1860s

1870s

1880s

1890s

1900s

1910s

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

Hannah Day was born in the parish of St Clement Danes on the Strand and in 1861 was sharing number 11 Archbishop’s Place with other single or widowed women. Twenty years later she was still in Archbishop’s Place but now living at number 25 with 76 year old Mary Day, also a charwoman, and presumably her sister as Mary was born in the same parish. They were sharing number 25 with Caroline Reeves (born in France) and her five young children. I wasn’t able to find them in Archbishop’s Place in the 1871 census so they may have moved away and come back and I don’t know what became of them after 1881.

Ann Brasher, née Johnson, born 1835 was the daughter of James Johnson, a brewer, and Sarah from Godalming. She worked initially as a domestic servant in Woking then in 1858 she married Thomas George Sebree Brasher, a gardener from Streatham who was himself the son of a gardener. However, he had already died by the time of their daughter Annie’s baptism on 2nd June 1861 in Streatham.

Widows (and widowers) tended to remarry. Ann went on to marry Frederick William Baines in 1866, a widower almost 20 years her senior who was a Clerk to the Court of the Exchequer (this was a court concerned principally with financial matters to do with the Crown although it also dealt with civil disputes, particularly about debts, contracts and property). At first Ann worked as a milliner but after Frederick’s death (by 1891) she must have been left sufficient money as she was then living on her own means. Annie continued to live with her at various addresses around the Battersea area and worked at different times as a governess, a clerk and a florist’s clerk.

I’ve not been able to find out anything about Mary Ann Kye or Emma Elizabeth Learber, despite trying variations of their surnames as I suspect these are mistranscribed.

Joseph Goldsmith had a difficult start in life. At the age of four he and his six siblings were living in Rougham, Suffolk with their widowed mother Mary who was described as a pauper. His late father John had been a wheelwright. However, ten years later Joseph was one of six servants in the household of Robert Bevan, a banker, living at Rookery House in Rougham. Joseph married Sarah Hunt in Rougham in 1860 at which point he was a labourer.

In 1861 Joseph, Sarah and their first child were living with his mother as were two of his siblings, four grandchildren and another child. They then moved to Brixton where he worked initially as a labourer and lived in Somers Road. In 1871 they were in Archbishop’s Place with two more children and he was now a cabdriver, which would of course have been a horse-drawn cab.

Interestingly, their neighbour at number 12 (later number 23) was John’s older brother Henry Goldsmith, a 43 year old labourer. Ten years earlier, Henry and family were already in Archbishop’s Place, one of two families lodging at number 45. Henry had been working as an agricultural labourer at 13 and at 23, living in Suffolk, he was the only one in the household who was working; the rest of the family were described as Alms Woman or Alms Man so most likely living on charitable support. This branch of the Goldsmith family continued living at number 23 and the 1939 register shows Goldsmiths living there. Joseph’s wife Sarah Goldsmith died in 1877 and in 1878 Joseph married a widow Mary Ann Horton (at St John’s Brixton although she too was also originally from Suffolk). By 1881 the family had moved to 5 Vining Street where they were lodging with another Cabman. John died in 1884 aged 47 and is buried in Lambeth.

Harry married in 1881 and became a butcher. He moved with his family to Blackburn but sadly went into Prestwich Asylum at the age of 45 and died within a month.

William also married (to Sarah Jane Goldsmith, presumably a distant-ish cousin!) and moved to Beddington in Surrey with his wife and two sons. He had various jobs; a Cabman, a baker, an oilman and a grocer.

Mary Ann became a domestic servant and in 1893 married a bricklayer called John Briffett. They lived in the St Pancras area for many years. In 1891 a Mary Ann Goldsmith is servant to Philip Calderon, a Royal Academician and Keeper of the Royal Academy, living at the Royal Academy in Piccadilly. This could well have been her. Ann Mitchell and two of her children, sharing the house with the Goldsmiths, was originally from Chichester. Née Sarah Ann Dibben, she was the daughter of a tailor and she worked as a dressmaker. She had married a Scotsman, Robert Peacock Mitchell, in 1846 at St Peter the Less, Chichester and the family was living there in 1851. Robert was a cork cutter and is listed as such in a Chichester directory of the time. Cork cutters mainly made stoppers from imported cork, a job which became more prevalent in the 19th century with the increase in the use of glass bottles. Chichester apparently had a substantial brewing and public house trade and was also a port so it makes some sense that he’d be there. And London was the main centre for cork cutting with Islington and Clerkenwell especially relevant areas (there was a long-established cork business in St John Street). I’ve not located the family in 1861 but in 1871 when they were in Archbishop’s Place, Robert was on his own in north London. Ten years later Ann was a widow and living in Islington, still working as a dressmaker, and with daughter Maria living with her. Maria became a schoolmistress. I’m afraid I don’t know what became of the son, James Mitchell – his name is too common!

