One of my ancestresses, Jane Harding née Young, of Camberwell, was a 'monthly nurse', which referred to a live in helper for young mothers and their newborns, generally being for affluent families. Both Jane and her spinster daughter Sarah worked for rich families, both in consequence living in grand homes in the distinguished Grove Lane. The old lady Sarah cared for, Caroline Hilton, was so grateful that upon dying she even left Sarah her home, at 22 Queens Row, Grove Lane, and enough means by which to no longer need to work. It can be seen that serving the trés riche got one out of the slums and into elegant environments. One ancestress, Elizabeth Moulds alias Moules, I discovered to have been born in Wapping in 1774, her mother being Elizabeth née King and her father John Moulds being a mariner, the family living at Milk Alley, near to the infamous execution block, at the rivers edge, where mutineers were regularly hung, all to large audiences which would crowd along the riverside and upon boats in the river to view the morbid spectacle. As for Jane the monthly nurses father, Nathaniel Young of Lambeth, I now found out he had been a waterman on the Thames river, who had apprenticed three of his sons to also be watermen. Not only therefore did I have watermen and lightermen in my family further along at Greenwich, but also at Lambeth too. Nathaniel had done his own apprenticeship in Fulham, from the ages of 10 till 18 under the tutorage of his uncle Robert Lewis (married to Nathaniel aunt Mary), who in all those years would have provided training in boating skills, food, clothes and lodging, according to the contract dates from 1768 to 1776. Generally lads would be apprenticed at the age of 18, unless a father or uncle was the tutor, in which case the apprentice could be taken on at a younger age. Robert Lewis himself had done his own apprenticeship in Fulham with his father, also called Robert Lewis. Another find, at last, something I'd never been able to suss before, was the 1830 baptism in Windsor for my ancestress Sarah Green. Like wow, what a super find (even though the record was merely a transcription and not the original). This gave an address in Windsor, Sheet Street, and what's more I discovered another Green, an older Henry, had been living at the same address, dying there just two years earlier. This may well have been Sarah's grandfather, or even great grandfather, for him having born as far back as 1747. Maybe Sarah's parents, Henry Green and Elizabeth née Harding, had inherited the house, or had taken over the rental, staying a couple of years before returning to Lambeth. So many Greens there were from way back in Windsor, a place I myself had once enjoyed to visit, swimming in the river there.
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I met Darren, who was my daughter Eleanors boyfriend. He had some tattoos, both gentle and strong, from Basildon in Essex. As I would see, on beginning to suss out his genealogy, as of course I would, with him phoning his parents for information, he was descended from lorry drivers and even they were from the same areas of London as our own ancestors, that is Greenwich (well, Lewisham really) and Lambeth. There were many Londoners in general in his genealogy. One, edward Ryde of Isleworth, was even an undertaker. One ancestress, Esther York, looked of interest for having had two children out of wedlock. Still single at the age of 30, her youngest child, by then five, at last was baptised. I wonder, did her then husband, Edward Ryde, even know about her children, who certainly weren't living with them upon the beginning of their married life together. These were the days of 'skeletons in the cupboards', when it was shameful of one didn't tow the line with what was considered 'normality'. And there were Stafford ancestors not sending their children to school (which as I have seen was actually pretty normal) and one Stafford lad getting smallpox for which he was shut up in the pest house, as were other smallpox sufferers. There were a couple of drunkard ancestors in Warminster who were much in the papers for their shennagins. One of these fellows even died from fighting with his nephew after a drunken altercation in the pub. The landlord had told them to take their quarrel outside, whereon they had fallen into a quarry and the nehew, Uriah, had savagely stamped on his uncles chest. He was acquitted of murder, though, because the specifically fatal injuries could rather have come from falling into the quarry. Another Warminster ancestor, along with his pals, was into dog drawn carts (which was illegal and for which they all got in trouble). He cared not for societies rules and was in and out of gaol. He was a chimney sweep and even got int trouble for using one of his sons (who was underage) to climb the chimneys (which had also been made illegal). They were a fighting hard-drinking bunch. More scandal I found in Darrens family, there being an ancestor who was a philanderer and an adulterer, Charles William Allett, who had children by many women. One of his ladies was Darrens ancestress, Elizabeth Ann Smith who had four sons with him, all out of wedlock. It was of quite some interest to unravel his story.
In the post there arrived some death certificates for my genealogy research, in regard to my ancestress Elizabeth Maxted of Lambeth, who died at a good old age, and her son David, who tragically died just aged 19 from smallpox. This got me realising how it was then that our Elizabeth had gone blind, as indicated in the later census's. Moving from the countryside to the big city, with its crowded unsanitary lanes, was sure going to have some consequences. And we never have the theat of smallpox anymore, as it had been eradicated, but for all those who once contracted it there was a 30% risk of death, and David was the one among our family who perished from this. The family was all living together in one house on New Street, and so likely all contracted it; and poor Elizabeth, blindness was a well known complication, a third of cases resulting in this. There would also have been a recognisable scarring of the skin. With smallpox, pus filled blisters covered the skin, along with mouth sores, fever and vomiting. The blisters would scab over, leaving scars. Vaccination against smallpox had already been discovered, but did not become common practice until the end of the 1800's. The first Russian child to recieve such vaccination was bestowed the name 'Vaccinov' by Catherine the Great and was educated at the expense of the nation. The British introduced compulsory smallpox vaccination by an Act of Parliament in 1853. David had died in 1849. This disease had even been found in Egyptian mummies. It is thought to have developed from an African rodent virus thousands of years ago. Deities exist in Asia and Africa for people to pray for healing from this disease. Nicasius of Reims was the patron saint of smallpox victims. The pustules of Chinese smallpox sufferers were referred to as beautiful flowers, so as not to offend the smallpox goddess T'ou Shen Niang Niang. The Indian smallpox goddess, Sitala Ma, was known to both inflict the disease, and also to calm and heal it. Some cultures simply had smallpox demons. These demons were afraid of the colour red, so this colour would be used both to prevent and heal the pox. Elizabeth 1st had smallpox and would disguise her pockmarks with heavy make-up.
