I have had a particular affinity with my great, great grandmother, Ann Stratford, ever since I discovered that her childhood home was in the road I myself lived in for three years. Ann was the third of the five children of Richard and Grace Stratford née Kingham.[i] She was baptised on the 13^th of May 1834 at St. Michael and All Angels, Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire[ii] and it seems that she spent the first twenty-one years of her life living there.[iii] Aston Clinton is a village situated on the main road between the towns of Tring, in Hertfordshire and Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. Once married, Ann moved six miles away to Little Kimble,[iv] another Buckinghamshire village whose economy was dependent on agriculture. In company with many rural areas, Buckinghamshire was a flourishing centre for home industry, in particular lace-making and straw-plaiting. Many members of the Stratford family were involved in the plaiting and distribution of straw for the hat trade, which centred on Luton. Born on the eve of the Victorian era, in 1834 and dying a month before Edward VII, in 1911, Ann Stratford’s life-story spans not just the Victorian age but also the rise and demise of the domestic straw-plait trade.

St. Michael and All Angels, Aston Clinton

At the time of Ann’s birth, Buckinghamshire was still suffering from the aftermath of the Swing Riots. In 1830, following an agricultural depression and a series of bad harvests, the plight of agricultural labourers led to protests, during which threshing machines across the south of the country were destroyed under the auspices of the mythical Captain Swing. Conditions and wages were poor, with workers increasingly being hired on short term contracts and having to find their own accommodation, leaving them destitute when work was scarce. Prior to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, poor relief was inadequate and the obligation of church tithes was punitive. The riots spread across the south of England and were prevalent in Buckinghamshire and the surrounding counties.

The Swing rioters targeted those they perceived as wealthy and overseers of the poor were sent threatening letters, ostensibly from Captain Swing. The rioters demanded increased wages, better conditions, reductions in rents and tithe payments, as well as the destruction of threshing machines. Groups of rioters roamed the countryside damaging threshing machines, burning ricks and attacking property. As labourers in an agricultural community, even if they were not actively involved, the Stratfords must have been affected by causes and consequences of these troubles.

Before Ann’s birth, in 1829, her father Richard, had twice been in court for petty theft.[v] This may have been as a result of the actions of a headstrong young man but the stealing of firewood and turnips suggests perhaps that the family were in dire straits. As poverty tightened its grip, families, such as the Stratfords, were increasingly dependent on income from home industries, in their case straw-plaiting. In 1839, Ann’s short-lived younger brother was born.[vi] In the January of 1840, her two and a half year old sister, Mary, died of convulsions.[vii] Just a month later, Ann’s mother, Grace, mother died of tuberculosis.[viii] This left Ann’s father, a straw dealer, with three young children, Ann and her two older brothers, to care for. Just over three months after the death of his first wife, Richard Stratford married again, to nineteen year old Hannah Young;[ix] Ann was just six years old.

The plait trade flourished in the years known as the ‘hungry forties’. The Stratford’s local market would have been five miles to the east, in Tring. By 1846, a new market opened up to the west in Aylesbury, four miles away from Aston Clinton. The first Aylesbury market was held on the 3^rd of October and twenty children under the age of twelve, from surrounding villages, were give monetary prizes for their plait; one of the winners was eleven-year-old Ann Stratford.[x] Ann was recorded as a plaiter in the 1851 census. She was living with her family in Green End Street, Aston Clinton, where I was to live in the 1980s.[xi] It was in 1851 that Anthony Nathan de Rothschild purchased the Aston Clinton estate from The Duke of Buckingham.[xii] The Rothschilds were to set up a model farm in the parish.

Green End Street, Aston Clinton

According to Gróf, 4% of the female population of Buckinghamshire in 1851 were involved in the plait trade, yet in some parishes, such as Edlesborough, the figure was as high as 58%.[xiii] Conditions were notoriously hard for straw-plaiters, who would be brought weekly supplies of straw by the plaitman and paid by the score (twenty yards) for what they produced; the more complex patterns commanding the highest rates. From a very young age, children would be expected to contribute to the family income in this way, some in plait schools that gained a reputation for ‘places of child exploitation amid exceptional squalor, and even cruelty’.[xiv]

In 1851, Ann was one of one hundred and eighteen females aged between five and twenty five in Aston Clinton, 59% of whom were involved in the plait trade. In all, 60% of Aston Clinton females, including children, were recorded with some form of occupation; two thirds of them were plaiters.[xv] Ann Stratford’s father Richard was a straw dealer,[xvi] as was her older brother Peter;[xvii] another brother, Henry, was a straw drawer, preparing the straw for plaiting.[xviii] The graph below shows the age and gender distribution of the two hundred and thirty nine plait workers in Aston Clinton in 1851; they made up 41% of the workforce in the parish.