James Philip Vincent was born in Wilton, near Salisbury in 1844, the son of George and Eliza. He spent most of his life working with horses and at 16 he was working as a groom for a doctor in Wilton.

He married Frances Hopper in Canterbury in 1866. After their first child was born, they moved back to Warminster in Wiltshire and he worked as a baker for a while. But by 1871 he had started working as a coachman, for William Fisher, the Rector of Poulshot at Canons House in the Salisbury Cathedral close. He was one of the Rector’s nine servants. Frances meanwhile was in Poulshot with their children and their sons William and George were born there. They clearly returned to Kent for a time as three children were born there but by 1881 James and Frances Vincent had moved to London and were living with their eight children at number 11 Archbishop’s Place. He was a Coachman which would have involved looking after horses and horse-drawn vehicles.

They’d moved on by 1886 and lived in various addresses in Brixton and in 1891 they were living at 2 Sydenham Road. Their six oldest children have left but they’ve had a further four children; Florence Mary, Ada, Edward and Dorothy. In 1901 they were still in Sydenham with three of the younger children and James was still a Coachman. James died in 1906 at the age of 62 and is) buried in Canterbury cemetery.

Frances Hopper was the daughter of William and Martha; he was a master baker in Canterbury (which may explain why James was having a go at being a baker shortly after he married Frances). When her father William died in 1908, Frances, a widow by then, was his executor.

In 1911 Frances Vincent was living back in Canterbury with her oldest son William, a general labourer. By this point she’d had 12 children of whom 11 were still living. In 1921, she was living on her own, in Watford but in fact several of her daughters had moved to Watford. Florence was there working as a domestic servant in 1901, so too was Mildred Louisa. And Bessie, now a widow called Bessie Doggat, was also in Watford in 1921.

I wasn’t able to find out much about what happened to the rest of the children.

In 1891 Frederick J Vincent had followed in his father’s footsteps and was a 17 year old groom, boarding with a blacksmith in Ewell.

Dorothy married Charles Dodd from Canterbury (initially a cab proprietor and coal merchant and later a groundsman). They continued living in Canterbury through to at least 1939 when Dorothy’s sister Louisa is living with them. Amy Frances married a gardener called Charles Young and they lived in Eastbourne and had nine children. She died in 1939 at the age of 70.

James and Sophia Boulton were living at 98 Effra Parade in Brixton in 1870 when their daughter Eliza was baptised although must have then been in Essex as their son James was born in Epping in 1876. However, by 1881 they had moved to Archbishop’s Place, sharing number 37 (I’m not sure what that would have become after the renumbering) with an elderly couple Thomas and Ann Shepherd. They must have then moved to number 21 Archbishop’s Place.

According to the 1891 census, 12 year old Mabel Evans who was boarding with them was born in Leicester. However, on other census records she’s shown as having been born in Brixton which makes more sense. Her father was a butler but he doesn’t appear on the census records with his wife and daughter so perhaps had a residential job. Mabel was with her mother Anne, a dressmaker, who seems to have moved back to Brixton as they were living together again in 1901 and Mabel worked as a draper’s shop assistant. She married a butcher, Fred Cracknell; they had three children and lived in Stockwell.

The Boulton family were still living at 21 Archbishop’s Place in 1901 although James, who was the 15 year old son in 1891 has now become the head of household and his mother Sophia had died by this time. James John married Rose Ann Coleman, born 1871 in Poulshot, Wiltshire (I think just a coincidence that she wasn’t the first resident to be born in that village!). Rose Ann was the second of nine children (including eight daughters) of George (a farm labourer) and Caroline Coleman. James and Rose Ann were living at number 21 when they married in 1899.

James senior became a labourer in later years while James junior worked as a postman. As well as their two sons, James and Rose also had a daughter, Lilian Caroline Rose, in 1902 while they were living in Archbishop’s Place.

By 1911 the family had moved to Balham. The two boys followed their father into the GPO, one a counter clerk and telegraphist and the other a Post Office sorter at Mount Pleasant.

Lilian married and in 1939 James and his son Harry were living with Lilian and her husband. In 1962, on his retirement as a Postal and Telegraph Officer, Harry was awarded the Imperial Service Medal which was usually awarded to lower-ranking civil servants for long and meritorious service.

George Goshawk was born and died in Bromley but lived for a while in South East London. Sadly, the first record I can find for someone of his name in the area is in 1891 when he was a ‘Pauper Inmate’ at the North Surrey School Pauper Educational Establishment in Penge. It seems likely this was him. The school, designed for 500 children, opened in 1850 and you can read more about it here: The North Surrey District School at Anerley, Upper Norwood - a residential school for workhouse children. https://www.workhouses.org.uk/NorthSurreySD/

In 1901 George was working as a cement worker in a village called Halling in Kent which was a centre of the lime and cement industry. In fact, in 1900 some 80% of cement used in Britain was produced in the Medway Valley.

