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00:00Dolly, come on, come on, come on!
00:04Media personality Sharon Osbourne divides her time between her homes in Los Angeles,
00:10where she lives with her husband, rock star Ozzy Osbourne,
00:16and England, the country she was born in.
00:22This is me and my mother at our home in Brixton.
00:28I lived in Brixton for the first, I think, 10 or 11 years of my life.
00:34My mother was a dancer.
00:37My father was an agent in the music business, very ambitious.
00:41He became a manager and then he opened a record label.
00:46He was like a workaholic.
00:49I had a very interesting childhood.
00:53My brother and I just had a lot of freedom.
00:56I used to run wild.
00:59We didn't have that sort of structure where, you know,
01:02mummy takes you to school and mummy's there waiting for you
01:05and you come home and you have something nice to eat
01:07and then you do your homework and a nice little bath and bed.
01:11It wasn't that way.
01:13After she left school, Sharon joined her father in the music business.
01:18I think I'm hard working and I got that work ethic from my parents, definitely.
01:25You know, if you ever wanted anything, you had to work for it.
01:29Sharon knows about her father's roots in Manchester's Jewish community,
01:34but very little about her mother's side of the family.
01:37My whole life I just thought they're all Irish, but I don't know if that's really true.
01:44The little bits I do know.
01:47My grandmother was called Doris and she was known as Dolly.
01:51She was a choreographer dancer and worked a lot in vaudeville.
01:57As a child, Dolly frightened me.
02:01She had white, white hair and she would put a lot of red lipstick around her mouth
02:06and it would always be on her false teeth.
02:10I always thought she looked like a witch.
02:13I had no idea of my grandfather's name.
02:17Just don't know it.
02:19There weren't any pictures and she would never speak of him.
02:24It's very exciting to kind of find out how it all started.
02:29What am I connected to? You know, what are my roots?
02:32You know, probably I came from a load of old witches that were burnt at the stake or something.
02:37That would be fabulous. I just don't know.
02:43mentor me, thanks for 20 minutes.
02:44I thank you for chaносos and all my friends.
02:54If you could do it, you can grab her.
02:55Me too!
02:58But look, your father says you've always liked me.
02:59Your father says ja que do he workout?
03:14I'm waiting for my niece Gina to arrive I think she'll be able to help fill in all the gaps
03:24that
03:24we have she knows a lot more than I do Sharon's niece Gina has always taken an interest in the
03:42family history and she's brought along some memorabilia do you know who that is mm-hmm
03:52that's your mother hope that's hope yes oh my lord wow what year would this have been I don't know
04:03oh it says on the back there you go Southampton 1935 oh my lord and look at the name of
04:11the
04:12song or the act come over here over here it's quite a sultry picture as well isn't it
04:18hmm I definitely got her legs me too gee thanks a lot hope
04:26and this one yeah so this is Dolly your grandmother your mother's mother and who is that I think that
04:36is Dolly's husband Arthur James Shaw your grandfather wow
04:43there he is it was always a mystery to me I mean I didn't know anything I mean I didn't
04:50even think
04:51that my grandmother was married or my mum had like a stable dad in her life so this is like
04:58I think
04:59that he can't have been on the scene but what happened to him I don't know so that's my granddad
05:06eh yeah what did you get up to mister yes really and I think this lady is Ira and I
05:15think that might
05:16be Dolly's sister because she had a sister called Ira her sister her sister I think I never knew that
05:22Dolly even had a sister no she would have been my great aunt yes I wonder what happened to her
05:29no idea
05:31yeah I don't know and they were called hewson hewson hewson trio I never heard the name hewson
05:41it's not catchy is it and if you look here this is the stage newspaper from March 1912 and it
05:50lists
05:51the renowned hewson trio um an act that is always working oh wow and they seem to repeat the lines
06:00a lot
06:01it's quite funny hewson's trio the greatest novelty vocal and dance acts in vaudeville hmm I wonder
06:10what the novelty was today yes it looks like it's a bit of a comedy turn yeah yeah it does
06:18like he's
06:19being very naughty because they're shaking everything yes yes they're telling him off aren't they yeah they
06:24were going to be following in Darwin Salford and Durham must have been a hard life I think fun but
06:31no sense of home no sense of home no sense of family no no because you're always on the move
06:41listen you
06:42saw with my mum and dad coming going yeah there's no sense of no of security and then this is
06:51their
06:52marriage certificate Arthur James Shaw so your grandfather and Doris Armgill Dolly your grandmother
07:00they're both listed as musical artists what dates they married in 1915 and the first world war had
