Householder with Servants, aged Eleven?

Earlier this week, in response to a typical enquiry of how was I getting on in the present unnatural conditions, I used the expression, "... more out of interest than necessity".  Regular readers won't be surprised to learn that I was referring to my family history researches.  For the past couple of weeks or more - I've completely lost account of the passing of time - I've been following up the casual observation a few months ago that one of the characters in my cousin's husband's family tree had the same, rather unusual, surname of my and my cousin's great-grandmother.

I wondered whether there might be any connection ... which is not all that surprising in a rural community.  Subject to the limitations of records easily examined on line, it didn't take long to establish that there is no connection.  But I decided, "more out of interest than necessity", to continue investigating this woman's family ... not least because she bore the alluring name of Angelina Carman.  Some interesting stories have emerged.

One of her nieces, born in a small south Norfolk village, appears in the 1891 census as a 25-year-old housemaid in Ely.  In addition to Angelina's niece, Mary Ann, the household comprised two sisters and a cook, the latter of whom shared the same name, Mary Ann.  I found it a little puzzling that the elder sister, the head of household, was only 17 but at the time I thought little of it.  Later, I sought Mary Ann in 1901 and found her working as a cook in a household in the centre of London.  Progress indeed, I thought, but then spotted the names of the people she was working for.  It was Newbolt and, sure enough, there were those same two sisters, Henrietta and Sophia, now aged 21 and 17 and Mary Ann the cook from Ely, too, now described as a nurse.  I did a quick re-check; hey, what had happened to those daughters' ages?

I checked back at 1891 and looked at the image of the original census.  The head of the household, Henrietta, was indeed only eleven! ... Her age had been mis-transcribed.  Who, I wondered would leave an 11-year-old in charge of a house with two servants?  I looked again at the household in London in 1901.  The head was a married man of 56, described as a clergyman.  His wife, however, was not present.  I returned to 1891 and sought this man there.  Sure enough, there he was at the same address in Ludgate, the head of a large household, most of whom were the family of someone described as his 'servant'.  Still there was no sign of his wife, though.  Then I looked at their occupations: the Revd. William Charles Edmund Newbolt was a Canon of St Paul's Cathedral, and the 'servant' was the verger.

I eventually established that William Newbolt was born in 1844 and married Fanny Charlotte Wren, two years his senior at East Cowes on the Isle of Wight in the autumn of 1870.  In addition to the two sisters, who were born in Malvern Link, Worcs., they also had an elder son, Michael, born in Gloucestershire.  In 1911, William was still at the same address - shown as 'married' but without a wife - with a staff of four, including the 'other' Mary Ann who had now resumed cooking responsibilities.  Mary Ann Carman, meanwhile, had met a Norfolk-born bricklayer whom she had married in St Albans in 1905 and they had settled in Epsom.

I could find no trace of the Canon's wife or son, and nothing to account for their absence ... although the explanation could simply be that she regularly spent some weeks abroad at that particular time of year and took her son for company.  Fanny died in Northampton in 1923 and William in Central London in 1930.

I'm still looking at another 'interesting story'; part 2 may well follow next week!