LiveTheirStory

In my post about her husband Isaac, I reflected on how stories of criminals leave a lot unsaid about the impact on their families. Isaac’s transportation, however, seems to have been the culmination of a life of loss for his wife, and their story might even contain a clue as to why a man might have turned to drink and crime.

It turns out that Isaac and Charlotte had – and lost – six children between their marriage and his trial. Their firstborn, James Green, was conceived before their marriage and died within 2 weeks of his baptism in 1831. Their second, Charles, died in 1838 at the age of 4. Ralph, born in 1835, died in the same year. Elijah, born in 1836, died in 1841. Harriette Letitia and Charles, both born in 1838, may have been twins, but sadly Harriette did not see her first birthday. Her brother, named after the deceased Charles, only survived until 1841. Another Harriett, born in 1841, would outlive her mother but not reach her tenth birthday.

It would be easy to put this terrible family tragedy (and Isaac’s criminality) down to extreme poverty, and maybe the simplest explanation is the best. Poor nutrition and diseases such as typhus, tuberculosis and smallpox all took their toll on children in 19th-century England, as Andrea Tange discusses in her article. Charlotte’s own life was relatively short, and perhaps her repeated pregnancies impacted the neonatal health of her children. It was not uncommon to lose a child, but this cluster seems particularly cruel. She and Isaac had named their fourth child after Elijah, a biblical prophet and miracle-worker: were they hoping for a miracle themselves?

Charlotte’s own death certificate put down her early death at the age of 32 in November 1843 to a ‘Visitation of God’. This, I found, was a common phrase used at the time when cause of death was unknown (and in fact used in many child deaths), rather than a judgement on her life. But coupled with her identification in the written certificate as ‘wife of Isaac Knott under transportation [my emphasis]’, it seems that even in death she could not escape the infamy of her husband.

But her story doesn’t end there: see the next chapter at https://livetheirstory.com/2025/07/30/charlotte-knott-again/