Isaac Tullett (1810-1883) and Frances Wolven (1818-1871).
My 3rd great-grand uncle and aunt.
Isaac spent a lot of his life in trouble with the law… He was the son of Daniel Tullett and Ann Palmer and was baptised on 24 December 1810 at St Peter’s in Newdigate, Surrey. He married Frances or Fanny Wolven / Woolven on 10 April 1837 at St Martin’s Church in Dorking, Surrey. She’d been baptised on 18 January 1818 at Horsham in Sussex to Thomas and Elizabeth Woolven.
The couple settled in Rusper, Sussex, started a family and worked in agriculture but Isaac found himself in trouble with the law. The Morning Post of 7 January 1842 reported that he, along with his brothers Joshua and Solomon, had been found guilty of stealing a bed, a clock, a quilt and other property from a farm at Newdigate. Isaac initially told the police that Solomon had organised the hit and had persuaded him to commit the burglary with him. However, the court decided that Isaac had been the mastermind and he was sentenced to six months in the House of Correction. His brothers received 21 days in solitary confinement.
In 1849 he was sentenced to two months’ hard labour at the West Sussex Quarter Sessions for stealing turnips worth one shilling, according to the Brighton Gazette of 25 October 1849. The 22 August 1850 edition carried a report from the Horsham Petty Sessions, where Isaac had to find a surety in the sum of £10 to avoid three months in prison for threatening violence against a farmer from Rusper. Isaac told the court that he had been exasperated by the victim, who’d been telling his neighbours that he was a house-breaker and thief (perhaps with some justification!). The same newspaper of 25 December 1851 reported that Isaac had received two months’ hard labour at the Horsham Petty Sessions for stealing yet more turnips from a farmer.
The 1851 census had recorded the family in Friday Street, Rusper, but relations between the couple deteriorated and the Sussex Advertiser of 29 March 1859 noted that he had violently assaulted and threatened to kill his wife. The result was six months’ hard labour. Then, according to the Sussex Advertiser of 19 July 1864, Isaac was sentenced to another month inside for pulling up more crops.
It’s not surprising that subsequent census records showed Isaac and Frances living apart. In 1861 he was with his parents and one of his daughters in Rusper but Frances was in Horsham living as a house-keeper with Timothy Tullett, her brother-in-law, and other family members. She was still there in 1871 but died later that year and was buried in Rusper on 10 December.
Isaac did have at least some success with the law. The West Sussex County Times of 25 September 1880 noted that he had won a case in the County Court at Horsham and received £15 compensation after suing the owner of a horse and cart for knocking him over on the road between Capel and Kingsfold. He’d been injured and was unable to work for some months.
Isaac’s death a few years later was horrendous – killed on the railway when he was hit by a train. The Southern Weekly News of 17 March 1883 reported that the accident happened on the line from London to Horsham. Driver William Roberson told the inquest that he was in charge of the down train when he saw a man on the crossing at Kingsfold Farm near Warnham and sounded his whistle. He also stated that if Isaac, who was said to be a wood-cutter, had stayed where he was he would’ve been alright but instead he’d tried to cross and was hit by the buffers. He died instantly and a verdict of accidental death was returned. He was buried in his home village of Rusper on 18 March.
Isaac and Frances’s children were:
- Frances Tullett (1840-1927) was baptised in Capel, Surrey, but was born blind. She lived at home to begin with but by the 1861 census was in the Horsham Union Workhouse and remained there for much if not all of her life. She died in 1927.
- George Tullett (1844-1899) was baptised in Rusper, Sussex, and went on to work as a farm labourer and gamekeeper. He married Mary Charter in her home village of Horsham in 1863 and together they raised a family. Census data recorded them in Horsham, Rusper and Worth, Sussex, while various newspaper reports (such as the West Sussex County Times of 10 May 1884) record him as one of the Rusper parish bellringers. He died in 1899, Mary in 1903.
- Martha Tullett (1847-1915) was baptised in Rusper, Sussex, and worked as a domestic servant before marrying James Sexton in Horsham in 1866. They raised a large family in Rusper while James worked as an agricultural labourer and then a gamekeeper. They both died in 1915.
- Mary Ann Tullett (1850-1912) was also baptised in Rusper, Sussex. She married labourer and bricklayer James Etheridge in Horsham in 1876. They settled there but James died in 1896. Mary Ann took in lodgers and worked as a laundress, dying in 1912.
Sources: BMDs, Census and other records at Ancestry.co.uk, Findmypast.co.uk, Familysearch.org. British Newspaper Archive, titles mentioned in text. Newdigate Local History Society.