The mysterious story of Robert Stafford 

The adopted baby

We start the story at some date between 1810 and 1819. Two people are travelling north along the road from Newcastle. One is a man perhaps aged around forty, whose name is Sproat. The other is a girl, quite young. She has charge of a baby only a few months, or perhaps weeks, old. This baby is Rob.

The pair must be domestic servants. They have been given the task of finding a home for the child, whose mother died when he was born. They have been travelling for several days and have come perhaps one hundred or two hundred miles. The railways have not yet arrived so they must be in some kind of horse drawn vehicle.

After leaving Newcastle they arrive at Gosforth where they stop to spend the night at a small inn. Gosforth was then only a tiny village, separated from Newcastle by open fields. It was located where South Gosforth now is. There was a colliery owned by the wealthy Brandling family who lived at Gosforth House, at what is now known as Melton Park.

The colliery at Gosforth, just north of Newcastle upon Tyne

While this pair stayed overnight at the inn, Sproat learned that in the village was a pit man whose wife had lost the baby she was expecting. Next morning Sproat set out to find this couple. After talking to them he decides to leave the baby with them. Perhaps he had grown desperate. He returned to the inn where the girl was waiting with the child and they took him to the pit man's cottage. Since there was no proper road they had to cross a ploughed field.

I clearly remember the next part of our conversation, when I interrupted Old Jim. 'So the family name (Stafford) was actually the name the child acquired from his foster parents?' 'Oh no' he said. 'Robert Stafford was his own name. Sproat insisted that he must always keep it'.

'Then what was this pitman called? I asked, suspecting he might not know. 'Thomas Menham' he said. By this time I had started scribbling down notes in a pocket book or diary. 'How do you spell it?' I asked. 'M-E-N-N-E-M or M-E-N-H-A-M?'. 'Thomas Menham' he said.

SEPARATE NOTE: Some years later, and having no connection with the above, I was looking at the report of the Employment Commissioners who were sent in 1839 to investigate the employment of young children in the pits.

The Commissioner who went around the Northumberland coalfield was called John Leifchild. At Gosforth Colliery he spoke to the Overman whose name was given as John Menham. While this is interesting it could be coincidence. It must be remembered that this was twenty years after the child was handed over to Thomas Menham.

Rob's early years and the Chartists >