07:11started the year before so that could explain why he wasn't on the scene he might have been killed in
07:20the war yeah he could have been he could have been did you go into the war what happened to
07:25you mister
07:27right yeah
07:34so I never even knew that my grandmother had a sister and this is the first time I've ever seen
07:41a picture of
07:42my grandfather Arthur James Shaw they look like a very sassy trio to me it's nice because it goes to
07:53prove that my suspicions are all wrong and you know I go right to the edge it's like right she
07:59was never
08:00married you know and he she is with her husband my grandfather but I'd still like to know what actually
08:08happened to him and why nobody ever spoke of him Sharon's grandmother Dolly performed in a musical act
08:16with her sister Ira Sharon's great-aunt as well as with the man she married in 1915 Sharon's grandfather
08:24Arthur James Shaw who went by the name of James to see if James was called up as a soldier
08:33Sharon is
08:34checking the British Army service records here we go he was in the Royal Artillery
08:46ah what is this so this is his enlistment papers Mr James Shaw and his number was one one two
08:56two three
08:57five are you a British subject yes what is your age 27 and two months what is your trade of
09:04calling
09:05music hall artist are you married yes rank driver he had very nice handwriting oh my lord he was very
09:18short height five foot five and a half so he'd signed up before he got so we signed up the
09:32year he got
09:33married or before he got married no after because they got married in July 1915 and he signed up in
09:41October so really they weren't to get along for he he absolutely went to war particulars as to
09:51children so he had hope my mother and it gives the date of birth 12th of April 1916 the military
10:00history
10:01sheet so one month before my mother was born he was sent across to the Mediterranean ended up
10:11in Egypt he returned home in 1919 so he was gone three years that's a long time but he survived
10:27it he
10:27came home it must have been tough for my grandmother I mean he's office of God forsaken place in the
10:36middle of
10:36a war must have been very hard just to get by every week Sharon wants to know how her grandmother
10:51Dolly coped
10:52left to look after her newborn baby Sharon's mother hope I'm so interested to join up all the dots I
11:04wonder
11:04what happened to grandma I just instinctively feel that she must have kept working that was the only
11:11way she could have survived by the time of the first world war musical had become known as variety theater
11:25a program of acts featuring singers acrobats jugglers and dancers it was the most popular form of
11:34entertainment at the time and elegant new theaters sprung up across Britain
11:41Sharon has come to one of the handful of venues still preserved from that period in Tunbridge Wells it's been
11:48converted into a pub she's meeting historian Dr Caroline Radcliffe
11:58hi Sharon how are you lovely to meet you what a wonderful place we're in well we're standing on the
12:06stage of the
12:06Tunbridge Wells opera house and it's not the sort of opera house you think of as performing grand opera it
12:15was built more as a
12:16variety theater at the beginning of the last century and just over a hundred years ago at Christmas in 1917
12:26your grandmother and her sister were performing on this stage wow unbelievable and I'll tell you a bit more
12:35about it if we go up to the dress circle come on let's go
12:43so when your grandfather went off to the great war
12:48dolly and ira her sister were left behind so the hewson trio couldn't function anymore so they went and
12:56joined the phil ascot four it was phil who ran the group and then the three women so ira doris
13:05dolly and one other woman so we've managed to find a program from christmas eve 1917
13:17the phil ascot four the famous novelty dancers introducing the english pony trot
13:25because the pony trot it was um a novelty dance
13:29and it was really modern at the time and i think this is an amazing photo of your grandmother and
13:38her sister there's dolly with the girls wow it's wild it is now amazingly we've managed to find
13:48a little bit of film but it doesn't show your grandmother unfortunately but it shows a troop of
13:54dancers doing the pony trot so you get an idea of the kind of liveliness and energy that went into
14:03it
14:08oh yes yes yes i'm loving it i absolutely love it
14:18wow
14:24they must have been knackered after this
14:30that's like wild for those times
14:36animal dancers like the pony trot were all the rage at the start of the 20th century
14:43and there were many of them including the grizzly bear bunny hug and even the turkey trot
14:53and it wasn't just the ballroom dancing purists they offended
14:59these sorts of very modern novelty dances they they were accused of being a little bit edgy yeah a little
15:06bit risque and the pope in particular condemned the turkey trot so i don't know what he would have
15:12thought about the pony trot