Inhabitants of Aston Clinton in 1851 who were involved in the Plait Trade[xix]

Children as young as three would begin to learn to plait. Plaiting expert, Veronica Main, has found a record of a child of eighteen months involved.[xx] The children would be crowded into plait schools, held in small cottage rooms= that had poor lighting and were full of fumes from the ‘chaddy pot’ charcoal heaters that they put under their skirts for warmth. Those running the schools were accused of exploiting their labour-force. School is a misleading appellation, the education provided related solely to plaiting. Ann was illiterate, signing her marriage certificate and registering her daughters’ birth with a cross.[xxi] A child’s early attempts at plait would not be saleable and were termed ‘widdle waddle’ but by the age of ten, a child could earn two-thirds of an adult’s income.

The plaiters would work twelve or fourteen hour days but the rewards were significant; the most proficient, who produced the more complicated patterns, might earn more than their agricultural labouring husbands. Plain plait was worth seven pence a score. In 1813, Priest wrote, ‘women and children here make great earnings by making lace and platting [sic] straw, unfortunately to the disadvantage of agriculture; for whilst they can earn by such work from 7s. to 30s. per week ……, it can scarce be expected they would undertake work in the field’.[xxii] Lucy Luck referred to the straw season, as being from January to June, saying that there was less work during the remainder of the year[xxiii] but there was a good living to be made from plaiting.

There were several roles involved in the plait trade, including drawers, strippers, cutters, splitters, sorters, bleachers, dyers and the plaiters themselves. One splitter could provide enough straw for fifty plaiters. Although it was possible to fulfil more than one of these roles, increasingly, individuals specialised in one or the other. At the top of the hierarchy were the straw dealers, some having large-scale, highly profitable businesses. At the first Aylesbury plait market, held in 1846, Mr Thorn of Aston Clinton brought 500 score of plait to sell; the most productive dealer bringing 1300 score and nearly £1000 of plait changed hands.[xxiv]

There were health hazards associated with plaiting. Plaiters developed cracks at the corners of their mouths, from dampening the straw. If dyed straws were used, the dye transferred to the plaiter’s mouth. The posture required also led to hunched left shoulders.

Throughout the nineteenth century, middle-class men passed judgements on the lifestyle of the straw-plaiters. Straw-plaiting was regarded as leading to immorality and ignorance, with plaiters deemed to be more likely to have illegitimate children and lack proficiency in essential domestic tasks. The plaiters’ husbands were accused of being lazy and living on their wives’ incomes. In 1882, it was reported that plaiters

“are a sadly untidy and unthrifty set of people, scarcely knowing how to do a stitch of needlework, or cook a potato; addicted to making a cup of tea and eating dry bread and butter if they can afford it.”[xxv]

Goose writes that,

“The Clergy Visitation Returns for Buckinghamshire in 1854 and 1866 blamed high levels of illegitimacy squarely on the industry. At Stewkley and Linsdale the ‘evils’ of the trade were castigated, while at Aston Clinton the local clergyman complained that plaiters became independent of their parents too soon, leading to early marriages and unspecified ‘immorality’ which, it was claimed, frequently took place on Buckland Common.”[xxvi]

Goose goes on to point out that, in 1864, the Royal Commission on Children’s Employment reported that children could earn 6d a week from straw-plaiting, therefore there was a significant incentive for parents to put them to work, thus, “it is not surprising… that ignorance and vice abound among a population so reared.”[xxvii] As early as 1804, Arthur Young wrote in General View of Agriculture of the County of Hertfordshire that, “the farmers complain of it, as doing mischief, for it makes the poor saucy, and no servants can be procured, where this manufacture establishes itself.”[xxviii] George Culley’s report to the Royal Commission on the Employment of Children, Young Persons and Women in Agriculture of 1867/8, commented on the “great want of chastity amongst the plait girls,” blaming the early independence from their parents, that earnings from plait allowed and the fact that, “male and female plaiters go about the lanes together in summer engaged in work which has not even the wholesome corrective of more or less physical exhaustion”.[xxix]

