Henry William Hayes (1816 - 1868)

Born 1816 in Dublin, Ireland

Husband of Ann Henrietta Boyd — married 1 Aug 1837 (to 6 Feb 1855) in Marylebone, London

Husband of Ann Elizabeth Nettleton — married about 1849 in de facto

Descendants

Died 25 Jul 1868 at about age 52 in Hackney, London

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Biography

With Henry William Hayes, we have been very fortunate in that he was known to the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning who mentions him in several of her letters. These have been preserved and are in the care of the University of California, Berkeley, California.

A body found floating in the River Lea on 25 July 1868 was that of Henry William Hayes. He had married Ann Henrietta Boyd (marriage 1 August 1837) at what would appear to have been a high point in his life and looking at it dispassionately it was all downhill from there... His bride was the daughter of the prominent Greek scholar Hugh Stuart Boyd who in turn was the tutor of Elzabeth Barrett (Browning). Barrett attended the wedding and included an account of it in one of her letters, observing that the match would hardly find favour with Henry's prospective father-in-law whose family owned land in Northern Ireland and who was a strict protestant whilst Henry's family were devout Roman Catholics from the south. In all probability, Henry may have shared the sympathies of his father towards Irish Home Rule and the Freeman’s Journal of 12 January 1839 shows him contributing to a political fund set up by Daniel O'Connell. The meagreness of his contribution (he gave £1) may either have been a symptom of the financial difficulties at the time or perhaps a lack of interest in the politics of his erstwhile country.

There is a curious paragraph in a letter from Elizabeth Barrett Browning to a Julia Martin written on 16 August 1837 in which she states; 'She (Annie Boyd) has married an amiable young man, a Mr Hayes, an Irishman, & he & she & Mr Brown a very rich bachelor from who he has expectations, are all to live together in a beautiful house in Regent’s Park—with footmen & carriages & horses “to correspond'. This is intriguing. Their marriage was witnessed by a John Browne(1) and the 1841 census shows the same individual living in Hanover Terrace(2), where presumably they had all intended to live while at the same time, Henry is languishing in the Queen's Bench Prison. I guess we will never know what went wrong, but who is this Mr. Browne and why was he intending to leave what appears to be a fortune to Henry? He is still living at 7 Hanover Terrace ten years later and the 1851 census reveals that he was a gentleman (land owner) born around 1780 in County Carlow, Ireland. Reporting his death on 30 June 1854, Bell's New Weekly Messenger describes him as the Rev. John Browne 'in his 87th year'. This is definitely the same man as the address is quoted as 7 Hanover Terrace (the address Henry gave in the marriage certificate). The Carlow Post describes him as the last surviving brother of the late William Browne of Browne's Hill in this county'. Browne's Hill is a large Georgian mansion which still stands just outside Carlow. There is plenty concerning this family on the internet, so we now know who he was but we don't know how, if at all, he relates to Henry.

Henry’s incarceration in the Queen's Bench Prison was a harbinger of things to come as he was twice more declared bankrupt, in 1846 and 1862. As at 1 February 1846 his debts stood at £4,465 and although he made efforts to pay his creditors (partially via what he described as a ‘marriage settlement’) it seems that money difficulties would continue to dog him for the rest of his life. After his first bankruptcy he followed a variety of occupations and by the mid-1850s had settled into that of house/estate agent, very similar and presumably not unconnected to the trade being followed by his elder brother back in Ireland. The death certificate though describes him as a 'gentleman reduced' which may indicate that he was once again without occupation at the time of his death.

Perhaps to escape his creditors, he moved location to Devon, living variously in Plymouth, Teignmouth and Exeter Gaol… Round about this time, he appears again in the legal system but now as a wholly innocent witness in a breach of promise case reported in the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette of 28 March 1846. He is cross-examined at length and several interesting snippets about his life come out; firstly his presence at a racecourse would indicate a possible love of gambling (thus confirming a rumour I had heard from my grandmother) and secondly that he had spent some time in Paris(3) where he had met the defendant.