15:16i'm sure he wouldn't have liked it i think they must have really added to to that
15:23you know escapism from worrying about the war and everything that was happening it was exciting and
15:29and it was what all the young people wanted to be watching it's just amazing so they must have been
15:34doing this all through the war your grandmother had a daughter by this time hope my mother so she had
15:42to look after the baby yeah they couldn't stop working do you know how old they were what the difference
15:49was between dolly and her sister ira yeah ira would have been 17 and dolly was 25 or 26
15:58um so dolly was obviously the one who took charge when they were traveling and sort of chaperoned
16:06her younger sister and they were living together as well they're all registered at the same address
16:11so they must have been so close so this is the last thing that i've got to show you and
16:18this concerns ira
16:23death certificate oh she died
16:29on the 9th of november 1918 wow she was 18 oh my god
16:44tuberculosis and it said here that she was two years into it
16:51so she was clearly ill all the time she was performing theaters were a place where
16:58illnesses did get spread yeah all put together in dressing rooms and oh my lord
17:08she must have suffered so much
17:11my grandmother was present at her sister's death
17:17acre lane in um brixton that must have been absolutely awful to be there
17:24and see like an 18 year old die
17:29how terribly terribly sad
17:33in the back of my mind i suppose i was fearing that for her because there was never any
17:42any any mention of her ever
17:46terrible
17:48at the time ira died tuberculosis was one of the deadliest diseases in the world
17:54highly contagious and spread through the air it had killed hundreds of millions of people
18:00just three years after ira's death in 1921 a vaccine was introduced and given to children
18:08which would help curb the spread of the disease
18:12i knew my grandmother not well because i was too young to know her well but i have a whole
18:19new respect
18:20for her as a woman and what she did for those years on the road and you know dealing with
18:26her
18:26sister's death and the birth of my mother and it's like i don't know how she did it all you
18:33know her
18:33husband was away in egypt this woman was a hard worker a very very strong woman i don't know how
18:41she went on after she lost her sister and even though she's gone years and years ago it's still um
18:53it matters to me
18:56the way i thought of her and um my impressions of her from a child to now were totally wrong
19:07after the first world war dolly was reunited with her husband sharon's grandfather james shaw
19:15james returned home to live with his wife and their daughter hope sharon's mother at 29 acre
19:21lane in brixton south london sharon's trying to find the house she remembers seeing as a child
19:34as a child's mother's mother's mother's house at acre lane and the buildings next door
19:49were demolished in the 1970s we used to come up and down here all the time and whenever we were
19:56on the
19:56bus because we went everywhere by bus my mum would always point out the house you know that was a
20:03big
20:03house like that nothing stays the same though does it
20:15while they were in acre lane dolly and james had a son sharon's uncle who was born in 1920
20:26o'm
20:29sharon is meeting social historian dr kate bradley to find out about her family's life in brixton
20:39sharon i have got some documents to
20:41show you i'd like to start with a photograph
20:44wow
20:47my grandmother my mother and my uncle it's actually one of the nicest pictures i've seen
20:55of my grandmother where she looks quite soft and i love the way that my mother is holding on to
21:03her
21:04her mother it's a very warm photograph it is my mum looks very sweet in there too
21:15wow so this is an extract from one of the south london newspapers what year was this this is 1929
21:25a brixton incident mother and daughter charged child takes the blame oh my lord
21:35mabel shaw 35 a variety artist of acre lane brixton but who is this
21:44this is your grandmother mabel yes she seems to be calling herself mabel here whether it was a name
21:52she came up with when she'd been arrested or whether she was using a slightly different name
21:57at that time probably because she was arrested yeah doris dolly
22:05mabel however um your mother's name hope yes is correct mabel shaw 35 and hope shaw 12 were charged
22:16before mr harold mckenna at lambus police court being concerned together in stealing two pairs of
22:26stockings and other articles valued at eight shillings and four pence they pleaded guilty
22:37unbelievable wow must have been pretty desperate to do that when they were stopped the girl exclaimed
22:46i will take all the blame if you will let mummy go oh my god that is just heartbreaking
22:57a detective officer said mrs shaw was separated from her husband and had an aged mother to support
23:06she was a variety artist but had been out of employment on and off for five or six months