Smallpox was distinguished from syphillis, this contrarily being known as the 'great pox' rather than the small. In general, smallpox was simply known as the 'pox' or red plague. I worked on my genealogy website, looking at my nanny Eileen's quite vague Irish origins from Westmeath, and at her half Irish mother Florence whose school, which she'd attended in the poor streets of Lambeth, was so bad for bullying that one girl even died as a consequence, her head bashed on stone steps and upon a desk. Before that, and only briefly, Florences schooling was at the convent of the Sisters of Mercy in Sunderland, those same nuns infamous for their Magdalene laundries and rough treatment of single mothers. 1901 Florence started school at Lambeth in the Springfield School on her birthday 18th March. Information given: Florence Maxted, daughter of Willilam Maxted, boiler maker, address of 18 Springfield Place. Former school marked as none, then changed later to The Convent, Sunderland Violent School Children
While at Springfield School, South Lambeth, one day last August, Grace Smith, aged 8 years, was pushed down the steps at the school. She complained of pains in her head; but the mother did not find any mark of violence. On 20th October, however, she again complained, saying another child had struck her head on a desk. In more detail, another schoolgirl had 'pulled her hair until her head struck the desk'. Eventually she died in St Thomas's hospital, from pressure on the brain set up by an abscess, 'of delirium and hemorrhage', the abscess having formed behind her ear. At the inquest, the class teacher and one of the school managers, a curate of All Saints, South Lambeth, was called. The teacher said she did not hear anything about the pushing downstairs. The curate said he had been unable to obtain any trace of the children who pushed Grace or struck her head on the desk. He quite understood the possibility of pushing taking place on the stone steps, as there was only one exit for 500 children, and much crushing was inevitable. The jury found a verdict of death from misadventure. Long time arriving in the post, and something that for years I had wanted enlightening on: the death certificate details of my great great great grandmother Sarah Green (Sarah Maxted as her married name). And so I learn that she had died from childbirth complications. She'd already had a good brood of children and being 43 was quite likely on her last. Sarah got septic infection from a clotted vein in her leg, phlebitis, dying 12 days after giving birth. Neither does the baby seem to have survived, there being no records at all in this regard.
On looking up about phlebitis from childbirth I see that it is nore common for women over 35, who have already had three or more babies. And you would think such women would have got childbirth down to a tee. So far in my genealogy research the women of the family had been very robust, churning out babies and very competently so. Dear Sarah, I now see, was an exception. Sarah Maxted, age 43, of 54 Riverhall Street, Wandsworth Road, Lambeth Parturition, 12 days, phlebitis, certified wife of Charles Maxted, an engine fitter, present at the death deceased 14th October 1873, registered 15th October ![]() I got re-absorbed into genealogical realms, all my pets around me as I researched, Storm Kitty on my lap, Angel doggess who had sneaked onto the sofa, and the guinea pigs by the door with outside views. A toy dinosaur I was using to hold down my papers. My ancestress of Pluckley, Elizabeth Maxted, once she was widowed, left Pluckleys rural landscape for the slums of London, staying in the home of a married daughter, and becoming blind. A workhouse had by now been built on the Hothfield common, to dump all the poor and struggling into, and I suspect she didn't want to end up stuck in there. Her new home was on Wickham Street in Lambeth, and her livelihood was washing clothes, as many women in hardship were doing along that same street. One neighbour on Wickham Street, Mrs Manual, made her living caring for the babies of young unmarried mothers, which she would dose up with laudanum to keep them quiet. She was in the papers for the scandal of having poisoned in this way one of the babies. And yet it was quite the habit, and had been since ancient Egyptian times, to give opiates to children and babies, so they would stay content alone while others worked. They were plenty of products advertised to do such a job, with opium lozenges and pastilles on display in pharmacies as if they were sweets. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() A genealogy discovery gives a great sense of achievement, even if for a sad revelation, this latest being for my great great grandfather, William Maxted of Nine Elms, who while a teenager had begun his career as a boiler maker on the railways. At a young age he was in a dreadful accident, from the exploding of a barrel of tar in his workshop, back in 1879, when he was 15 years old. William and another were burnt all over, legs, arms and bodies, for which they were conveyed to London's St Thomas Hospital, their condition described as 'dreadfully burned'. And how could such an accident be recovered from, but certainly my ancestor survived this and went on to have a family and children and always a career on the railway. Likely, then, he always would have had scars from that time. His mother had died but couple of years before, I don't know from what as yet. I'd already come across that newspaper article before, but had not been able to link it with certainty to my ancestor, despite this being his name and profession, not only because it sounded fatal, but because his age was given as a couple of years older and I didn't know if he's lived at the address given, Riverhall Street off the Wandsworth Road. But, anyway, it was looking at the marriage certificate of his older sister Sarah that I saw the family was indeed living at that time in Riverhall Street. How remarkable, and I don't know what became of the other fellow, but William made a miraculous recovery. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
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