His marriage to Annie Boyd was not to last and a newspaper report in The Daily News for Wed. Feb. 7 1855 reveals the following;

‘Consistory Court--Feb. 6 Before Dr. Lushington

Hayes vs. Hayes.--Divorce

In this case Mrs. Hayes sued for divorce on the ground of adultery. There being no defence Dr. Lushington pronounced for the separation.’

I am not sure of the terminology here, as before 1858, a genuine divorce required an Act of Parliament, so we may be talking about what became known as a legal separation. Nonetheless, the pronouncement is hardly surprising given that he had been co-habiting with Annie Nettleton, who he probably met in Devon, since around 1850. The situation came to the notice of Elizabeth Barrett Browning who on 20 December 1854 wrote from Florence to her sister Arabel;

“I am very sorry about Annie Hayes’ divorce. As she can’t marry again, what can be the use of it, I wonder? A divorced woman in England (thanks to the state of law and public opinion) is never in an improved position. She was mad when she married, and is scarcely sane when she unmarried. That’s my opinion. “As the tree falls, it may lie” and her tree fell into a ditch. Most heartily glad I am to escape being ‘witness’—Poor Arabel. I do quite pity you. You come in for the worst of everything.”'

In stark contrast to the childless relationship with his wife, Annie Nettleton is believed to have borne him nine children between 1850 and 1863. Few however seem to have lasted long and tracking down their names is proving a mammoth task in itself. Curiously, some who we do know a little about seem however, to have disappeared without trace.

His death seems to have gone unnoticed, or at least unacknowledged by his birth family such that the Standard of 16 June 1891 (almost 28 years after his death) carries a notice requesting his next of kin to come forward as he had died intestate and the proceeds of his estate had still not been distributed. Unfortunately, my ancestors would have been excluded due to their illegitimacy. The estate was still unclaimed a year later and probably went to the exchequer. The solicitor involved (Edward Bernard) appears also to have handled his ex-wife's estate some ten years after this appeal.

He was buried at the non-denominational Victoria Park Cemetery (now Meath Gardens) in Tower Hamlets on 29 July 1868. The cemetery register gives no place of abode, merely noting, 'arrived from the deadhouse, Hackney'. Any gravestone, although I suspect there was none was removed when the graveyard became a public park in 1894.

A possible explanation for the course that his life took is that he abandoned his own family and the religion into which he was born due to the prospect of an inheritance from Rev. Browne. There is certainly no evidence that he ever followed the Roman Catholic religion while living in England. The breakdown of the relationship with Rev. Browne and the estrangement from his own family would also explain his bankruptcy in 1841.

It is difficult not to have some sympathy with Henry, his entire adult life and arguably that of his children was blighted by events in his early twenties. Furthermore, for the son of a devout Roman Catholic, marrying the daughter of a staunch protestant may have occasioned a rift with his own family. The verdict given at the coroner’s inquest into his death concludes that he committed suicide while in unsound mind. Sadly, I think he knew exactly what he was doing but had just reached the end of his tether. His demise at the age of 52 was therefore all the more poignant.

(1) I had often suspected that our Hayes family was related to the eccentric Hayes family of Cork (notably Attiwell Hayes and his son Sir Henry Browne Hayes) and the fact that Attiwell's wife was Mary Catherine Browne (as in Rev. John Browne above) could go some way to explaining the relationship. Additionally the title 'Reverend' as mentioned in John Browne's obituary would indicate that he was probably a protestant rather than a catholic.

Unconfirmed data would suggest that Attiwell Hayes was actually of Scottish descent, a member of Clan MacFarlane, which would tie up with the available DNA evidence. See; https://www.clanmacfarlanegenealogy.info/genealogy/TNGWebsite/getperson.php?personID=I63850&tree=CC

N.B. The London Gazette of 8 October 1841 states that other than the known locations, Henry was at some point in Kilkenny.