Despite these contemporary claims, Gróf’s study of Edesleborough in Buckinghamshire[xxx] concluded that the assertions of higher illegitimacy rates amongst plait workers were unfounded. Goose’s wider study of Hertfordshire suggests that despite indications of enhanced rates of illegitimacy in some plaiting areas, this was not necessarily attributable to plaiting, other factors being at work.[xxxi]

Plait-School

Image George Washington Brownlow in the public domain

Studying the Stratford family shows that Aston Clinton was similar to Edlesborough, in that their women played a vital role in the family economy. These villages had far more women with recorded occupations than the county average of 4%. Two of the factors that Pennington and Westover cite as being likely to result in the emergence of home industry, such as plaiting, were low wages for men and the prevalence of casual labour; both factors which also stimulated the Swing Riots.[xxxii] It can be seen that Ann was part of a much wider pattern of female employment.

On the 13^th of March 1855, Ann gave birth to an illegitimate daughter, Mary Ann Howe Stratford in Aston Clinton.[xxxiii] There is no DNA evidence to confirm or refute the identity of Mary Ann’s father but it seems almost certain that he was William Howe. Ann was to marry William three months later in his home village of Great Kimble, where the couple set up home. What then of the allegation of immorality amongst plait workers? Ann’s eldest brother had been born three months before her parents’ marriage. Ann’s own first child was also born out of wedlock. Would Ann, or her mother Grace, have been subjected to the ‘rough music’ that traditionally accompanied illegitimate births? This involved banging saucepan-lids or tins cans together to cause a commotion outside the mother’s home. At her baptism, which took place in Great Kimble after the marriage of William and Ann, Mary Ann’s parents were listed as Robert and Charlotte Howe, who were in fact William’s parents.[xxxiv] As Charlotte would have been fifty at the time this seems unlikely, also Mary appears in the 1861 census as William’s daughter.[xxxv] Mary Ann’s birth was registered as Mary Ann Howe Stratford,[xxxvi] underlining the probability that she was the child of William and Ann and illustrating that the baptism record is misleading.

St. Nicholas’, Great Kimble

From this single instance it is difficult to draw any conclusions about pre-marital pregnancy however, in this respect Ann was adding weight to those who reviled the straw-plaiting women as being promiscuous. Gróf mentions an unreferenced Parliamentary Report of 1842 which stated that, “the moral condition of the lace-makers seems nearly as low as that of the plaiters… chastity is at a sad discount … prostitution is at a high premium.”[xxxvii]

Ann’s husband, William, was an agricultural labourer. Despite the Swing Riots and increased demand for labourers following waves of emigration, agricultural wages were still low in Buckinghamshire in the 1850s. Perhaps attracted by the promise of up to £6 bounty, in 1852, whilst still a single man, William Howehad responded to a recruiting poster and enlisted in the Royal Bucks King’s Own regiment of militia.[xxxviii] The militia were groups of amateur soldiers, mustered in times of strife or perceived threat. The Militia Act of 1852 was a response to the fear of French invasion and 80,000 men were sought. It was hoped to recruit sufficient volunteers but the Act did provide for a ballot to force men to enrol should they not come forward. Private 492 William How [sic] was recruited on the 28^th of October 1852 at the age of twenty years and eight months[xxxix]. His height was 5’ 6¼”, his occupation was listed as labourer and he received an initial bounty of sixteen shillings. Over the next two years William undertook several periods of service throughout the county, receiving regular bounty payments of up to £3 13/- a quarter.[xl] This illustrates how wider reaching foreign affairs affected the life of a simple agricultural family in the provinces.[xli]

Recruiting Poster[xlii]

