The Sun. — 1859-10-25 (London, England)

THE WOMAN WHO PASSED FOR A  MAN.  (From the Salford IP eekly _Yews.) The most remarkable woman of this century was " Harry' "Stokes, the bricksetter, who committed suicide in the sluice of the river Irwell, at Mode Wheel, last night week. For about 30 years this extraordinary person had lived in Manchester and Salford as a journeyman and master bricksetter ; had been twice married to other women ; had kept beerhouses and served customers at the tap as a "jolly landlord;" had worked at her trade as bricksetter, and erected many important buildings in both towns ; and had obtained the reputation of being the most skilful fire-grate setter and "chimney doctor" in the neighbourhood. She always dressed as a man, in the clothing peculiar to her trade ; invariably superintended the men in her employment ; and could lift a weight, spread the mortar, and set a brick with the best of them. Her habits were those of a man. She attended a daily ordinary in the town along with other bricksetters, drank, smoked, and joked with the hardest, and joined in the evening carousals. Yet, with all this constant and Close intimacy with the opposite sex, this strong-minded woman contrived to keep her own great secret ; and there is every reason to believe that she has gone down into the valley of death at the advanced age of GO, or thereabouts, having throughout the whole of her remarkable life maintained an unbroken check upon those pas• sions which crowd the streets of every large town with the unfortunate of her own sex. Her great endeavour was on all occasions to keep up the manly character she had assumed. From a child she had been accustomed to the seyere,work of one of the most laborious occupations in which man is engaged, and the skill she had attained in the trade reveals an amount of persevering energy which made her worthy of a better fate than a wretched suicide. She was the daughter of a bricklayer, in a village in the neighbourhood of Doncaster. Before sho could well balance her own little body, she was made "useful" in the house; and, ere many years had pasped over her head, she was brought into acquaintance with some of the roughest and toughest work in those hard wrought days. Little llarriet Stokes's lines had not been laid in pleasant places. She was so ground down by the iron hand at home, that, when she was about eight years old, she put on a tattered suit of boy's clothing, and walked forth into the " wide, wide world." Arrived at the village of Whitby, she looked about for work. She had not run away from her father's house because she did not like work, and preferred to eat the bread of idleness. The hard treatment of parents, ignorant of their responsibility, had driven her from the protection of home, and from all the associations which should enchain the young mind to home. That she was not afraid of hard work was apparent, when she offered her services to a bricksetter in Whitby. Though somewhat undersized, she appeared a broadset, active, useful lad, and was speedily set to work. Her first efforts to please were attended with success, and she was soon taken as an apprentice. From this point we mast drop the feminine appellative, and speak of " Harry Stokes" as a boy who has worked his way to the dignity of journeyman bricksetter. For something like 20 years from this point wa lose the connecting links which .join this Yorkshire experience to his Manchester life. About 25 years ago, however, he was brought prominently under the notice of the public, by the consequences of an eccentric excursion which had taken into the domains of matrimony. Harry Stokes wanting a companion in life, executed a matrimonial contretemps. True to his role as a man—for he had now reached the age when the average of bricksetters are fathers as well as journeymen—he cast about and fixed his choice upon a plump little widow who kept a beer-house