(2) This was indeed an opulent address. The author Wilkie Collins’ mother was also resident here, although a little later. Not being over-enamoured by his mother’s choice of abode, a letter from the author said, ‘I am resigned to Hanover Terrace (and the Queen’s Bench afterwards)…’ which by coincidence is the route Henry took.

(3) Later in the century, the Hayes family are known to have had business interests in Paris.

Sources

Catholic Birth Register, Westland Row, Dublin 15 January 1816 (latin - Henricus Gullielmus Hayes).

Hayes Henry William 1837 England & Wales Marriages 1837-2005 Marylebone, London, England

Hayes Henry 1816 1841 England, Wales & Scotland Census St George the Martyr Southwark, St George Southwark, London & Surrey, England (Queen's Bench Prison)

Hayes Henry W 1819 1851 England, Wales & Scotland Census Paddington, Kensington, London & Middlesex, England

Hayes Henry ... 1815 1861 England, Wales & Scotland Census St Marylebone, Marylebone, London & Middlesex, England

Hayes Henry William 1819 1868 England & Wales Deaths 1837-2007 Hackney, London, England

Hayes Henry William 1819 1868 England & Wales Non-Conformist Burials Hackney, Victoria Park Cemetery, Middlesex, England

Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Name: Henry William Hayes Death Date: 23 Jul 1868 Death Place: Middlesex, England Probate Date: 25 Apr 1890 Registry: Principal Registry

Ancestry.com. England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858-1966, 1973-1995 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Original data: Principal Probate Registry. Calendar of the Grants of Probate and Letters of Administration made in the Probate Registries of the High Court of Justice in England. London, England © Crown copyright.

Name: Henry William Hayes Birth Date: abt 1819 Event Type: Burial Death Date: abt 1868 Death Age: 49 Burial Date: 29 Jul 1868 Burial Place: Hackney, Middlesex, England Piece Title: Piece 47-2: Hackney, Victoria Park Cemetery: Burials. Vol 6 Indexed, 1867-1868

Name: Henry William Hayes Birth Date: abt 1819 Event Type: Burial Death Date: abt 1868 Death Age: 49 Burial Date: 29 Jul 1868 Burial Place: Hackney, Middlesex, England Piece Title: Piece 47-2: Hackney, Victoria Park Cemetery: Burials. Vol 6 Indexed, 1867-1868 Source Citation The National Archives of the UK; Kew, Surrey, England; General Register Office: Registers of Births, Marriages and Deaths surrendered to the Non-parochial Registers Commission of 1857, and other registers and church records; Class Number: RG 8; Piece Number: 47_2

Source Information Ancestry.com. England & Wales, Non-Conformist and Non-Parochial Registers, 1567-1970 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013.

Bell's New Weekly Messenger, 9 July 1854.

Carlow Post 8 July 1854

Irish Times 12 October 2020.

First name(s) Henry William Country England Last name Hayes Record set London Gazette 1665-2018 Publication year 1841 Category Directories & social history Issue date 08 Oct 1841 Subcategory Newspapers & Magazines Issue number 20025 Collections from England, Great Britain Periodical London Gazette

As there are two illegitimate generations, it is difficult to trace the descent from Edward Hayes and it is therefore necessary to investigate the connection forensically, highlighting similarities and contradictions. To do this, we need to split the evidence concerning Edward’s son, Henry William Hayes into two parts; HWH(1) gives evidence relating to the individual who married Annie Henrietta Boyd, and who was known (marriage certificate) to be the son of Edward Hayes and who is mentioned in the letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. With one exception (death certificate) all evidence under this heading is pre-1850.

HWH(2) on the other hand is the individual who co-habited with Annie Nettleton from about 1850 and who fathered Jane and Lillie Hayes, as well as their several older siblings. To demonstrate that they are one and the same, we need to show that they cannot be located in two separate places at approximately the same time.