When Ann married William Howe at St. Nicholas’, Great Kimble on the 26^th of June 1855; she was described as a servant of Great Kimble and William was recorded as being a militiaman.[xliii] It appears that William and Ann spent thirty years in the same cottage.[xliv] It is likely that they moved there on marriage in 1855 and were still there in 1886 when their daughter, Caroline, returned from Battersea in south London, in order to give birth to her daughter, my grandmother, Elizabeth Ann Hogg.[xlv] The census returns of 1861 and 1871[xlvi] suggest that this cottage was close to a chapel and the Crown Inn, with just one cottage between the Howe’s and the Inn. In Little Kimble, when I visited in the 1990s, Old Chapel Close indicated the site of the Chapel and an Indian Restaurant inhabited what appears to be the former Crown Inn. Next door was one cottage, then named ‘*** ******’, clearly old enough to have been built by the 1850s. Further on again, was Brookside House, where William and Ann’s daughter Jane was working in 1881.[xlvii] So where could William and Ann have lived? Had it been demolished? Looking more carefully at ‘*** ******’ it became obvious that this was once two cottages; the brickwork round a second front door was clearly visible to the left of the existing door. So, the right-hand half of ‘*** ******’ was home to William, Ann and their nine children. In 1861, the family, by then with four children, even found room for a lodger, George Fleet; almost certainly an economic necessity. According to the 1861 census, Ann was still plaiting.[xlviii]

The Probable Former Home of William and Ann Howe

William and Ann went on to have five more daughters and three sons. They all survived to adulthood and married, which seems unusual in times of poverty and poor public health. It is possible that there were miscarriages but the children are very evenly spaced.[xlix]

Although no occupation is listed for Ann in the censuses from 1871 to 1891,[l] it is almost certain that she would have continued to plait; women’s occupations are notoriously under-represented in the census returns. Toward the end of their lives William and Ann went to live in Weston Road, in Ann’s home parish of Aston Clinton, next to their son Joseph, for a time. They were there in 1891, when, at the age of sixty, William was working as a roadman and by this time, Ann had lost her hearing.[li] Ten years later, they had returned to Great Kimble and were living in Smokey Row. William was working as a horseman on a farm. Ann was then recorded as plaiting straw.[lii] William, described as a farm labourer, died in Great Kimble of exhaustion and acute bronchitis on the 14^th of December 1904. His death was registered by his daughter-in-law Louisa, who had come down from Fulham and had been in attendance at the time of William’s death.[liii]

Ann’s generation was the last to depend on straw. The market had collapsed in the face of cheap imports and former plaiters were forced to turn to sewing the foreign plait into bonnets, or to seek other means of contributing to the domestic economy. Of Ann’s daughters, only the eldest, Mary Ann, took up plaiting, something she did into adulthood, although by the time she was widowed, in 1911, she was engaged in laundry work, there being no longer any demand for plaiting.[liv] The remaining daughters went into domestic service, or worked as dressmakers.[lv]

On the 1^st of April 1911, Ann died in Saunderton Workhouse infirmary of old age and exhaustion. Her death was registered as Hannah How.[lvi] Ann was buried with her husband at Great Kimble.[lvii]

William and Ann’s Grave[lviii]

Select Bibliography

BBC2 Made in Britain: hats first screened 2018.

Beckett, Ian Call to Arms: Buckinghamshire’s Citizen Soldiers Barracuda Books (1985)

Carpenter, Daniel Heritage Crafts Hat Plaiting https://heritagecrafts.org.uk/hat-plaiting/ accessed 26 April 2022.

Clarke, E. ‘Plait and Plaiters’ in Cassell’s Family Magazine (1882) Vol. 8 pp. 76-79.

Davis, Jean Straw Plait Shire Publications Ltd. (1981).

Few, Martha unpublished, untitled essay for The Open University course A173 (2008).

Goose, Nigel ‘How saucy did it make the poor?: Illegitimacy fertility and the family in nineteenth century Hertfordshire’ in History Vol. 91.4 304 (2006) pp. 530-556.

Gróf, Lázló L., Children of Straw, Baron, Buckingham (2002).

Luck, Lucy ‘Lucy Luck Straw-plait Worker’ in Burnett, John Useful Toil: autobiographies of working people from the 1820s to the 1920s Routledge (1974) pp. 53-62.

Pennington, S and Westover, B., A Hidden Workforce, homeworkers in England 1850-1985, Macmillan Education, Basingstoke (1989).

Page, William [ed.] ‘The parishes of Aylesbury hundred: Aston Clinton’, in A History of the County of Buckingham: Volume 2,Victoria County Histories (1908), pp. 312-319. Accessed via British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/bucks/vol2/pp312-319  accessed 23 September 2022.

Priest, St. John General View of Agriculture of the County of Buckinghamshire (1813).

