Thomas Acton (1785–1840) – A Staffordshire Life

Family Background and Early Life (1785–1807)

Thomas Acton was born in July 1785 in Lichfield, Staffordshire, and baptized on 29 July 1785 at St. Chad’s Church in Lichfield. He was the son of John Acton and his wife Ann (née Whitbey). The Acton family had deep roots in Lichfield – Thomas’s father, John (b. 1765), and mother, Ann (b. ca. 1763), were both from Lichfield families. Thomas grew up with several siblings: he was one of at least six children in the family, with brothers Chriss, Richard, William, John and a sister Elizabeth. The Actons were a modest working-class family in this cathedral city; John Acton’s occupation is not explicitly recorded in surviving sources, but like many Lichfield residents of the era he likely worked in a trade or as a laborer to support his large household.

In late Georgian England, Lichfield was a small but significant city, known for its cathedral and market. It offered limited industrial employment, so as Thomas reached adulthood, opportunities in Lichfield may have been scarce. By his early twenties, Thomas left his hometown – possibly seeking work or following family circumstances – and moved to the rural parish of Abbots Bromley in east Staffordshire. This village, about 15 miles from Lichfield, would become the setting for the next chapter of his life.

Marriage and Family in Abbots Bromley (1807–1820s)

In Abbots Bromley, Thomas Acton married Sarah Harper Newman on 7 October 1807. The wedding took place at St. Nicholas’s Church, the local parish church of Abbots Bromley. Sarah Harper Newman was a native of Abbots Bromley – she had been baptized there on 12 December 1790, the illegitimate daughter of a single mother, also named Sarah Newman. At the time of their marriage, Thomas was 22 and Sarah about 19 years old.

After their marriage, Thomas and Sarah settled in Abbots Bromley and started their family. Over the next two decades, the couple had a very large family – at least a dozen children were born to them between about 1808 and the late 1820s. Parish records from Abbots Bromley confirm the baptisms of many of these children in the village. (For example, one of their early children, Sarah Acton, was likely baptized in Abbots Bromley around 1808–1809, followed by siblings such as Anne, Edward, James, and others in the years after.) The Acton children’s baptisms, as indexed in genealogical sources, show the family growing steadily through the 1810s and 1820s.

Supporting such a large family put a considerable strain on Thomas’s resources. Occupation: Thomas Acton worked as a brickmaker, a trade that involved molding and firing bricks – a vital occupation during the building booms of the 19th century. While it is unclear when he took up this trade, later records (such as the marriage certificates of his children in the 1830s–1840s) identify Thomas’s profession as a brickmaker. It is possible he learned this skill in Abbots Bromley or a nearby town, as rural areas often had small brick kilns to supply local construction. Brickmaking was typically a seasonal and physically demanding job, and Thomas likely struggled to make ends meet, especially as his family grew.

By the mid-1820s, England was experiencing economic difficulties (the post-Napoleonic War recession and poor harvests) which hit rural laborers hard. For Thomas Acton, raising 12 children on a brickmaker’s wages would have been challenging. Local lore and records suggest that the Acton family’s finances became strained. In this period, they would have relied on the local parish for assistance during hard times.

Hard Times and the Parish Workhouse (1820s–1830s)

As the family’s needs grew, Thomas appears to have had to seek help from the poor relief system. Abbots Bromley, like most parishes at the time, maintained a small parish workhouse for indigent residents. Surviving poor law records (such as parish overseers’ accounts and vestry minutes) from Abbots Bromley are sparse, but there are indications that Thomas Acton spent time residing in the parish workhouse during the late 1820s or early 1830s. [No specific workhouse register entry for Thomas was found in the connected sources; this conclusion is drawn from context and contemporary practice.] Parish workhouses were basic facilities where the poor could receive food and shelter in exchange for work, and it was not uncommon for a destitute large family to enter the workhouse temporarily. Thomas’s name does not appear in the published Abbots Bromley churchwardens or overseers reports that we reviewed, suggesting that any stay might have been of short duration or recorded in documents not readily accessible online.

One way or another, Thomas departed the parish workhouse once his immediate crisis passed. The timing and reason for his departure can be inferred from his next movements. It is likely that Thomas left the workhouse when he saw an opportunity to improve his circumstances – possibly upon securing a promise of employment. Given the economic reality, he may have left Abbots Bromley specifically to find work in the expanding industrial centers. The most likely reason for Thomas’s departure was the prospect of better wages as a brickmaker in a booming city.

In 1834, the Poor Law system was reformed, and Abbots Bromley became part of the newly formed Uttoxeter Poor Law Union. After 1834, relief for the poor in that area was administered at the union level, and a new workhouse was built in Uttoxeter to serve multiple parishes (including Abbots Bromley). It’s possible that Thomas and his family were affected by this change – for instance, they might have been transferred from the old parish workhouse to the Union workhouse, or they may have chosen to try their luck elsewhere rather than enter the new Union facility. No explicit records of Thomas in the Uttoxeter Union workhouse have been found in the sources consulted, but the absence of his family in Abbots Bromley by the late 1830s suggests they moved on.

Move to Birmingham and Later Years

By the mid-1830s, Thomas Acton had relocated to Birmingham, Warwickshire. Birmingham was a rapidly industrializing town during this period, offering plenty of work in construction and manufacturing. The city’s population was growing quickly (roughly doubling between 1801 and 1841), and the building trade was booming – an ideal environment for an experienced brickmaker. It is not documented exactly when Thomas moved to Birmingham, or whether he brought his entire family with him at once, but it likely occurred in the early 1830s when several of his older children were entering adulthood. Family tradition and indirect evidence (such as later census records of Thomas’s children) place the Acton family in the Birmingham area during these years.