1) The appeal for his personal representatives published in The Times dated June 16 1891 indicates that a Henry William Hayes died in July 1868. This is certainly HWH(1) as the solicitor, a Mr Edward Bernard, is the same individual as that who handled the estate of his wife, Annie Henrietta Hayes (nee Boyd) on her death in 1901. In the 1871 census we find that HWH(2)'s common-law wife and my great great grandmother, Annie Nettleton (using the name of Hayes) describes herself as a widow. We know this is her, as the date of birth is approximately correct, she states that she was born in Plymouth (a moot point but she stated this from 1871 right up to her death) and the fact that the cook at the location where she was in service is also using the quite unusual name of Nettleton. All subsequent mentions of HWH(2) state ‘deceased’.

2) HWH(1)’s elder brother Edward jnr. describes himself as a ‘house and estate agent’. This is the same occupation as HWH(2) was pursuing in the 1850s and was mentioned in the 1861 census and on the marriage certificates of Jane Hayes.

3) Bankruptcies – HWH(1) was declared bankrupt several times in the 1840s and in 1862 a Henry William Hayes of Newman Street, Paddington, house agent was declared bankrupt; there is a slight anomaly here, as there was no Newman Street in Paddington as far as I can tell, and in February 1863, HWH(2) is recorded as living at Newnham Street, Paddington. It is therefore likely that this is merely a drafting error.

4) Status; at the time of his marriage, HWH(1) described himself as ‘Esquire’. The birth certificate of HWH(2)’s son, Henry Dawson Lane Hayes lists his father as ‘Henry William Hayes… Gentleman’. The 1851 census shows HWH(2) as ‘fund holder’ (i.e. an individual who has sufficient funds not to work).

5) Ireland; HWH(1) is palpably from Ireland (as is confirmed by Elizabeth Barrett Browning) and the census returns for 1851 and 1861 confirm this country of birth for HWH(2).

6) Plymouth; we know from newspaper reports of the time that HWH(1) spent much of the early 1840s in South Devon. For whatever reason, from 1871, Annie Nettleton consistently states that she was born in Plymouth, although it is on record that she was baptised in London. It may or may not be significant, but Nettleton is essentially a Yorkshire name and in the 19th century most of the individuals using the name still live there. There is, as is to be expected a small number in London but the only other significant enclave is in Plymouth.

7) Names; HWH(2)’s first son was unsurprisingly named Henry but the second son was Edward i.e. the same as HWH(1)'s father. HWH(2)’s eldest daughter was called Rebecca. If HWH(1) and HWH(2) were one and the same, then it was very likely that HWH(1)’s mother would be called Rebecca which ultimately did turn out to be the case.

I only discovered this in December 2014, but HWH(2)'s youngest daughter, always known as Lillie was in fact baptised with the comparatively unusual name of Letitia, i.e. the same as one of HWH(1)'s sisters according to Annie Boyd.

8) Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s letter of 20 December 1854 reports that Annie Hayes (HWH(1)’s wife) is divorcing him on the grounds of adultery. The case is uncontested and the judge pronounces for the separation. HWH(2) has been co-habiting with the young Annie Nettleton since at least as far back as 1850 (young son noted living with them in 1851 census) which would obviously provide evidence for adultery.

9) 'Henry William Hayes', when used in full, as was the habit for both HWH(1) and HWH(2), is not a particularly common name. When allowing for errors etc., less than half a dozen people of all ages (including HWH(2)) were using it at the time of the 1861 UK census.

10) Although Henry was the first, several of the Hayes family, as well as their mother, moved to West London from the 1850s onward and none of them ever lived more than 3 miles from HWH(2).

On the balance of probabilities therefore, it seems almost inconceivable that HWH(1) and HWH(2) are not the same person.

Derek Allen

October 2014

N.B. DNA testing has now confirmed a link to the McGreevey family (also descendants of Edward Hayes), John McGreevey being described as my '4th to 6th cousin'. The above is therefore proven.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Derek Allen for starting this profile.

Click the Changes tab for the details of contributions by Derek and others.