Brett Payne’s Victorian & Edwardian Photograph Collection

Elizabeth Cash bade farewell to Jane Cash late in the afternoon of New Years Eve 1885. She may even have wished her good tidings for the year ahead, for Jane was Elizabeth’s step-sons wife, but there would be no over the top embracings between the two. On Jane’s part perhaps she resented the fact that she seemed to have been left to care for an elderly woman who wasn’t even family and on Elizabeth’s she may have grown bitter at how life had treated her especially in her later years.

Elizabeth Eagleston was born in Hayes, Middlesex in about the year 1818 but her child producing years had passed her by the time she met and married Charles Cash in Duffield in 1857. Charles was himself a widower by this stage and his children were already for the most part grown adults with even the youngest still a teen. Considering that Elizabeth was unlikely to produce any children the marriage would appear to have been an arrangement where she would assist with the final upbringing of Charles children remaining at home and in return she would receive the security that a marriage would bring. For Charles, the help that his young wife would bring would help him to concentrate on his carpentry business which on the face of it was healthy. Just 4 years after his marriage to his second wife he listed it as employing 4 men and two boys. By all accounts the union looked like beneficial to both parties but with Charles death in 1871 Elizabeth may suddenly have found herself feeling very alone.The sole reason that she had spent the last 14 years almost 150 miles away from her place of birth was now gone and her increasingly bad health may have exasperated conditions.

Her later years saw her lose all power in her limbs with her hand solely under her control. As a result she had to be hoisted in and out of her chair, in which it appears she also slept, and needed treatment regularly to her ulcerated legs.

This continual treatment meant that Jane Cash had a need to visit Elizabeth on 31 December 1885, whilst revellers surely partied nearby. During the visit Jane argued with her mother-in-law that she shouldn’t be left alone in the house at night with the impropriety of it to which Elizabeth replied that ‘She wouldn’t have anyone’.
Jane left Elizabeth as comfortable as possible, with her legs treated and a fire smouldering nearby to keep her warm. On the table beside her was placed a small lighted candle with snuffers, a box of matches and a blotting pad.

A neighbour, Eliza Wright, whose duty involved locking and unlocking Elizabeth’s house arrived early the next morning to see smoke emerging from the house. Immediately she contacted another neighbour who entered the house. He found the deceased Elizabeth Cash burnt to a cinder with furniture in the room still burning.
Reports of the intensity of the injuries in subsequent coroner reports as detailed in the local media state that ‘the body of the deceased was terribly burnt, one of her arms being taken off nearly at the shoulder and her flesh in other places being consumed to the bone’.

It was suggested that an overturned oil lamp found near the deceased caused a fire to spread towards her clothing which in turn caught on fire. Elizabeth unable to escape succumbed to the inevitable was burnt to death.

The coroner reports these details but also that it is uncertain as to why Elizabeth was so burnt suggesting that the oil lamp itself would not usually cause such extensive damage.
In October 1896 shortly after Jane Cash’s death the house was placed for auction with description of the premises being ‘ 2 sitting rooms, kitchen, pantry, 5 bedrooms and necessary appurtenances, with yard, good garden, stabling for 5 horses, coach house and lofts over same. Brick building used as the ‘Duffield Literary Institute’ with wash-house, store-room and double gateway entrance under same to yard. No mention of the damage caused by the conflagration is made.

Sources:
Derby Daily Telegraph
Derby Mercury
English census returns 1861
Civil marriage record for Charles Cash and Elizabeth Eagleston.
Civil death records for Charles Cash and Elizabeth Cash