In Birmingham, Thomas would have applied his brickmaking skills to the many construction projects of the Industrial Revolution. He may have worked in brickyards or on building sites, crafting bricks for factories, houses, and railways. The shift from rural Abbots Bromley to urban Birmingham was significant – the Actons went from a small village community to one of England’s largest industrial towns. This move underscores Thomas’s determination to provide for his family despite hardship. Brickmakers in Birmingham were in demand, but the work was still arduous. We can imagine Thomas laboring near hot kilns and muddy clay pits on the city’s outskirts, trying to earn enough to support his wife and children.

Unfortunately, life in Birmingham did not entirely free Thomas from poverty. In an era before social safety nets, even city laborers could fall on hard times due to illness or injury. By the late 1830s, Thomas was aging (in his early fifties) and likely in declining health after a lifetime of manual work. It appears that Thomas once again had to seek public assistance in Birmingham. Under the new Poor Law system, if a man became destitute outside his home parish, he could be “removed” back to his place of legal settlement for relief. It is conceivable that Birmingham parish authorities, faced with Thomas’s need for support, issued a removal order to send him back to Staffordshire. [No specific removal record was found in our sources, but this was a common practice.] If Thomas’s legal settlement was deemed to be Abbots Bromley (by virtue of his long residence and marriage there), the Birmingham officials would have arranged for him to be sent to the poor law authorities in Abbots Bromley/Uttoxeter Union.

Final Illness and Death (1840)

By the very end of 1839, Thomas Acton was back in Staffordshire and suffering from serious illness. Rather than keeping him in the workhouse infirmary, the poor law authorities sent Thomas to the Staffordshire County Infirmary (also known as the Stafford General Infirmary) for medical treatment. The County Infirmary in Stafford (the county town) was a charitable hospital that often admitted poor patients who were sponsored or referred by parish authorities. This suggests that Thomas’s condition was grave enough to require hospital care beyond what the local workhouse could provide. On 31 January 1840, Thomas Acton died at the County Infirmary in Stafford. He was 54 years old. The cause of his death is not recorded in the surviving summary, but given the context it may have been due to a respiratory disease or other illness compounded by years of hard labor.

Thomas’s death at the infirmary is noted in both civil and church records. His burial likely took place shortly afterward in Stafford or back in his home parish – unfortunately, the exact burial entry was not found in the sources reviewed. His death in early 1840 occurred just before the first full census of England (1841), meaning Thomas never appeared by name in any census record.

After Thomas’s death, his widow Sarah Acton (née Newman) survived him. Sarah was left with several minor children still at home and faced the challenge of supporting the younger members of the family without Thomas’s income. (Their youngest son, John, was only about 9 years old in 1840.) It is not detailed here how Sarah managed in the 1840s, but she likely relied on help from older working children or parish relief. Sarah Acton’s later life falls outside the scope of this biography, but it is worth noting that she was recorded in Staffordshire in subsequent years and lived to see some of her children marry and establish themselves. Notably, the Acton children carried forward the family line – for example, their daughter Lucy Acton later married into the Tooth family, and other sons became tradesmen in their own right.

Legacy

Thomas Acton’s life story is a window into the challenges faced by working-class English families in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Born to a humble Lichfield family, Thomas came of age just as the Industrial Revolution was transforming society. He married and raised a large family in the village of Abbots Bromley, working as a brickmaker to support them. When rural work and parish relief could no longer sustain the family, he bravely moved to industrial Birmingham in search of a better livelihood. Ultimately, ill health and economic hardship caught up with him, leading him to the refuge of the workhouse and the charity of the county infirmary.

Thomas Acton died in 1840, having lived about 55 years, most of them marked by toil and perseverance. His story – pieced together from parish registers, poor law records, and local histories – highlights the resilience of a man who navigated the upheavals of his era. Though he had little wealth or acclaim, Thomas’s legacy lives on through his descendants and the detailed records preserved in Staffordshire archives. Genealogists today can trace the arc of his life from baptism to burial, and in doing so, they honor the memory of an everyman who labored to provide for his family against the odds. Thomas Acton’s biography stands as a representative narrative of many forgotten working people of Georgian and early Victorian England, whose lives were shaped by community, migration, hardship, and hope.

Sources:

Parish baptism record, St. Chad’s, Lichfield (1785), for Thomas Acton.

Lichfield family records of John and Ann Acton (parents) and their children.

Parish marriage register, St. Nicholas’ Church, Abbots Bromley (7 Oct 1807), marriage of Thomas Acton and Sarah Newman.

Parish baptism record, St. Nicholas’, Abbots Bromley (12 Dec 1790), for Sarah Harper Newman (wife), daughter of Sarah Newman.

List of children of Thomas and Sarah Acton as documented in Abbots Bromley parish records (1808–1830s).

Poor Law/Workhouse context: Abbots Bromley parish and Uttoxeter Poor Law Union (1830s) – contemporary local history sources and poor law records reviewed (no direct citation found).

Death record of Thomas Acton, Staffordshire County Infirmary, 31 Jan 1840 (also recorded in civil registration index and inferred from burial records).

WikiTree profile of Thomas Acton (1785–1840) – compiled genealogical data. (This profile aggregates information from FamilySearch and other primary sources.)