Joseph Harrison and Ellen Ball moved from Poolstock to the house at 8 Swinley Street circa 1892 for reasons probably connected with Joseph’s employment. Ellen Ball died there in December 1893 according to her death certificate. It was likely that this house was the starting point for Edward Harrison’s funeral procession in October 1894, based on the following quote from the “Wigan Observer”’s description of the funeral:
“The coffin, on which were several beautiful wreaths, was borne in a glass hearse from the Infirmary to the house of a relative in Swinley street from which place the cortege started.”
Elizabeth Harrison (b. 1858) was living at this address when she married Francis Whitfield in April 1895. Jemima Harrison (b. 1865) lived at this address at the time of her marriage to Joseph Woods in July 1895. Around this time Joseph Harrison and his four spinster daughters (Maria, Ellen, Alice and Margaret) moved to the Pumping Station at Boar’s Head to care for the orphaned children of Edward Harrison.
We do not have the ordinance survey map showing Swinley Street in the 1890s. However there is a Swinley Street, probably the same, in modern Wigan located about 3km north of the town centre.