For many years domestic violence for the most part hidden and little talked about. Only the most egregious examples seemed to capture attention. Betsy (Dixon) Stewardson (1804 – Abt 1850) stands out as an ancestor who was a nineteenth century victim of appalling domestic abuse.
My relationship to Betsy is remote. As the daughter of my 4th great grandfather James Dixon (1771 – 1862), she remains a very distant aunt from long ago. She stands out, however, as an ancestor with a compelling story.
Writings of her niece Rebecca (Potter) Dixon (1856 - 1938) have preserved recollections of Betsy’s difficult marriage. These memories would have been passed on by Rebecca’s own mother (also Rebecca), Betsy’s half-sister, who was a witness to many of the events described.
Betsy and other siblings had in 1818 accompanied their father James and his third wife (he had by then been widowed twice) to Canada from their Yorkshire home. The family, including later Canadian born children, eventually settled in Etobicoke Township where James farmed. As her siblings married, it appeared that Betsy, much to her regret, was destined to remain a spinster. During her late thirties, however, Betsy’s fortunes changed when on July 19, 1842 she married widower William Stewardson in Toronto’s St. James Cathedral. Betsy would have been thirty-eight and her husband about thirty-five years old at the time.
The story of their courtship, if it may be called that, is described by Rebecca (Potter) Dixon as follows:
“Betsy Dixon married
old Billy Stewardson. He was a widower
and abused his first wife shamefully. He
lived at Grandfather Dixon’s one summer.
Betsy got to think a great deal of him.
He drank fearfully and Mother begged her to think before she took such a
step (marriage) and to mind how he used his first wife … “
Betsy chose to ignore her half-sister’s advice. The recollections continue:
“All this my mother told
her and many more things. (Betsy
replied) with a wail ‘O Becca I like him and I can’t help it. I must marry him.’ And they were married.”
Although the writing seemed to be clearly on the wall, Betsy, earnestly wanting to marry and shed the label of spinster, refused to see it. Family misgivings were borne out:
“Oh poor thing, she
suffered a thousand deaths. He beat her
and would do terrible things. One night
he threw a shovel of red coals into bed on her.
He would make her get up in the middle of the night and get him
something to eat. If what she got did
not suit, he would make her get something else.
And at other times, if the knife belonging to the cheese was not put on
the plate, he threw everything off the table.
And all the while she would be saying ‘what is it Stewardson (she
apparently addressed him by his last name), what can I do for you?’ He would curse her.”
Not surprisingly, Stewardson’s behaviour did not improve over the years. One night when he failed to return home, Betsy became concerned. Rebecca’s reminiscences continue:
“Well, it ran along this way until one night he had been away all night and she was nearly wild with fright. She came over to my mother’s house and crept into bed with Jim and M.J. (older siblings of Rebecca). And after my father and mother and Bessie the baby were up (Rebecca’s sister Isabella, the baby referred to, was born in 1850 thus fixing events around that time), she got into their bed. While mother was doing up the breakfast work, she heard Aunt Betsy saying ‘oh, what a poor creature I am and does not know where he is’. She fell over in a fit. She was sick for some time (from what is unclear) but when she was a convalescent … she determined to go up and see him (Stewardson) with mother.” (The exact nature of Betsy’s illness and of the fit she suffered is at this time unknown. From snippets of information provided by Rebecca, it appears that Betsy was a highly strung individual of perhaps limited mental capacity)
It appears that Stewardson, having now returned home and advised that Betsy had spent the night with her family, somehow made it known that he expected her home by nightfall. The horse and wagon (apparently to be used for Betsy for her trip home) was first required by her brother John to run an errand some distance away. (Although the Stewardson home was within walking distance, albeit perhaps not within convenient walking distance, Betsy, not yet fully recovered, may have opted to use the horse and wagon.) Betsy’s fear about being late and incurring her husband’s wrath is evident from the following passage:
“She reluctantly let
it go and followed him (her brother) to the lane and begged him to be home
before dark as Stewardson told her to be home by that time.”
Stewardson then apparently changed his mind and indicated he wanted his wife home by noon. Fortunately Betsy’s sister stood up for her.
“It seems as they were
starting out, it being near eleven, he (Stewardson) came and told her to mind
and be home by noon to get him dinner. My mother yelled to him that they would do no
such thing and he need not expect them until night.”
As the day wore on, she became increasingly desperate for her brother to return:
“Well, Uncle John did
not return and many times did she go to the lane to look for him. At last she couldn’t stand it and told mother
she would go home (presumably on foot).
Mother said no, that she wasn’t able, but Betsy said she must go.”
It appears that her sister may have followed some time later to check on Betsy’s safety:
“When mother got down
Aunt Betsy was dead. His (Stewardson’s)
tale was that when she came home, he met her at the gate and she said she was
very sick. Well, he told her to go and light a fire and get him some supper and
then go to bed. She was in the act of
lighting the fire when she took a fit.
He left the house and ran for help and when he got back she was dead.”
There was no doubt in the family’s mind that the physically abusive Stewardson had caused Betsy’s death shortly after she returned home. Given, however, the reference to an earlier fit of undetermined cause, this, in fairness, is not conclusive.
“My mother felt so
badly she could not bear to go in and see her until just before the
funeral. She claims if ever murder was
committed, it was in this case. She
thinks that he met her at the gate, as he said, and frightened her in some
way. Now no one will ever know.”
The reminiscences of Rebecca (Potter) Dixon mention that an inquiry was held into the cause of death and that the verdict was that Betsy died from “water on the brain”, a finding the family never accepted. Whatever the case, Betsy clearly suffered through eight years of marriage to a sadistic husband with a long history of physical abuse. As an intimidated battered woman trapped in an abusive marriage, Betsy today would garner considerable sympathy. Her family was less kind. Rebecca’s (Potter) Dixon’s recollections conclude with the following harsh judgement:
“Well, so ended the
life of the hardest working and most foolish woman that ever lived.”
David Arntfield
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