In 1889, 20-year-old William Hoodless boarded the SS Buffalo in the port of Hull bound for New York. The manifest tells us he was “in charge of horses” by profession a groom, so he may have worked his passage across the Atlantic in that capacity.
William was born June 1868 on a farm in the small village of South Willingham on the edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds. A place where life and the countryside around the village had likely not changed for centuries, until recent industrial and mechanical improvements in farming methods threatened the livelihood of many farm labourers. He was the 9th child of ten, born to William and Elizabeth in this tiny rural village.
On 15th January 1896 William marries Irish born Hannah Shine in Manhattan. The summer of that year the north-eastern states of America experienced a heatwave which saw temperatures exceed 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 deg Celsius) resulting in the deaths of thousands. The Lower East Side of Manhattan saw 420 people over the course of nine days in August as a result of the oppressive and stagnant conditions.
The 1900 Census records the couple in their fourth year of marriage living in a boarding house on 6th Avenue somewhere between W 50th and W53rd Streets, run by Irish sisters, Margaret and Mary White. Nowadays these blocks are a high-rise canyon and the location of such tourist attractions as Radio City Music Hall, the Rockerfeller Centre and The Musuem of Modern Art.
6th Ave circa 1900 had one of the first elevated railways transporting workers up and downtown.
William Hoodless was a coachman and worked with horses. As we can see from the scene above, horse-drawn transport was about to become a dying mode and his, a dying profession. Although William had been in the States for 11 years, he was still an alien, he had not been naturalized. Things were clearly not going well for the couple and a few years later on 31st October 1910, at the age of 41 William is found guilty of burglary and petty larceny and sentenced to 12 months in Auburn Prison. On 5th May 1910 the State Census records that William was residing in Deerfield just outside Oneida in a boarding house but had been out of work for 4 weeks. Hannah, his wife, was working as a servant in the house of Frederic Coolidge a distinguished orthopedic surgeon who lived in Pittsfield on the Massachusetts border, about 140 miles away. Separation and distressing circumstances no doubt contributed to William’s Incarceration.
The record tells us William has moved out of New York City and is resident in Oneida, a small rural township about 250 miles north of Manhattan in Madison County, New York. He states he has been working as a coachman and possibly moved north out of the city to find work where horse drawn transport would still be the norm. His charge is 3rd degree burglary and petty larceny – the theft of low value items.
A person is guilty of burglary in the third degree when he knowingly enters or remains unlawfully in a building with intent to commit a crime therein.
New York State penal code
Burglary in the third degree is a class D felony.
Auburn Prison was a notoriously violent and controversial prison which held the first execution by electric chair in 1890. Riots and uprisings and race-related violence were regular occurrences. Reformed later in the 1890’s it still maintained strict discipline. Other than essential work-related conversation, the inmates were silent, wore a rough striped cotton unform and walked in lockstep as a group when moving around.
William served 10 months of his 12-month term and his discharge record gives us some insight into his time at Auburn. He had been unemployed at the time of his arrest. He weighed 175lb on entry and 167lb on discharge, a testament that the food was at least adequate. He was of moderate habits and good health. This is a positive turn of events but there’s no evidence William and Hannah were reunited.
William tried to get his life back on track as this entry in the Utica city directory shows. He was living there on West Street and advertising himself as a coachman. I feel if he had retrained or changed to a different trade or profession William would have had better luck. Horses as a mode of transport are on the out. America is about to take the automobile to the next level, and everyone embraces motorized transport. William was living in the last century it seems.
The next document we have for William is this one admitting him to Oneida County Almshouse an imposing institution in Rome, New York which took in the poor, disabled and destitute people of the county, who found themselves unable to pay their bills or work to support themselves.
For most people poorhouses were the absolute last resort. They were a catch all for the indigent and the mentally ill who had nowhere else to go and the conditions were extremely basic. Oneida County Almshouse also had a farm of over 100 acres in which it would put to work those who were able bodied. On his induction card we can see that William has a physical disability affecting his legs and is described as a “cripple”. He claims to be single, no sign or acknowledgement of his wife Hannah. It’s sad that they had no children, and their lives and legacies were so short.
Concerned that William, now aged 49, might have lived out his remaining days at the poorhouse among the insane and the neglected, I pursued any information or sign of him after 1918. In the 1920 Census for New York State, he was living in Utica and employed as a hotel porter and then nothing further. However, as I desperately spread my searches over a wider area, I came across a passenger list for a ship called the Saxonia departing New York and arriving at Plymouth, England on 13th April 1923. On the manifest is a coachman of the correct age, 54 years, called William Hoodless and his proposed address is 26 Langworthgate, Lincoln. This is William, cutting his losses, accepting that America was not his dream after all and returning to his birthplace. His home, because he never took American citizenship, just like he never stopped being a coachman.
But how can we be sure? Well, in the 1921 UK Census for the address William gives above is the home of Mary Ann Hoodless, aged 54 years and originally born in South Willingham. She is William’s older sister.
William died in Lincoln and was buried on 19th June 1928. I’d like to imagine his final five years were a lot happier than the decades he struggled to make a life for himself in the United States.