23:15talking here about being out of work and separated yeah
23:20yeah yeah so to have two kids a husband gone it must have been really hard yeah
23:33at the time that sharon's grandmother and mother were caught stealing in 1929
23:39they were no longer living with james shaw sharon's grandfather
23:45oh it's like i feel a pain in my heart you know looking at my mom's little face in this
23:50photo
23:52she's just such a sweet innocent little thing holding on to her mom really tight and
23:58she must have had one hell of a childhood with no father her mother was working so growing up and
24:05not
24:05having the comfort of your parents my heart really does break for her and it gives me a sense
24:12sense of why she was the way she was after they were arrested dolly and hope were taken to the
24:23police
24:23court in lambeth today the court has become a buddhist and meditation center but much of the original
24:31building has been preserved
24:43oh my lord they've still got the original doors too
24:46yeah wow there are a couple of things i'd like to show you if we go inside this cell here
24:53okay
24:57the first thing i'd like to show you is the jailers index this is for december 1929
25:03this kind of is the list of the people who come through the cells on their way to kind of
25:07going
25:07to court and down here we find mabel or dolly and hope mabel's 35 hope is 13 and they were
25:19arrested on
25:20the 12th of december and it was for stealing stockings etc i wonder if they were stealing for
25:29christmas gifts i don't know quite possibly yeah would they have been brought in here yes
25:36were they kept overnight do you know um i don't know for sure i think it's quite likely because we
25:42do know that they saw the magistrate on a monday and we know they were arrested on a saturday and
25:47the
25:48fact that they're on this suggests that they were here from saturday night through to monday morning
25:53you'd just be traumatized wouldn't you stuck in here as a little kid yeah
26:00and what is this this is the 1939 register this is going forward about 10 years which is similar to
26:10a census of everybody in the country shortly after the outbreak of the second world war
26:14and it was used to gather information on the population for things like generating id
26:19cards and russian books and we can find doris here mm-hmm she's here oh she was back to doris
26:26now
26:26back to doris mm-hmm here she is and if we read along she's a petrol can filler that was
26:34her job
26:35yes during the war yeah okay and a designated heavy worker what does heavy worker mean it meant that
26:42she was doing heavy industrial work okay and she would have got more rations as well really for
26:48doing the manual manual work yeah so we find out 10 years later my grandmother is working in the war
26:57effort filling petrol cans hmm and it says w yeah so she's given her marital status here as a w
27:08which would mean widow widow yes it is possible that she was indeed widowed it's also possible that she
27:17was trying to keep her appearances easier to say that you're a widow than to say you're separated or
27:23i'm trying to have a very important memory and without a single divorce right particularly at this
27:25time yeah this is where grandfather falls off the record um we've not been able to find a death
27:31certificate um or find him on the 1939 register so it's quite possible he was using a different name
27:39the thing is about my grandfather don't know where he went or where he was from initially i don't know
27:49hear anything about his background at all and i put it in the ad james ad family members yeah
28:01sharon is keen to know more about her grandfather's past so she's searching the census online
28:10this is a census um from 1891 and i'm trying to trace arthur james shaw who was my grandfather
28:22i'm trying to trace his family to see where he actually came from because this man is like a ghost
28:30okay it says arthur shaw here head head of family annie his wife so my great grandmother and father
28:43and then there's three sons thomas john and arthur james my grandfather okay so he was son
28:54of arthur and where is he from hold on is that lancashire and his mom annie came from
29:09this is really really hard to make out to me it looks like america fallen river wow
29:20america that's unbelievable my great-grandmother his mom was american my god i'm really really
29:31shocked about this i would never ever have thought that i wonder what she was doing
29:40in england how on earth did they meet how did annie who's here was 22 meet arthur shaw to be
29:50my great
29:51grandparent and where is fallen river i've never heard of it
30:04to find out more about her american ancestry sharon's traveled to the united states she's come to newport
30:12new england to meet up with genealogist dr stephanie corey who's been researching the life of sharon's
30:19great-grandmother annie hi stephanie hello hello how are you welcome to newport oh it's my pleasure to be
30:30here so i'm going to tell you what i know about my great grandmother okay her name was annie and
30:38she
