General Chat

Despite all the hardships, three of the children born in 1870 survived. Taking everything into consideration I don’t feel there life style differed greatly from that of their neighbours. Their families may have had their trials and tribulations but at the end of the day they did the best they could in the circumstances to raise their children. Certainly in 1901 we can see that Abel was married, with a child and still living in Bromley. He is shown as a bricklayer, like his father before him. Reuben had become a builder’s labourer and had married one of the girls who worked in his uncle’s laundry and Ernest was an unmarried lodger with a Bromley family and was employed in the laundry business, like his father before him Bibliography Mary Abbott, Family Ties, English Families 1540/1920, ( Routledge 1995) Peter Boreham, Daily Life in Bromley and Neighbourhood 1858 – 1900 (Peter Boreham, 1999)

An aunt and uncle in Kingston-on-Thames, Surrey had taken in the youngest child, Minnie. The uncle is show as a waterman and they had one son living at home. Minnie must have found life there very different to what she had been used to in Bromley. Families were often split up following the death of a parent. The other alternatives would have been for the husband to remarry, or the children to go into the workhouse Young Sidney had presumably gone out to work to help with the family finances. This was not uncommon at the time. Children of his age would often be found working. If he were lucky he may have been allowed to keep a small amount of his wages for himself. As we can see from the census returns some of Sidney’s cousins were still in education after their tenth birthday. This is perhaps evidence that the families were aware that education would give their children better prospects in the future. It wasn’t until 1880 that compulsory schooling was introduced for all children up to the age of 10 and in 1899 the age was raised to 12

Ernest’s parents ran a laundry, and in 1881 he is shown as a scholar. Two of his younger siblings were at a boarding school nearby and one of his older brothers was at home doing the bookkeeping for the family business. It leads one to suspect that the younger children were in boarding school because the parents were busy building up their business. Like parents today, some families would have probably put their work before their children. In 1881 Abel and Reuben were living at home with their parents and were also shown as scholars. Abel’s father was a builder and Reuben’s was a carman. Abel and his parents were living in a two bed roomed terraced house. He had six brothers and sisters, and they shared the house with a boarder (his mother’s brother) and a lodger. In the book ‘The Rise of a Respectable Society’ F.M.L. Thompson states that ‘all the brothers and sisters in a family might be fortunate to have one bedroom to share between them, and often one or two of the younger children slept in the kitchen’. It is also possible that the younger children would have slept in their parent’s bedroom. Conditions must have been very cramped, affording little privacy to the adults or the growing children.

1877 was to see the death of young Albert’s mother, aged 36. Although childbirth was a common cause of death during this period there is no evidence that this was so in her case. Worn down by childbirth and the loss of two children in a relatively short period it is not unreasonable to suspect that she would have been vulnerable to infection. Poor living conditions would not have helped. Certainly the houses she and her family were living in had given concern to The Borough Surveyor in a report he made in 1868. In 1888 things were not very much better as these same houses were causing the Medical Officer of Health concern. Sanitation at the time was poor and overcrowding rife, leading to the rapid spread of infection, which resulted in high mortality rates. When she died she left her husband with five children, three boys and two girls, aged between 3 and 15. We cannot be sure what happened immediately after her death, but by the time of the 1881 census the three boys were working and still living at home. Two had followed their father into the building trade. Sidney, the youngest, aged 13, was working as a carman’s boy for his Uncle. Annie, age 15, was living with her father and three brothers. She is shown without occupation so was presumably keeping house. It would not have been unusual at the time for a girl of that age to take over the running of the house following the death of her mother. She would have had Aunts living close by to advise her and no doubt neighbours would have also helped out.

Child mortality was also high, with only three out of four children reaching the age of five. They were not only affected by the previously mentioned diseases and poor living conditions, but also died as a result of accidents in the home. There seemed to be an alarming number of fatal accidents reported in the local papers, and sadly young Albert was one of the cases I read about. In February of 1872 the Bromley Record reported his death. It appears that his mother ‘returned from a house in the neighbourhood where she had been working, with a number of bottles. Without thought, she placed them within reach of her child’ Sadly Albert drank from one of the bottles, which contained poison, and by next morning he was dead. A verdict of accidental death was passed following the inquest. Other reports told of a child scalded to death and of several children burnt to death following carelessness with candles. Albert’s parents went on to have two more children, Minnie in 1874 and Albert in 1875. Albert Noel was born Christmas Day 1875 but sadly did not live to see Christmas 1876. Like other families of the time his parents had named their new baby after a child that had already died.

Checking through the GRO index for the year 1870 I came across the births of five children in the family I was researching. Born in Bromley, they were Abel, Ada, Albert, Ernest and Reuben. They were born at a time when infant mortality rates were high and large families often lived on low incomes and in poor conditions. Education at that time would not have been compulsory and I wondered what would become of the children. Certainly by the time of the 1881 census two of them had died. The circumstances that led to those deaths, and the fortunes of the other three are what I hope to relate here. Ada was the sixth child to be born to her parents and she lived for less than 6 months. Her father was a saw sharpener. It is known that in Victorian times infant mortality rates were high. Certainly in the poorer areas two out of ten babies would die before their first birthday. Some of the babies would have died following birth complications and others from congenital defects. Poor nutrition and infectious diseases also took their toll. Scarlet fever was an ever-present threat and the people of Bromley would have also lived in fear of cholera and diphtheria.

in 7 parts, hope you find it interesting, it may give you an idea of conditions at the time for young families