LiveTheirStory

My great-great grandmother Rachel was one of 6 children born to Richard Boddington and his wife Emily on the London/Surrey borders. Her younger sister Penelope left home when she married Stanislaus Adamski, a Russian Pole, at the age of 18. He was fifteen years her senior, and worked as a confectioner. It is likely that he was part of the wave of Russian Jewish immigrants who arrived in London in the latter half of the 19th century, although none of the records states this explicitly.

By 1881 they had a young son, also Stanislaus, and were living in Henage Street, Mile End. Further children followed: Thomas born in 1882, Penelope in 1883 and Agnes in 1887. The marriage, however, was a difficult one, and in 1888 we find Penelope being tried at Clerkenwell Quarter sessions alongside a certain Julian Froganowski for theft of a looking-glass and other articles, value £5, from Stanislaus.

Predictably, the newspaper reports of the case add sensational details to the tale. The Canterbury Journal of 20 October 1888 reported that the pair had stolen all of Stanislaus’ furniture except the bedstead, and had eloped to Soho where they were living as man and wife. Worse still, Stanislaus claimed, they left the four children out on the street. Froganowski responded that as a lodger he had regularly supported the family finances, that Adamski had ‘brutally ill-treated his wife’ and in fact had kicked her out. Penelope backed up the story of ill-treatment.

However, Froganowski, who was 20 years older than Penelope, had form. He had just been released on licence from 10 years penal servitude, imposed in 1879 at Central Criminal Court for forging and passing Russian banknotes. He was sent to Pentonville Prison for the remainder of the original sentence plus a further 6 years. Penelope, who had pleaded guilty to the theft and had no previous convictions, having already served 14 days in prison from her arrest, was sentenced to those 14 days and so was discharged. Stanislaus’ reported treatment of her may have mitigated her sentence, but now she had to return to her husband, which may have been punishment enough.

The 1891 census confirms that the couple remained together: their story moved to 151 Jubilee St, Mile End, and she had another child, Walter, born in 1890. However, the picture of a family with little financial security re-emerges in 1893, when Penelope and her children Thomas, Penelope, Agnes, Walter and Ethel are admitted to Mile End workhouse ‘destitute’. Had Stanislaus thrown her out again, or was his work drying up? Either way, a radical solution was needed.

On 13 June 1894 Penelope, aged 32, and her children Stanislaus 14, a labourer, Thomas 11, Penelope 10, Agnes 8 and ‘Arthur’ [Walter] 4 arrived at Ellis Island, New York, on board the Chester from Southampton, intending a ‘protracted sojourn’. There is no sign of Ethel, possibly Walter’s twin, and I can only surmise that she died in the workhouse or was put out for adoption.

The 1900 US census confirms that Stanislaus joined them in America because he, Penelope and Stanislaus, Thomas, Penelope, Agnes, Walter, and William (born in Essex County, New Jersey, in 1897), are living at 307 Pleasant St in Baltimore that year. As if to signal their fresh start, both father and son had changed their given names from Stanislaus to Samuel. 

Penelope Adamski died and was buried at Woodland Cemetery, Newark, NJ, in 1902. Using American records it is possible to trace many of her descendants, and I’m tempted to think that one of them was also interested in this tumultuous family history, for after three generations of absence the name Penelope was given to one of her great-great-grandchildren, born in 1949.