30:39comes from a place called fallen rivers actually it's fall river it must have been a the registrar wrote
30:47down the wrong information okay it's actually called fall river fall river massachusetts and she
30:53moved from here to england and she married um an englishman and she had three sons and then one of
31:03her sons was my grandfather so you have deep roots i think in fall river so this is your great
31:10-grandmother
31:11annie yes and here is her birth certificate in fall river massachusetts she was born on august 17 1868
31:22and her name was hannah yes so annie nickname hannah o'donnell her father's name was thomas o'donnell
31:31and her daddy was irish her mother's name was catherine and her mother's birthplace was england yes a father
31:44who was irish and a mother who was english and they immigrated to fall river massachusetts
31:51so is this surprising to you um it's all surprising to me i never thought that i was connected to
31:59anyone who
32:00actually was american so there you go yeah you're american too wow
32:06sharon has learned that annie's father sharon's great-great-grandfather thomas came to america
32:12from ireland while her mother catherine came from england in the middle of the 19th century crop
32:19failures and famines struck europe causing death and suffering across many countries
32:26it was particularly bad in ireland where around a million people died after a failure of the potato
32:33crop and this may have been why thomas o'donnell who had grown up during this period decided to go to
32:39america thomas was part of a massive european migration to the united states but sharon wants to know why
32:49thomas and her great-great-grandmother katherine chose to live in fall river there's a travel guide
32:56that's called the tainter's guide that you could read to learn about the glorious qualities of the
33:03communities which you were traveling to including fall river massachusetts so this was enticing people
33:09to come to fall river its streets are handsomely adorned with shade trees adding much to the comfort
33:18and beauty of the place it says that fall river contains many elegant residences still does and the
33:26sunset views from here are said to rival those in italy if i read this i would come
33:34the way it was written about the sunsets and the trees and the beautiful rivers it's like oh it must
33:41have been like you know heaven right i can i can see people just you know closing their eyes and
33:49imagining what it would be like with anticipation yeah it says this important manufacturing city it was
33:56a major manufacturing center because of location because of temperature and a lot of
34:03people that wanted work yes the principal manufacturers are for cotton wool prints iron
34:11and the making of various kinds of machinery it was the largest cotton textile manufacturing center
34:19in the whole united states second only to manchester england in the world yeah at uh at the height of
34:25fall rivers mill industry there were 2 000 miles of cotton cloth produced today wow
34:35in the 1860s the american industrial revolution was in full swing textile mills were using modern
34:42production methods and the united states was rapidly transforming from an agricultural to a manufacturing
34:49economy sharon's great-great-great-grandparents thomas and catherine were both hoping to benefit from this
34:56economic boom in fall river now i have the marriage record of annie's parents
35:07thomas o'donnell carla white age 24 his first marriage the bride catherine dowd white 22 her first
35:19marriage birthplace england and they were married by james murphy catholic priest yes in december 1867
35:29and the parish is saint mary's parish which is located in corky row which is a neighborhood where
35:36uh predominantly irish people live yeah and that's where the church is it's still there yes oh yeah
35:42that's great i would love to see where they were married
35:52sharon is on her way out of affluent newport heading for full river just 20 miles away
35:59it is nice to know my heritage because i had no idea before nothing and it's nice to come to
36:06from um
36:07people that fight for a better way of life and that are brave enough to get on a boat and
36:16go to the
36:16unknown land and i i really admire that i think it's great strength of character pioneers you know i love
36:26that and fall river i'm really interested it sounds beautiful with the italian-like sunsets and trees
36:35everywhere i'm really looking forward to going
36:42in the 19th century fall river grew from a collection of villages to become one of the most important
36:49cities in new england today there are still many relics of its industrial past
36:59mary's cathedral where sharon's great-great-grandparents thomas and catherine were married
37:05was built in the 1850s in response to the growing number of catholics coming to work in the city
37:11which is what's hard if we need to know walk in the city
37:25wow
37:30incredible
37:52That's so unbelievable that I would be here walking down the same aisle as my
38:00great-great-grandparents did. That's incredible.
