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Welcome back! You are right when you say that there were lodging houses at the entrance to Mugger’s Neuk in 1861. There were in fact two, but in 1851 these were one larger lodging house. As I mentioned earlier, housing was scarce for the increasing workforce so as well as the lodging house which housed 17 lodgers (and the family of three who ran it), there were a further 60 people lodging in the market place within the homes of various families. However, I don’t think your relatives were lodgers of either sort. In 1851 there were no Dixons living in the lodging house or lodging with private families in the area where the lodging house was ie. the market place. If your relative is who I think he is, Charles Dixon with father of the same name and a mother named Dorothy, then he did live in the Market Place just to the left of the Howard Arms when facing that building. Why do I think this? The enumerator’s route, 1n 1851, went from “the first house in the corner below the Cross to the last house at the east end of the town on the same side”. He then crossed the road and enumerated “the south side of the town from the first house in the Mill Yard at the east end to the last house in the Half Closes on the same side”. There was a general lack of postal addresses in the 1851 census as the postal system hadn’t really developed at that time. However, there were schedule numbers for each household in the census documents and certain locations were identifiable by the occupation of the residents – such as “innkeepers” and “grocers” who usually lived on the premises. Looking at the 1851 census for Bedlington, district 2a (which includes the market place), and following the enumerators route, as he himself describes it above, the first house below the cross has schedule number 1. Successive sch. nrs. are given in sequence to the various households along the route. NB. The sch. nr. applies to a household, NOT a building. There may be several households in one building. Continuing eastwards in the enumerator’s footsteps from Muggers corner towards Leadgate House (on the corner opposite the Northumberland Arms) you will find at sch. nr 29 an innkeeper with the unusual surname Petrie. Unfortunately, there is no name to the inn. However, if we look up Petrie in the following 1861 census, we can see that he is in the same position and that his business is the Howard Arms. That sorted out we leave sch. Nr 29, the Howard Arms, and get back onto the enumerator’s route. We don’t have to go far to find Charles and Dorothy Dixon together with 5-year-old Charles Dixon and his siblings because he is at sch. nr 31, almost next door to the tavern. At sch. nrs. 30, 31 and 32 are three small households which probably, but not certainly, occupy the small row of buildings which I’ve arrowed blue in the map below. What I can say with certainty is that Charles Dixon lived in one of the buildings - or the buildings in the yards behind them -which I’ve marked in red.

Thank you! (a bit late on the response 😁) . I believe the premise of his parents lodging is very likely. It completely missed me, but in 1851 the family was living at “Lodging Houses” in Bedlington (but do not know where these were located). 1861 census shows next on the schedule to Mugger’s Corner a lot of “licensed lodging houses” so I wonder if it was here??

Just wear yer wellies Mal you can get through their bs.

Hi Alan, I’ve checked that too. I’m trying to find my granda, he got my grandma pregnant and her dad, a Home Guard threatened to shoot him if he came back haha. However the name we have doesn’t seem to fit the DNA ancestry profiles. thank you though

Its getting pretty acrimonious this election period. First rebuttal, "It seems the Labour canvassers going around today are saying the schemes and projects I’ve listed in my ‘CV’ post are only what I’m claiming to have been part of or done, in other words a figment of my imagination? Well the lists are there if you want to challenge them, Im quite happy to justify each and every one! In fact if you want some more………. Ill just say this in response, we had a Labour councillor for the four years before I got in and he picked up the nickname……..”The Invisible Man!” Lets not go back to those dark days! We have lost trust in the national government in record time, God forbid the same happens to our county!" Second one, "Just by way of a post script to my last ‘political’ post another claim by the Labour canvassers was that I always vote with the Conservatives. Doesn’t take too much effort to show that’s not true either! As part of the last NCC pre Budget presentations all councillors were given a large number of papers to read through. As I said at the time the financials alone were 467 pages. It would seem I was the only one to pick up on the Advance proposals they contained. You might think with tens of millions of pounds at stake it would be a stand alone item but I could only find three quite curtailed references to it. As usual I asked about it because I didn’t understand completely what was intended. Once I had the explanations my words were……….”That’s a deal breaker for me, if I went along with it I couldn’t look my residents in the eyes ever again!” Now I’ve put that in inverted commas because that’s exactly what I said at the time in the faces of the main political and professional players at County Hall and that why I voted against the conservative proposed budget. Fast forward to the recent vote on the restructure of Advance, only a month or so ago, and we see the whole Labour group vote with the conservatives on this issue with only Independents voting against. These days I only believe half of what I see and nothing of what I hear, that might be good advice for residents in what is fast becoming a pretty acrimonious election period. I’m trying to remain positive and not descend to levels others are crawling around in, but it’s hard!"