Eliza Ann Breakspear was born in 1811 in Chipping Norton, the daughter of John Breakspear and Emma (née) Salmon. Her father seemed to have moved around as her younger sister Emma was born in 1813 in Brill in Buckinghamshire and older siblings appear to have been born in Kings Langley, Hertfordshire. This was probably because John Breakspear was for a time working as an Excise Officer, although he soon reverted to being licensee of a string of pubs. He had been brought up in the Blue Boar in Chipping Norton. By 1820 the whole family had moved to Birmingham.
On 20 May 1830 at the age of 19 she married Walter Showell, in Harborne Staffordshire. He too was a licensed victualler. But this was a tragic and short marriage. Her first son William Henry Showell died at nine months and her husband died in 1835 leaving her with her second son Walter who was born in 1832.
Eliza Ann Showell remarried Thomas Francis, an engraver, on 10 Jan 1840 in Aston. He was eighteen years older than her, a widower and had four young children. It would appear that Walter did not join the new family and was brought up by his Aunt Mary Ann Hands. Later Walter certainly seems to have more family connections with the Hands family than he ever did with his step brothers and sisters in the Francis family. This estrangement from her son could either have been at the behest of the Showell family or possibly of Thomas Francis himself. Matters did got any better for Eliza as again her first born in her new marriage, William Breakspear Francis died before his first birthday and she appears to have had no more children of her own. She is not recorded as living with her husband in the 1851 census.
By the 1871 census Eliza Ann Francis is shown living with her sister Emma Kirby, both widows. Emma’s husband, Thomas Collins Kirby, was a Spirit dealer. Another sister Jane Davis was married to a ‘Retail Brewer’. Eliza’s only surviving son Walter Showell, went on to become a major brewer in Birmingham in the 1880’s. All this makes it interesting to speculate that the Breakspears in Chipping Norton are quite closely connected with the nearby Breakspear dynasty of brewers in Henley. The parents of the founder of the brewery Robert Brakspear (1750-1812) were indeed married in Chipping Norton in 1748. But this is close as it gets as Breakspear is a strong regional name to the Cotswolds and Oxfordshire. Its roots connect back to the family of the only English pope Nicholas Breakspear (1100-1159) – Adrian IV
Sources and Notes
- Warwickshire Licensed Victualler Database 1801-1828
- The relationship with Thomas Francis is a little difficult to explain. The 1841 census shows Thomas and Eliza together living with four children all under 10 years old, presumably from Thomas’s first marriage. These children seem to disappear after this date and in both the 1851 and 1861 censuses Eliza and Thomas are living separately in Aston. He as an engraver and she as a ‘staymaker’. Thomas dies on 4 Jan 1863, with a newspaper announcement Aris Birmingham Gazette ‘in his 71st year deservedly respected’
- Thomas Francis’s father was John Francis, Licensee of the Angel Pub, who died and left a will 1809. Indeed Thomas Francis himself could well have been licensee of the Wellington Pub in 1815-16. This may indicate that Thomas and Eliza shared a view on the fragility of the pub trade.
- The burial of the infant William Breakspear Francis is recorded in St Paul’s Birmingham. As with all Thomas Francis’s children no baptisms can be found.
- Eliza Ann Francis does not sign the wedding certificate of her son Walter on his marriage to Sarah Harill in 1854. She probably did not attend.