Much of the Lucy Clarke story has been told in the previous chapter, but here are some more details.
Lucy was born Lucy Drake, on 7 February 1862 at Little Muddy Creek, West Auckland. After her father, John Drake, died in 1865, Lucy changed her name to Clarke, after her mother Lucy’s second husband, Solomon Clarke, in 1868. She was only 15 when she married John Henry Taylor in Thames in 1876.
The account of her leaving Taylor and moving in with Joseph Greenwood Jnr has been well documented, but it seems that since Lucy stayed with Joseph until his death and bore him at least six children, she was happy in that relationship.
Unfortunately Joseph was to succumb to typhoid at the age of 33, leaving Lucy a young widow in 1889. Two years later, however she married Thomas Chappell, to whom she bore a further seven children. Little wonder that he outlived her by 20 years. She died of stomach cancer in 1918.
There are as usual more questions than answers, several of which concern the nature of her marriage to John Taylor. Was she pregnant? Did she end up leaving her three children indefinitely in order to live with Joseph Greenwood? She would have given birth to at least 18 children in her lifetime, and indeed she looks to be more than 55 in the photo above. Perhaps it was taken shortly before her death.
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