The Father, his Daughter and the Pensioned Soldier

While there are many challenges in life for which an obvious, usual or most likely solution can be identified, many other remedies - less common but rarely unique - might be adopted instead.  Last week I mentioned the options for a young widow in the 19th century; much the same choice was open to a man.  Childbirth, for example, was much more dangerous then than we might appreciate today, and it wasn't uncommon for a man to be widowed with a young family.  The solution was usually to take a new wife - possibly a widow with young children of her own - and form a new family, but more importantly, to enable him to continue working to provide for them all.

As I begin my story with a man who followed a less common route, I repeat my caveat of last week.  The snapshots provided by the censuses and other records are just that; the intervening events can only be interpreted by guess and assumption.  You must make your own judgement as to what actually happened.

John Vincent was born in the Breckland village of Feltwell in 1828.  The 1841 census reveals that he was the eldest of six brothers, and had two elder sisters.  Not content with life in his home village, ten years later he was lodging in Burnt Fen, near Littleport, Cambs., although working as a farm labourer just as he might have been in Norfolk.  We can take it that he had some desire to travel, though, for within the next six or seven years he had found his way to the Kent coast.  Perhaps he was a bit homesick there; he found comfort in the company of a Norfolk girl, Sarah Carman.  Sarah was two or three years younger and was born in North Lopham: not Breckland, but less than thirty miles from his home.

They were married near Folkestone at the end of 1858 and made their home at the rectory in the village of Saltwood, where Sarah was a servant.  John worked as labourer nearby.  Their daughter Eliza Jane was born early in 1863; this event may have been the trigger for their next move, or they may have followed some other encouragement.  In 1871 they were found in Hayes, Middlesex, where John was working as a gardener.  All seemed fine for a year or two, until Sarah died in the autumn of 1874.  Eliza was nearly 12 and, with no younger children, John decided not to take another wife.  Instead, he moved back to Norfolk, and occupied a house next door to his mother, by then a widow living with her youngest son.

The 1870s were a time of great change for Eliza; the eight-year-old schoolgirl of 1871, now without her mother, became the housekeeper.  No doubt she learned much from her grandmother next door and quite possibly took on much of the work of running both households.  More changes were to come in the '80s.  Her grandmother, born in the first years of the century, died early in 1885, but this wasn't the first shock of the decade.  Two years earlier, Eliza had given birth to a son, Charles William, who was baptised on 23rd March 1883.  Bernard John followed four years later and by the census of 1891, she was pregnant with George, who was born later that summer.

During those years, John's brother James, ten years his junior, had moved into the house.  In 1891 he was working as a butcher, and John still a labourer, providing between them for Eliza and two - soon to be three - growing boys.  The census recorded John as head, with James his brother, Eliza his daughter and the boys his grandsons.  There was no sign of a husband, but children continued to arrive, Louisa in 1893 and Florence five years later.  When the new century heralded both a change of monarch and another census, England was in the midst of a war in South Africa, which may prove to be of significance as the story develops.

The 1901 census asks many questions.  The head of that household in Feltwell was still John, 73, widower and labourer, in addition to whom were his brother James, 63, single and now described as a shepherd, and Bernard, 14, George, 10, Louisa, 8, and Florence, 3, all described as John's sons and daughters; in addition were shown a married daughter Eliza Newman, 37, and a one-year-old daughter (not granddaughter!) called Charlotte Newman.  Eliza was placed between James and Bernard, in other words in descending order of age like one complete family.

The last snapshot in 1911 gives only some of the answers.  In Feltwell, the head of the household was James, the shepherd, 72, described as 'head and uncle' (John had died in 1910); the other five occupants were all described as his nephews or nieces: George Vincent, 19, Frederick Vincent, 15, (there had been no earlier mention of him and I assume he was the son of another of James's brothers), Florence Vincent, 12, Charlotte Newman, 11, and Cecily Newman, 9.

Bernard, 24, was recorded in Southampton with the 3rd Mountain Battery of the Royal School of Artillery; Louisa, 18, was working as a housemaid in Holloway and, as in 1901, there was no sign of Charles.  In a household in Waterloo Road, Lambeth, headed by a couple both described as 'Dining rooms keepers', was a couple listed unusually with the woman first.  She was Eliza Jane Newman, 47, who had been married for 11 years and had had two children, both still living.  With her was 44-year-old George Henry Newman, described as an army pensioner; both said they were born in Folkestone.

Did Eliza meet and marry a dashing young soldier in the late 1890s?  Was this a much-delayed honeymoon, now the girls were old enough to be left with their 'good shepherd' uncle?  All is far from clear.  For one thing, I couldn't find an appropriate marriage for Eliza and George; the only one recorded between Newman and Vincent is in Wareham in 1895; apart from the location, this was before the birth of Florence, who was clearly registered as Vincent.  I was also unable to find a birth registration for George in Folkestone, nor did he appear in the earlier censuses.  But of his existence there is little doubt.  He's recorded in Feltwell in the 1939 Register as a widower, Eliza having died in 1936.  In the 'additional information' section is noted, "Army pensioner, Middlesex Regt. Sergt. 6333".  From George's date of birth given in the Register, I was able to find the only Newman birth in that quarter of 1867 with both of his Christian names ... in Wandsworth! ... Maybe that notion of being 'born in Folkestone' had been a ruse to gain Eliza's approval.

Sadly, Cecily died in 1912, aged only 11; Charlotte was married in 1920 to a farm worker, Sidney Nichols and later that year gave birth to their only child, a daughter named Peggy.  By 1939, Sidney was a horseman; they were still living in Feltwell and had another couple living with them at the farm.  Later they moved to Cambridgeshire, where Charlotte died in 1965 and Sidney in 1974.