Tremenheere, Hugh S. Commission on Employment of Children, Young Persons and Women in Agriculture H. M. Stationery Office (1867)

Young, Arthur General View of Agriculture of the County of Hertfordshire (1804).

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Martha Barnard, Lorna Brooks, Stephen Daglish, Vicki Morphew.

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[i] Aston Clinton entries from Buckinghamshire Baptisms Index via www.findmypast.so.uk original document reference PR8/1/4. 1851 census for Green End Street, Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire HO107 1721 folio 485.

[ii] Aston Clinton entries from Buckinghamshire Baptisms Index via www.findmypast.so.uk original document reference PR8/1/4.

[iii] Aston Clinton entries from Buckinghamshire Baptisms Index via www.findmypast.co.uk original document reference PR8/1/4. 1851 census for Green End Street, Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire HO107 1721 folio 485.

[iv] 1861 census for Great Kimble, Buckinghamshire, RG9 861 folio 91.

[v] Bucks Gazette 16 May 1829 p. 4 col. d. Bucks Gazette 28 November 1829 p. 4 col. c.

[vi] Birth certificate of male Stratford 1839 digital image from the General Register Office.

[vii] Death certificate of Mary Stratford 1840 digital image from the General Register Office.

[viii] Death certificate of Grace Stratford née Kingham 1840 pdf from the General Register Office.

[ix] Marriage register for Tring, Hertfordshire via www.ancestry.co.uk.

[x] Bucks Advertiser & Aylesbury News 10 October 1846 p. 4 col. d.

[xi] 1851 census for Green End Street, Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire HO107 1721 folio 485.

[xii] Page, William [ed.] ‘The parishes of Aylesbury hundred: Aston Clinton’, in A History of the County of Buckingham: Volume 2,Victoria County Histories (1908), pp. 312-319. Accessed via British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/bucks/vol2/pp312-319  accessed 23 September 2022.

[xiii] Gróf, Lázló L., Children of Straw, Baron, Buckingham (2002).

[xiv] Gróf, Lázló L., Children of Straw, Baron, Buckingham (2002) p. 65.

[xv] 1851 Census Index CD, Buckinghamshire Family History Society.

[xvi] 1851 census for Green End Street, Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire HO107 1721 folio 485.

[xvii] 1861 census for Plumbers Arms, Weston Road, Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire RG9 867 folio 8.

[xviii] 1841 census for College Farm Road, Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire HO107 40/1 folio 10.

[xix] Few, Martha unpublished, untitled essay for The Open University course A173 (2008).

[xx] BBC2 Made in Britain: hats first screened 2018.

[xxi] Marriage certificate of William Howe and Ann Stratford 1855 from the Local Registrar. Birth certificate of Mary Ann Howe Stratford digital image from the General Register Office.

[xxii] Priest, St. John General View of Agriculture of the County of Buckinghamshire (1813) p .346.

[xxiii] Luck, Lucy ‘Lucy Luck Straw-plait Worker’ in Burnett, John Useful Toil: autobiographies of working people from the 1820s to the 1920s Routledge (1974) p. 63.

[xxiv] Bucks Advertiser & Aylesbury News 10 October 1846 p. 4 col. d.

[xxv] Clarke, E. ‘Plait and Plaiters’ in Cassell’s Family Magazine (1882) Vol. 8 p. 76.

[xxvi] Goose, Nigel ‘How saucy did it make the poor?: Illegitimacy fertility and the family in nineteenth century Hertfordshire’ in History Vol. 91.4 304 (2006) p. 534.

[xxvii] Goose, Nigel ‘How saucy did it make the poor?: Illegitimacy fertility and the family in nineteenth century Hertfordshire’ in History Vol. 91.4 304 (2006) p. 535.

[xxviii] Young, Arthur General View of Agriculture of the County of Hertfordshire (1804) p. 222.

[xxix] Tremenheere, Hugh S. Commission on Employment of Children, Young Persons and Women in Agriculture H. M. Stationery Office (1867) p. 135 mentioned in Goose, Nigel ‘How saucy did it make the poor?: Illegitimacy fertility and the family in nineteenth century Hertfordshire’ in History Vol.91.4 304 (2006) p. 535.

[xxx] Gróf, László Children of Straw: the story of straw plait, a vanished craft and industry Baron (2002).

