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Isabella Wilkinson - Steam Engine Widow

International work could affect entire families who had ties with Soho. The story of Isabella Wilkinson of Handsworth and her children is just one example.

In 1823 Isabella's husband Gregory, a Boulton Watt & Co. engineer, went to Calcutta to work on the engines at the East India Company's new mint.

Isabella accompanied him despite having doubts about the journey and climate. Three years later she returned home a widow, with two young children to support. Her husband Gregory had died of a fever.

Right: Proposed plan of the Calcutta Mint, circa 1821

The East India Company refused to grant her a pension. She appealed to James Watt Jr, who personally intervened at the Company's Court of Directors, and won her a pension of £20 a year. This was paid to her through Boulton Watt & Co.'s London banking agents.

Left: Apprenticeship Indenture of Gregory Wilkinson, 1814

Isabella never re-married. One of her children died soon after her return, and she struggled to educate her surviving son at her own expense. When he turned fourteen, it was time for him to find a job, and Isabella turned again to Soho, to start him in a trade.

As she wrote to Watt Jr in July 1839, she wanted her son “...to be employed at the same place which his Father was, and where many of his friends still are, and I should be quite at a loss to know where to make application if I could not succeed at Soho...”

Right: Isabella's acknowledgement
of recipt of her pension, 1835

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