Elizabeth was the eldest of Archibald Hoodless II and Esther Atkinson’s children. Born in Wetheral, Cumberland, she went to live with her widowed Grandfather (Archibald Hoodless Snr) and her Aunt Jane from the age twelve. She was still living with them in 1871 when Archibald ran the Wetheral grocers shop. So it seems to have been a long standing arrangement.
In 1871 Elizabeth was 21 years old and worked as a barmaid “out of place” i.e. not in the shop ran by her Grandfather and Aunt Jane. There were two lodgers living at the store at this time, one was a 20 year old stonemason from Scotland called David Edgar. I mention this because six years later Elizabeth marries master stonemason, John Henry Lomas at Upperby, the town closest to where the family farm Park Fauld is located. John Henry Lomas is not a local, he comes from Ashton Under Lyne in Lancashire. They are married on her home turf on 5th January 1877 and their daughter Olga is baptised on 30th June 1878 in Upperby.
In the 1881 Census the Lomas family live at 12 Lindsay Street, Stalybridge, Lancashire, in a modest stone faced terrace cottage. They now have a son Lawrence Harry Lomas who is 1 years old. John is described as a Master Mason employing three men, Elizabeth a housewife. Stone masonry was an old and well established trade in the Lancashire and Cheshire district with many fine buildings of limestone, sandstone, marble and granite constructed as the wealth of the area increased with industrialisation.
Tragedy strikes the family when John dies in 1890 at the age of 39. A few months later Elizabeth and their two children, Olga 13 and Lawrence 11, are documented in the 1891 Census, living at 416 Manchester Road, Little Hulton and Elizabeth is working as a saleswoman. There is then an event which suggests things were rough for the trio in the wake of the death of John. Lawrence is arrested and charged with a serious crime.
This extract describes Lawrence Harry Lomas, a clerk, arrested on 19th June 1897 for the crime of burglary to which he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to serve two calendar months of hard labour. He was 17 years old at the time.
Feloniously and burglariously breaking and entering at the City of Coventry, on the 14th day of June 1897, the dwelling house of William Hewitt Paul, and steal therein the sum of one hundred and fifty pounds, eleven shillings and threepence, the moneys of the said William Hewitt Paul.
Particulars of offence in the indictment
This may be the reason why the family eventually chose to migrate. This is no small sum of money he has attempted to steal and the stigma of such a crime would stay with the family.
In 1901 Elizabeth is now calling herself Elise! Elise Lomas and her daughter Olga, 22 are living at 113 Cox Street in the city centre of Coventry, in what is described as a lock up shop. Olga is a clerk. Lawrence has moved back to Stalybridge, he is living on Lindsay Street with his Aunt Lily Lomas. He is also a clerk.
Five years later, Lawrence Lomas is a passenger arriving at the port of Halifax, Nova Scotia on 15th April 1906 and is describing himself as a farmer. We have no way of knowing if he has any farming experience, this city lad born and raised in the shadows of the mills and factories of the Greater Manchester metropolis. Maybe he is stating his intention to become a farmer in his newly adopted country. A little over a year later on 7th November 1970 he marries Canadian born Elizabeth M Fox in York, Ontario. By 1911 the couple are living in Dunedin, New Zealand.
At roughly the same time that Lawrence was marrying his Canadian bride, his sister Olga had travelled to New Zealand (!!) and was marrying Alfred Edward Morgan an engineer. In 1911 the Morgans lived at The Floshes, Fitzherbert Street, Lower Hutt, a street I have passed down myself many times. So this trio were adventurers. Olga and Ted Morgan ended their days in Nelson, Marlborough and are buried there. Olga died in 1971 at the ripe old age of 93.
Elizabeth-Hoodless-1849I lost track of Elizabeth, their mother, until I found Lawrence’s burial record. He is buried in Andersons Bay Cemetery, Dunedin.
There she is, buried in the same plot as her son. Elizabeth Hoodless (Lomas) died 18th May 1915 in Dunedin, New Zealand all the way from Wetheral in Cumbria. She had covered half the world. Fifteen years later on 6th September 1930 her son Lawrence died and joined her.
As a Cumbrian lass who has made the same journey that they did, albeit 80 years after them, I find it both fascinating and emotional that my blood kin, from the same remote backwaters of the Cumbrian countryside, came to New Zealand before me and were here all along. I just never knew until now. It is very heart warming that all three were together in New Zealand.