38:10Oh, four o'clock. That's nice.
38:25I'd love some of those candles with the crosses on, Ozzie would love them. Look, fabulous.
38:34Gosh, they must have felt so special getting married here because it's so beautiful.
38:43Sharon is looking at the records kept by St Mary's Cathedral.
38:48This is the baptismal records, started in 1861.
38:59She's been given printed copies of the certificates to see what else she can learn about her family.
39:04So this is the birth certificate of Hannah, Annie O'Donnell, my great-grandmother, born 17th of August in 1868.
39:17Then we have April 19, 1870, Margaret O'Donnell.
39:26Oh, her sister. She had a bubba sister.
39:32Oh. All right, what do we have here?
39:35April 21, 1871, Mary O'Donnell.
39:41So they had another little girl.
39:47October 3, 1872.
39:50Oh, Lord. One after the other.
39:54John O'Donnell.
39:58There's more.
40:01April 1874.
40:03Elizabeth O'Donnell.
40:07Oh, at least she had a two-year gap.
40:10Okay.
40:14April 1875.
40:16Thomas O'Donnell.
40:20God, six kids.
40:22Can you imagine how hard that must have been?
40:27Whoa.
40:28They must have been in and out of this church baptizing the kids every year.
40:33Another one and another one.
40:36You know, I knew people had big families in those days.
40:39But, um, wow.
40:47To find out more about Thomas and Catherine O'Donnell's life here,
40:51Sharon is visiting the Fall River Historical Society.
41:00It's based in a former mill owner's house.
41:07She's meeting historian Dr Maura Doherty.
41:10So I have something for you here.
41:17And this is the city of Fall River, Massachusetts, 1877.
41:24Yes.
41:25At this point, there's 45,000 people living there.
41:30It was a small town that grew very fast.
41:32Yeah.
41:33In one year, in 1872, 6,000 people came.
41:37Wow.
41:38So it's growing rapidly and a bit chaotically, although we can see the mills are well laid out.
41:45Yeah.
41:48So many mills all around.
41:51All of this here and leading all the way up to there and around here, it's all industrial mills.
41:59Yes.
41:59It's unbelievable.
42:01I saw yesterday a pamphlet on Fall River and it was saying how the sunsets are really equal to what
42:13you see in Italy.
42:14And it's like where everything is just factories and industry and that's it.
42:24Just an industrial town, basically, Fall River.
42:29That's right.
42:30They're burning coal and I'm not sure how much of the sunset one would have seen.
42:35Because even in the map, you look at it and you see all the steam coming out of all the
42:41factories.
42:42So all of that pamphlet was just a terrible enticement to get these people here.
42:50With all of this industry going on, there must have been a constant cloud over here.
42:58It must have been a terrible place to live.
43:02You can see right here.
43:03This is one of the first mills built, the Troy Mill in 1813.
43:07You have some ancestors who worked in this mill.
43:14So it would have been my great-great-grandmother and grandfather.
43:20Yes.
43:21So this is where Catherine and Thomas worked.
43:25Oh, Troy Mill, one of the oldest in the city, Fall River, Massachusetts.
43:33And here I have the accounting books for the Troy Mill.
43:37If you want to take a look at this page here.
43:42Here.
43:43And O'Donnell.
43:45They called her Kate.
43:46Kate, yeah.
43:47Yeah.
43:48If we look here, that's how much she made for the month.
43:52$17.
43:53And four cents.
43:54Four cents.
43:56And if we look here, your great-great-grandfather.
44:05Thomas O'Donnell.
44:07Yes.
44:07And we can see here what he earned for the month.
44:10$34.50.
44:12Mm-hmm.
44:14Even in those days, this is low pay.
44:17Yeah.
44:18Fall River was known for being one of the lowest paid.
44:21Wow.
44:23And so what did my great-great-grandmother do?
44:27She's working in the carding room where the raw cotton comes into the process and gets
44:35combed so that the fibers are all going in one direction in order to be able to spin it later.
44:42Carding was a vital part of the production in cotton mills.
44:46Men, women, and children operated large rolling machines, which disentangled and cleaned the raw cotton in preparation for spinning.
44:57The carding room was considered actually one of the worst to work in the mill.
