In terms of education and work, both boys had not reached their teenage years when significant laws came into force which had a major bearing on their schooling and on their working lives. In particular, under the provisions of the Factory and Workshops Act of 1878, children who were between 10 and 13 (for Samuel, this meant March 1878 to March 1881 and, for John William, this meant September 1879 to September 1882) were to work half-time only. There was the added requirement that a parent of "a child employed in a factory or workshop shall cause that child to attend some recognized efficient school" on those days or half-days when the child was not working. A child who reached a certain number of attendances or attained certain standards in reading, writing and arithmetic by age 13 was awarded a certificate of proficiency and, with that certificate, the child was deemed to be a young person.

Maybe the two Hodkinson boys weren't awarded certificates. Maybe they were. Maybe attainment was the deciding factor, which would have been measured by Standard 4 of the Code of 1876. To reach that level, they would have been able to "read with intelligence" a few lines of prose selected by an inspector; to write eight lines slowly dictated once from a reading book; to show improved handwriting in their copy books; and as far as arithmetic was concerned, they would have been able to do sums involving compound rules in money and do reduction workings for weights and measures. Certainly, the evidence from John William's later life shows that he could have attained those standards as a child; probably the same was true for Samuel. I like to think that was the case and that Samuel and John William were the first Hodkinsons in my family to be awarded school certificates.

More about the life of Samuel Hodkinson is here.

James Hodkinson died in February 1881. He was 39. At the time of his death, he had three surviving children: his oldest son, Samuel, was twelve; his second-oldest son, John William, was eleven; and his only surviving daughter, Eliza Jane, was five months old. Sadly, Eliza Jane would only live for another few months.  With James Hodkinson, the highest earner of the family, no longer alive, widow Sarah Ellen Hodkinson knew that life was going to be a lot tougher than it had ever been during her marriage.

Sarah Ellen knew she had to move on quickly with her life and find a new husband. This was often the case with those recently widowed since economic necessity dictated the need for action. A new husband or the workhouse – the choice was not hard to make. As mentioned earlier, she married a widower, George Albert Kenyon. The ceremony took place in August 1882 at the Parish Church of St Michael and All Angels in Ashton-under-Lyne, with the new Mrs Kenyon about three months pregnant.

By February 1883, the Hodkinson/Kenyon family had moved to 61 Park Street in Ashton-under-Lyne. Sarah Ellen Kenyon had two children at this address – James Henry Kenyon and Hannah Kenyon. Of her six Hodkinson children, only two were alive – Samuel Hodkinson and John William Hodkinson.  In 1891, Samuel died; that left John William as the only survivor of his branch of the Hodkinson family. However, his prospects were looking good. A successful apprenticeship as an iron moulder (doubtless with the encouragement of his stepdad, who was also an iron moulder) set him in good stead for his future life with a job with status and a good wage. It wouldn't be too long before he married and a new generation of Hodkinsons would be born.

This is a list of key family events in John William's life.

• 1872: birth of Ellen Hodkinson, his first sister;
• 1874: death of Ellen Hodkinson;
• 1875: birth of Eliza Ellen Hodkinson, his second sister;
• 1876: death of Eliza Ellen Hodkinson;
• 1878: birth of James Hodkinson, his second brother;
• 1880: death of James Hodkinson;
• 1880: birth of Eliza Jane Hodkinson, his third sister;
• 1881: death of James Hodkinson, father;
• 1881: death of Eliza Jane Hodkinson;
• 1882: marriage of his mother, Sarah Ellen Hodkinson, to George Albert Kenyon;
• 1883: birth of James Henry Kenyon, half-brother;
• 1884: birth of Hannah Kenyon, half-sister;
• 1891: death of his only surviving sibling, Samuel; and
• 1896: marriage to Frances Eliza Farrar.

Long before John William was born, events in Ireland were having a profound and tragic impact on the people of the country. Between 1845-52 Ireland suffered a period of starvation, disease and emigration caused mainly by a disease which affected the potato crop, on which a third of Ireland's population was reliant for food. About a million died from starvation and disease, and well over a million emigrated to other countries.

Amongst those who sought a life elsewhere was the O’Gorman family of Dublin, comprised of dad Michael, mum Frances, daughter Teresa (born about 1836), and doubtless other children who have not been easily identifiable from surviving ancestry records. The family moved to Liverpool, and, as Roman Catholics, became parishioners of the Roman Catholic parish of Holy Cross.

The parish was under the care of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a missionary religious congregation in the Catholic Church.  The organisation’s website has a history of the parish of Holy Cross and it’s worth quoting two paragraphs which summarise the new life that the O’Gorman family experienced, after escaping famine and starvation in their birth country.

The Parish of Holy Cross opened a new church in October 1860 and the sixteenth marriage to take place in the building on Sunday, 7^th April 1861 was that of 25-year-old Teresa O’Gorman and 27-year-old Francis Farrar whose occupation was stated to be a labourer.  On the marriage record, the same address was given for bride and groom – Standish Street, which, as can be seen from the map below, was very convenient for Holy Cross Church!

Although the marriage certificate states Teresa O'Gorman was a spinster, a birth certificate for one of her children gives “Wilson” as the name of a deceased husband, so the Holy Cross marriage may have been her second. If that was the case, why did she lie about her marital status?

I’ve been able to find only three children born to Teresa O'Gorman and Francis Farrar, as in the family tree below. Was this what they wanted – with a big gap between the births of the last two children, or were there many miscarriages? About fifteen months after their marriage, Teresa O'Gorman and Francis Farrar were living in Wigan, where John Joseph Farrar was born. Their next child was Anne Farrar who was born in Stafford in 1864 where the family resided until at least 1872. That was the year when Frances Eliza Farrar was born but, sadly, also the year when her mum Teresa O'Gorman died.

In terms of the Hodkinsons and their Irish ancestry, Francis Eliza's birth was the important one. Half Irish and half English, she would become the wife of John William Hodkinson. Thus, their four children became the first Hodkinsons in my family to have Irish ancestry.