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

THE WOMAN WHO PASSED FOR A  M A N.  (From the Salford TI eekly News.) The most remarkable woman of this century was " Harry' Stokes, the bricksetter, who committed suicide in the sluice of the river Irwell, at Mode Itrheel, 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-;rate 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 attende'd a daily ordinary in the town along with other lnieksetters, 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 60, or thereabouts,  having throughout the whole of -her remarkable life maintained an unbroken check upon those passions 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 severe 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 she could well balance her own little body, she was made "useful" in the house; and, ere many years had passed over her head, she was brought into acquaintance with some of the roughest and toughest work in those hard wrought days. Little Harriet 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 awpepreea ar et tde na d ebdr owe th sets, u ca cc et is vs e, a, nuas es hf uel lad,wa s soaonndtawkeans in- Whitby. Though somewhat undersized, she speedily set to work. Her first efforts to please  as an apprentice. From this point we must 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 cf 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 averag e of bricksetters are fathers as well as journeymen—ile cast about and fixed his choice upon a plump lithe widow who kept a beer-houb9