45:03There's more cotton fibers in the air.
45:05It would have been all over the hair.
45:07Yeah.
45:07All over the clothes every day.
45:09Then you're breathing these fibers in.
45:11What an awful job.
45:13And if there was fibers everywhere, they must have gotten sick.
45:17They must have got bad chest and coughs and everything from inhaling that all the time.
45:23People also got something we call brown lung, or bisinosis is its technical term.
45:31And it's just a cotton disease of just infecting your lungs over and over.
45:39What a terrible place to come to when you've got dreams and you leave one country because it's so terribly
45:47hard there.
45:48And you think you're going to go to a better place and you get here.
45:52And it's just so bad.
45:56Did you have many women working in the mills in those days?
46:00Yes.
46:01There were a lot of women in America who worked.
46:04And in Fall River, we see a lot of women and children are working.
46:08It's really a family system here.
46:10Wow.
46:13Families made up a big part of the workforce in Fall River.
46:18Some of the children working there were as young as six years old.
46:23This was in contrast to the cotton mills in England, where there were child labor acts restricting working hours and
46:30raising the age of employment to nine.
46:35The mill workers, were they given homes or not?
46:39Well, that's an interesting question.
46:42If we see here, we have one column that is for rent.
46:46Mm-hmm.
46:47The Troy mill required that its workers live in the housing owned by the Troy mill, with each apartment being
46:56about 18 square meters.
46:59So that's smaller than an average hotel room.
47:03Sure.
47:04And they had six kids at the end of the day, living like that.
47:09So whole families and rows and rows of this.
47:12And the first thing that one would have noticed walking into one of these tenements would have been the stench.
47:17Yeah.
47:18They were filthy.
47:19They took very little care to build this housing because the city was growing so rapidly.
47:25And they didn't take care for the sanitation.
47:28So that bred disease.
47:30Yeah.
47:30A lot of people who came from Ireland and from England came here to Fall River thinking that it was
47:37the El Dorado.
47:39Yeah.
47:39You know, that the streets would be paved with gold.
47:41And they got here and they faced longer hours.
47:45They faced harsher working conditions.
47:48These machines are running faster than the machines that they had operated before.
47:53And yet they're getting paid less money for all of that.
47:57I think I'd have taken the next boat back.
48:01People were asked that in the newspapers.
48:03And they said, we can't leave.
48:05We have no money.
48:06Mm.
48:10I know that my great-great-grandmother and father had six children.
48:15How did they survive all of this?
48:17No money, breathing in all this bad air, and all they did was work.
48:23It was a tough life.
48:25Yeah.
48:31My great-great-grandparents, Thomas and Catherine O'Donnell, I mean, what a place to end up in.
48:40What a place.
48:43The brochures said that it was a beautiful place to be.
48:47And they come over here.
48:48They give up their lives.
48:49They give up their families and come to another land for a better life.
48:54And they get here.
48:55And it's just a hellhole.
48:58Horrible existence for young people that were enticed and then trapped, basically.
49:06They had six children, one after the other, and she was working pregnant.
49:11It's just unbelievably hard.
49:14It's just unthinkable.
49:18Complete nightmare.
49:23Sharon knows that her great-grandmother Annie left America and ended up in England.
49:29But what happened to Annie's younger siblings?
49:32Margaret, Mary, Elizabeth, Thomas and John.
49:43More has been looking into this for Sharon.
49:46I have some more records.
49:48Here.
49:56City of Fall River.
49:57It's a, um, certificate of death.
50:03So, Margaret O'Donnell died, um, on June 19th, 1870.
50:13Cause of death?
50:15Convulsions?
50:17Oh, my God.
50:21Two months.
50:25She didn't even last longer than that.
50:35And I have this.
50:44Another, um, record of death.
50:48Yes.
50:49Mary O'Donnell.
50:51Age two months.
50:55Cholera.
50:58Cholera infantum.
51:00What does that mean?
51:01It's a term used for babies usually when they die with diarrhea.
51:06Oh, my Lord.
51:10To lose two babies in a year.
51:15Hideous.
51:17I have another document.
51:22Oh, Lord.
51:23Another, um, record of death.
51:27Elizabeth A. O'Donnell.
51:31Oh, my God.
51:33So, three years later, my great-great-grandmother loses another little girl.
