18 May 2021

Today I received a copy of John Peak’s death certificate:

Death at Laygate Street, Westoe, South Shields on 16 December 1854 of John Peak, male, age 42 years, a publican. The cause of death was Chronic Hepatitis, Phthisis Pulmonalis, Aphasia, Certified. The informant was Margaret Johnson, present at the death, 11 Swan Hill, Westoe. Registered on 18 December 1854.¹

I’m still not sure if this is my ancestor. Being a publican fits with what we know of his wife, Jane, who was repeatedly fined and imprisoned for running a disorderly house and at least one mention in the newspaper of her being a publican.

Westoe is south of the Tyne. Laygate Street is a small street running west from Graving Docks on the Tyne to High Shields Station to the east.

In 1851 my ancestor was recorded as living at Mount Pleasant, North Shields, his occupation was Baker. I can’t find Mount Pleasant on the map. The census enumeration district is described as follows:

All that part of the Township of North Shields which comprises Mount Pleasant, Cross House, Dotwick Street (both sides) including Glass House Lane, Dock Lane and Pumpwell Lane, Collingwood Street, Steem Mill Lane, Quay House Quay, Buckhams Lane and Bull Ring the whole.

Based on some googling I think this area is near east ropery banks² where the ferry crosses the Tyne. Today a building called Collingworth Mansion stands nearby on a road called New Quay. The North Shields Heritage Trail contains some information about the Bull Ring:

This area was the town’s Market Place and nearby Low Street was, in the 18th century, the terminus for coaches. The end of Low Street was known as the ‘Bull Ring’ from the practice of bull baiting which is said to have gone on there in the 17th century.

And the slums of Low Town:

“Who can estimate the amount of immoral conversation that passes, the unlawful schemes plotted or the low, filthy literature read in common loding houses and the intemperance that prevails in this nest of vice?” So wrote the Shields Daily News in 1855, speaking about the warren of streets and alleyways which made up this part of North Shields, known as the ‘Low Town’.

Interestingly John has a servant called Margaret Allen. She is unmarried in 1851, age 33, but perhaps she is Margaret Johnson? I searched the marriage index around that time but couldn’t find her marrying a Johnson.

There does only appear to be one John Peak in the area in 1851. There is also a John Peek, sometimes spelled Peake, a mariner born in Suffolk in 1831, but there are almost no people called Peak in the Newcastle area at all.