George married Daisy in 1905 and they were living at number 21 by 1909 when their son Frederick was born. George was now working as a gardener.

However, Daisy died in 1913 and George moved back to Bromley where he married Gertrude Longhurst in 1915. In 1921 he was working in reservoir construction. They had a son who died in infancy and then went on to have eight daughters, all of whom they named after flowers or plants: Heather, Hazel, Myrtle, Iris, Daphne, Hyacinth, Jasmine and Pansy.

Frederick died in 1928 at the age of 18. George and Gertrude were still living in Kent in 1939 along with a number of daughters and he was back to being a gardener. He died in 1959 and Myrtle was his executor.

Their lodger, William Arnold was from Wiltshire, the son of Frank and his wife Harriet. Frank was a railway porter, later becoming a signalman. At 13 William was working as a labourer in a sawmill then in 1900 he joined the army, the Royal Field Artillery, as a shoeing smith. His army records tell us he was 5’7½”, 146 lbs with hazel eyes, dark brown hair, a mole on his left arm and a scar on his left neck! He left the army a year later but as part of his time there spent 104 days in South Africa.

In 1914, aged 39, he went to Brixton Town Hall to enlist. However, his medical examination reported “After leaving the service (was thro’ South African war) had malaria and double pneumonia at Salisbury (?) in 1903. He was told about [illegible] by doctor. Gets breathless on exertion and can’t do marches. Has done no training since.” He was declared permanently unfit with the following description of his present condition (I can’t decipher it all):

He seems to have been given a pension or gratuity of £30 – I’m not sure whether it was just a one-off.

In 1921 he was boarding with a family in Upper Tulse Hill and working for the LCC as a car fitter and examiner at their Clapham Depot. I have no record of him after that.

Census 1921

Census records 4 rooms.

James Axby (1865-1936) was born in the Pimlico area, the son of John, a labourer from Bedfordshire and Mary, from Ireland. At 15 James worked as a hatter’s porter but he joined the army, the East Surrey Regiment, just before his 19th birthday in 1883. He was 5’9”, grey eyes and brown hair and Roman Catholic! His army records show that in 1884 he was treated on three separate occasions for Syphilis. In January 1885 he landed in India where he spent the next six years in various locations including Bombay, Allahabad, Darjeeling and Calcutta. While there he suffered, among other things, Conjunctivitis, Balanitis (don’t ask!), Gonorrhoea, Enteric Fever, another bout of Syphilis and Hepatitis. But he lived to 71 so what doesn’t kill you…

When he came out of the army, he married Elvira Bellatti Parsons (Nellie) in Camberwell in 1892. She was from Battersea, the daughter of a candle mould maker, later a hot water engineer. Their first child was Gladys Ada Louise, born 1893 and they had a further five children, one of whom died aged three. I’ve not been able to find the family in the 1901 census but we know they were living in Clapham in 1895 from baptism records and that James was working as a tram conductor. By 1911 James is described as a Stage Carriage Conductor working for the London County Council (LCC) and his son William followed him into this line of work.

By 1911 they were in Thornbury Road, Clapham Park. Gladys wasn’t living at home at this point because she was working as a domestic servant in Streatham. However, the family made the papers in 1912 when her father threw her out when she came home to visit for Christmas and she was arrested for causing a disturbance! The judge sided with Gladys:

The family was definitely at 21 Archbishop’s Place by 1916 because when Gladys Axby married a soldier called Richard Brown, they both gave this address on their marriage certificate and did so again in 1917 on their daughter’s baptism record.

Sadly, Gladys died aged 39 in Kings College Hospital after an accident. Her death certificate records the cause of death as “Bronco pneumonia following severe burns accidentally caused at a gas stove at no 128 Brandon Road, Brixton Hill” (now Glanville Street).

James and Elvira were living at 98 Elm Park Road when they died in 1936 and 1935 respectively.

The 1939 register, taken just before the Second World War, gives less information than census records. Frank Hardy was born in 1899 in Brixton, the son of John and Jane, from Finchingfield in Essex. By 1891 John Hardy was running a greengrocer’s shop at 12 Somers Road. They were still there right through to at least 1921 and several of their sons also became grocers or greengrocers. I like to imagine Sophia Boulton, Rose Ann Boulton, Daisy Goshawk and Nellie Axby all bought their vegetables there!

Frank is the 7th of the ten children and also became a greengrocer. He married Margaret Brooks in 1923 and their son Frank Cornelius Hardy was born later that year.

I don’t know what year the Hardy family moved into 21 Archbishop’s Place but Frank Cornelius Hardy, an engineer, continued to live at 21 Archbishop’s Place with his wife Lilian and son Clifford F Hardy right through until 1970.