[xxxi] Goose, Nigel ‘How saucy did it make the poor?: Illegitimacy fertility and the family in nineteenth century Hertfordshire’ in History Vol. 91.4 304 (2006) pp. 530-556.

[xxxii] Pennington, S and Westover, B., A Hidden Workforce, homeworkers in England 1850-1985, Macmillan Education, Basingstoke (1989).

[xxxiii] Birth certificate of Mary Ann Howe Stratford digital image from the General Register Office.

[xxxiv] Aston Clinton entries from Buckinghamshire Baptisms Index via www.findmypast.co.uk original document reference PR8/1/4.

[xxxv] 1861 census for Great Kimble, Buckinghamshire RG9 861 folio 91.

[xxxvi] Birth certificate of Mary Ann Howe Stratford digital image from the General Register Office.

[xxxvii] Gróf, Lázló L., Children of Straw, Baron, Buckingham (2002) p.80. He is presumably refering to the second report of the Children’s Employment Commission.

[xxxviii] WO13 199 Muster Books and Pay Lists Royal Bucks King’s Own Regiment of Militia Enrolment Account 1852.

[xxxix] He was in fact twenty one years and eight months old.

[xl] WO13 199 Muster Books and Pay Lists Royal Bucks King’s Own Regiment of Militia Enrolment Account 1852.

[xli] Some of the information in this paragraph is based on Few, Martha unpublished, untitled essay for The Open University course A173 (2008); used with permission.

[xlii] Recruiting Poster reproduced in Beckett, Ian Call to Arms: Buckinghamshire’s Citizen Soldiers Barracuda Books (1985) p. 49.

[xliii] Marriage certificate of William Howe and Ann Stratford 1855 from the local registrar.

[xliv] 1861 census for Great Kimble, Buckinghamshire RG9 861 folio 91; 1871 census for Aylesbury Road, Little Kimble, Buckinghamshire RG10 1408 folio 109; 1881 census for Aylesbury Road, Little Kimble, Buckinghamshire RG11 1469 folio 95.

[xlv] Birth certificate of Elizabeth Ann Hogg 1886, short certificate in family possession, full certificate from the General Register Office.

[xlvi] 1861 census for Great Kimble, Buckinghamshire RG9 861 folio 91; 1871 census for Aylesbury Road, Little Kimble, Buckinghamshire RG10 1408 folio 109.

[xlvii] 1881 census index for Brookside, Little Kimble, Buckinghamshire RG11 1469 folio 97.

[xlviii] 1861 census for Great Kimble, Buckinghamshire RG9 861 folio 91.

[xlix] 1861 census for Great Kimble, Buckinghamshire RG9 861 folio 91; 1871 census for Aylesbury Road, Little Kimble, Buckinghamshire RG10 1408 folio 109; 1881 census for Aylesbury Road, Little Kimble, Buckinghamshire RG11 1469 folio 95. Birth indexes of the General Registrar.

[l] 1871 census for Aylesbury Road, Little Kimble, Buckinghamshire RG10 1408 folio 109; 1881 census for Aylesbury Road, Little Kimble, Buckinghamshire RG11 1469 folio 95. 1891 census for Weston Road, Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire RG12 1146 folio 37.

[li] 1891 census for Weston Road, Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire RG12 1146 folio 37.

[lii] 1901 census for Smokey Row, Great Kimble, Buckinghamshire RG13 1352 folio 83.

[liii] Death certificate of William Howe 1904 from the Local Registrar.

[liv] 1911 census for Great Kimble, Buckinghamshire RG14 7901 sn 7.

[lv] 1881 census for 10 Church Street, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire RG11 1472 folio 32. 1891 census for Church Cottages, Great Kimble, Buckinghamshire RG12 1142 folio 79. 1891 census for 37 Park Lane, St, George’s Hanover Square, London RG12 67 folio 87. 1881 census for Brookside, Little Kimble, Buckinghamshire RG11 1469 folio 97. 1891 census for 100 Fetter Lane, London RG12 238 folio 34. 1881 census for 14 Rickford’s Hill, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire RG11 1472 folio 24.

[lvi] Death certificate (pdf) Hannah How 1911 from the General Register Office.

[lvii] Gravestone at St. Nicholas’ Great Kimble, Buckinghamshire.

[lviii] Photograph from Vicki Morphew.