Events in the 1870’s had marked the Wertheim family. It had also changed them. With Samuel’s activities and brushes with the law that spanned a decade and a half, Moses turned on his son, and had banished him. Caroline seems to have not had a say in this action, despite the two being devoted and closer than most couples were, and even are today. This is not hyperbolic.
Furthermore, Samuel had married, and had produced children with his wife Elizabeth. But Amelia had also been banished and had come into contact with her brother Samuel again. She brought bad news, that their father was terminally ill, and that their brother Baruch had died too, something I forgot to mention in my previous posting. He had died of a ruptured bowl…not very pleasant at all. This left Samuel the only male Wertheim left and after Baruch’s death there were only three male Wertheim’s belonging to this family in the United Kingdom, one of which was near death. The name was in danger of dying out.
But Moses was not a bitter man. He relinquished his extradition of Samuel and wished to have him come home to say his goodbyes. Samuel then appears to have made the critical decision to not return. He did not wish to see his father, not after their past, despite him, in the grand scheme of things, being the one in the wrong. Yet the decision was made, and Samuel remained in Bristol. This also meant he refused to introduce his parents to their first two grandchildren. Whatever the reason, it remained true in practice, and he never saw his father again.
For Moses was now, a very ill man. His cancer of the stomach had spread into his legs and he could not walk. He was bedridden and uncomfortable, in great pain and quiet distress. Caroline feared for his life, and so did he. Amelia was summoned back to Bedminster and without Samuel; she visited her father at 50 Windsor Terrace. The scene was sombre. The great dream that had brought Moses to Britain had manifested to be everything he did not wish for. The family he wished for, and that they should grow up and old, marry and be successful…had barely survived at this point. Five children of fourteen remained, with inclusive of those five had gone abroad. Only the remaining two visited him, and so he cherished the time he had left, as Caroline looked on, like a wilting flower about to lose its head. But her pain, she kept locked away. By spring 1880, she knew that she would lose her husband in a matter of weeks.
But Moses kept on going, prolonging the inevitable, and Samuel was once again invited back to Bristol. He refused again. The lapsed Jew had grown very old now, although seventy-four, he appeared as if eighty. His beard had calmed to grey and so had his hair. The fight lasted for another three months, and on April 24 1880, he slipped into unconsciousness, much to Caroline’s distress. But the final hours of their life together were transpiring before them on their bed in Windsor Terrace.
Moses passed away some time later. Caroline’s heart broke immediately.
Following the silence of Moses’ breathing, Caroline was thrown into a fit of hysterical wailing. She fell to her knees as she clasped her husband and buried her head in his chest. The doctor that had been sent for, together with Rebecca, her husband Bart, and her sister Amelia, attempted to calm her down, which eventually they did, but the woman was clearly devastated and all the pain she had endured during her life suddenly rushed out. And her grief was total. After forty-three years of marriage, the man with a dream had gone before her. All she had left now were her daughters. She thought that perhaps Samuel would come back one day, but he did not. Moses was buried two days later in St Phillip’s Cemetery, Bristol. Today, however, the location has been lost, and the stone has long gone too, if there was one. The beginning and end of Moses’ journey on earth will remain a mystery now, for eternity. But at least I know the area where he lies.
After the death of her husband, Caroline broke up. Emotionally and physically she became drained. Her hair turned grey in weeks, she refused to eat and her sleep was disturbed by an ode of cognition that she seems to demonstrate, as if ritual. After her daughter Amelia returned to Wales, Rebecca and Bart Gidley moved in to Windsor Terrace to be with their mother. But she continued to deteriorate. For months after Moses’ death, Caroline would often lock herself in her room, and insert a handkerchief through the lock to stop her daughter from getting in. On one occasion she began hallucinating that Rebecca in fact wanted to kill her. She began waking up in the middle of the night, screaming “Murder!” and that she had seen ghosts and fairies. She would spend hours, gazing out of the bedroom window, rocking back and forth on her chair, back and forth, back and forth, as if somehow, she thought it would bring Moses back. She somehow thought, if she minded about him enough, he would see her. Everything about this strong woman fell apart about her. So Rebecca decided she needed help.
What happens next, I find hard to comprehend, but it did happen. Caroline was seen by a doctor and he concluded that she was a lunatic. This decision recorded, she was taken to the Stapleford Lunatic Asylum, and labelled a Lunatic there. Rebecca had done all she could have possibly done, but on January 27 1881 it became too much. Caroline spent five months in Stapleford asylum, alone, cold with winter’s chill, and silent with grief.
However sad and lonely Caroline felt, however lost she seemed, she was not. The staff in Stapleford genuinely helped her recover from the death of her husband. She still missed him like hell, and on occasion she still broke down into tears, but they had saved her from insanity, maybe even suicide. Who knows? They kept her on a diet of beef tea and arrowroot, and after she began to sleep whole nights through, and talk again, she could peacefully talk to people about her husband. She seems to have rediscovered her strength, in what was arguably the biggest test of her life. If she had lost Moses whilst her children were young, things may have been very different, but that should not be contemplated really. What’s the use, after all?
Things briefly got better for Caroline. She moved back in to her home, which was now under Bart Gidley’s name. Things began to settle, and had it not have been for Rebecca and Bart, this temporary bout of dementia may well have killed her. She started smiling again and times moved on. But still she heard not from her son, over in Wales. Mind you, he was a man occupied too…
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