Cecelia Blyghton

In the novel

Cecelia Blyghton enters Young & Condemned as Allen Griffiths’ mother, but the surviving records reveal a woman whose own life stretched far beyond the part she plays in his story. She was born Cecelia Blyghton — her name appearing in the records in several forms, including Sisilia, Cecilia and Cecelia — and was baptised at Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, on 28 October 1804, the daughter of Robert and Mary Blyghton. On 5 February 1827, Cecelia married William Griffiths at Radford, Nottingham. Over the following decade, five children can be traced to the couple: George, Allen, Mary Elizabeth, Cecelia and Mary Ann. Even within these records, Cecelia’s identity shifts. She appears variously as Cecelia, Sylvia and Sylva, while some of the children’s baptism entries give her surname as Mundy rather than Blyghton. The family also knew loss. Their daughter Cecelia, born in February 1835, died only weeks later. Mary Ann, born the following year, died in 1838 at about three years of age. By the time Allen appears in the 1841 census, the household that remained looked very different.

The historical record

In 1841 Cecelia was living in Earl Street, Nottingham, with eleven-year-old Allen and eight-year-old Elizabeth. Also in the household was seventy-five-year-old Mary Mundy. They shared the address with James and Harriet Marshall and their children, together with two other women and their children. The household is particularly interesting because it brings together several generations of Cecelia’s maternal family. Mary Mundy was Cecelia’s mother, Mary Julia Lane, while Harriet Marshall’s maiden name was Blyghton. Mary Julia had married three times. She first married Robert Blyghton on 18 October 1801 at Sutton-in-Ashfield. Their children included Hannah or Harriet, baptised in 1802, and Sisilia —(Allen’s mother) baptised in 1804. After Robert’s death, Mary married John Munday on 25 October 1808 at Nottingham. Following his death, she married for a third time, to Henry Haslam Francis Hough on 26 November 1820 at St Mary’s, Nottingham. Mary Julia’s marriages help explain the different surnames attached to Cecelia in the surviving records. Cecelia was born Blyghton, but her mother later became Munday/Mundy. Several of Cecelia’s children were baptised with their mother identified as Mundy, while other records identify her as Blyghton. The 1841 census therefore captures more than Allen, his mother and sister sharing a Nottingham house. Living with them was Allen’s maternal grandmother, Mary, while the Marshall family represented another branch of the Blyghton family. It was an extended family household spanning several generations, at a time when Cecelia was raising Allen without William present.

Two later census records almost certainly trace Cecelia after Allen disappeared from the English record. In 1861, a Cecelia Griffiths, aged fifty-five and still described as married, was boarding in Red Street in the parish of St Mary, Nottingham. Her occupation was lace maker. Ten years later, at 1 Pomfret Street in the same parish, Cecelia Griffiths appears again. She was now recorded as sixty-eight, widowed, a lace maker and a boarder. The ages are consistent with Cecelia’s 1804 baptism, the occupation fits Nottingham’s lace-working economy, and both addresses place her in the same St Mary district in which she had lived in 1841. No other Cecelia Griffiths of comparable age has been identified in Nottingham. Taken together, the evidence makes it very likely that these entries belong to Allen’s mother, although neither census provides enough information to prove the identification absolutely.

If so, they give us a striking final glimpse of her. While Allen was building an entirely new life in Victoria — marrying Alice, raising children and eventually selecting land — his mother remained in Nottingham. More than twenty years after watching her thirteen-year-old son disappear into the prison system, Cecelia was still earning her living with her hands as a lace maker.

Cecelia’s final surviving record comes only a few years later. She was buried in Nottingham on 24 June 1874, aged about sixty-nine. Unless a corresponding death registration or burial entry gives the actual date of death, the precise day on which she died remains unknown. By then Allen had been in Victoria for twenty-seven years. He was married, the father of a growing family, and had built a life more than ten thousand miles from the Nottingham streets where Cecelia remained.

The record does not tell us whether Cecelia ever learned what became of Allen, whether letters crossed the distance between Nottingham and Victoria, or whether mother and son ever had contact again. She died without ever seeing him return to England. On whether they remained part of one another’s lives, the historical record is silent.