51:40And she lost her at six days.
51:43And she died of weakness.
51:54Don't tell me another one.
51:57Oh, my Lord.
52:03July 6th, 1875, and this was for Thomas O'Donnell.
52:11Oh, and he was, um, three months and 29 days old.
52:17Again, weakness.
52:20They're living in Ulm's house.
52:22What is that?
52:23That was a poor house.
52:25A poor house.
52:26Oh, my God.
52:28Similar to a workhouse, you know, in England.
52:33Here we go again.
52:34So...
52:42And this is for John O'Donnell.
52:46And...
52:47Oh, Lord.
52:49So she lost her, Thomas, on July 6th.
52:54And then July 26th, she lost John.
52:59The same year.
53:04And he died at two years old.
53:08Consumption.
53:10Oh, my Lord.
53:13Consumption was the name used for tuberculosis in the 19th century.
53:18It came from the idea that the body was being consumed
53:21as the sufferer wasted away.
53:24And when Sharon's great-grandmother and his brothers and sisters died,
53:29tuberculosis was the leading cause of death in the United States.
53:45A certificate of death, and it was for Catherine O'Donnell.
53:50She was 35 years old.
53:53And she died March 3rd, 1880.
53:59Consumption.
54:00My Lord.
54:03What a life, huh?
54:07Lost five of her babies and worked to death.
54:16She died March 3rd, 1880.
54:17She died March 3rd, 1880.
54:17She died March 3rd, 1880.
54:19It's just unbelievable.
54:2235 is no age, sir.
54:26Poor little thing.
54:28and those little babies.
54:30Can you imagine how heartbroken she must have been?
54:35Do we know what happened to her husband?
54:38Shortly after her death,
54:40he and Annie went back to England and settled.
54:47Wow.
54:51So we now know why Annie went to England.
54:56It does suggest to me
54:58that she had a better start than the others.
55:01Mother wasn't ill,
55:03that she had enough nutrition at the beginning
55:06and probably saw a lot of luck,
55:08but that she made it.
55:10She made it.
55:11And the others didn't.
55:14Yeah.
55:15They were just, you know,
55:17people just wanting a better way of life, that's all.
55:20They were like pioneers, you know,
55:23going off to a new world
55:24and then they come here
55:25and it's worse than what they left.
55:28Mm-hmm.
55:32Terrible.
55:42Maura has left Sharon with one final memento.
55:48Wow.
55:49A photograph of her great-grandmother, Annie.
55:54The struggles that this young woman must have gone through
55:58just to, you know, stay alive is incredible.
56:03She was at an age where she could remember her mother dying in a workhouse
56:08and her brothers and sisters dying.
56:13God.
56:14What she's experienced,
56:16what she had experienced in her life
56:18and then I just hope she found some happiness
56:22when she went back to the north of England
56:27and she obviously married and had three children
56:29and one of those children was my grandfather.
56:33But all these women in the family suffered.
56:36All of them.
56:38My great-grandmother, my grandmother,
56:41my great-great-grandmother suffered terribly
56:44but they didn't give up.
56:46And I don't really.
56:49I must have inherited that from Annie.
57:04I never thought for one minute
57:07that I would have had an American great-grandmother
57:11when we started this whole thing
57:14and I'm proud that my family came from nothing.
57:20Just trying to get some dignity in their lives,
57:23just trying to just get by.
57:28Yeah, that makes me proud.
57:30Yeah, that makes me proud.
57:32Yeah, that makes me proud.
57:44Yeah, that makes me proud.
57:44Yeah, that makes me proud.
57:45Yeah, that makes me proud.
57:45Yeah, that makes me proud.
57:46Yeah, that makes me proud.
57:47Yeah, that makes me proud.
57:48Yeah, that makes me proud.
57:48Yeah, that makes me proud.
57:49Yeah, that makes me proud.
57:50Yeah, that makes me proud.
57:50Yeah, that makes me proud.
57:51Yeah, that makes me proud.
57:51Yeah, that makes me proud.
57:52Yeah, that makes me proud.
57:53Yeah, that makes me proud.
57:54Yeah, that makes me proud.
57:54Yeah, that makes me proud.
57:56Yeah, that makes me proud.
57:59Yeah, that makes me proud.