taught basic literacy and numeracy – she was illiterate when she was admitted – and the skills required for domestic service.  Where she went when she left and how she ended up in Leeds is unknown.  She may have gone to James to look after the children.  She called herself Appleton when she married and on all her children’s birth certificates and did not use Kelly until her marriage to John Cale when she gave John Kelly as her father.

Appleton was her step-mother’s first married name (her husband divorced her, unusual at the time, because of her adultery with John Kelly) and Dennis which she gives her eldest child Jane as a middle name was her step-mother’s maiden name.  On what basis they were married we will never know.  On Jack Cale’s birth certificate she gives her occupation as housekeeper and perhaps that’s what she was she looking after the house and James children from his first marriage in return for a home.  We will never know how many of her children were James’.  Edith Houghton nee Barker said thought her a rough woman -they came from very different backgrounds –  and would not go to see her though Isabella stayed with them for a week in Selly Oak.  Her daughter’s gave her money each week when she was widowed but Walter did not contribute as due to illness his earnings were so precarious.  Edith said she was, ‘no better than she should be.’