A Tale of Two Walters

I spoke about Walter James Bryer and his wife Phoebe Bishop in a previous post. In this article I want to cover what happened to Walter and Phoebe in later life. It is tale concerning “two Walters”, and it is not altogether a happy story.

The first family is named BRYER, the two main parties to this tale being Walter James BRYER and Phoebe BISHOP. Walter James was a London cab driver, born in 1845 in Newington to John Henry BRYER and Emma BERRY; as I said in my last post, Phoebe was the daughter of Robert BISHOP and Mary Ann ELY and had been born in the village of Dalham Suffolk in 1848. They married on 28 April 1867 at Trinity Church, Holborn. They had 9 children in total, 2 of whom did not survive childhood. One of these children was Rosina Jane (25 Jan 1867 – 1937), and she married Walter John HUDSON on the 19 September 1892 at Islington Register Office. The address she gave at the time of her marriage was 4 Rufford Street Islington, an area of high-density slum dwellings; this address will become relevant later!

The second family is named HUDSON, and as you can see the two families converged at the marriage of Rosina Jane and Walter John. Walter John (1867 – 1943) was the son of Walter HUDSON and Charlotte Ann MORRIS and was a Boot Last Maker by trade. Rosina Jane and Walter John were my great-grandparents, and there is another tale to be told of their lives, but for the moment I need to go back a generation, to Walter’s parents Walter and Charlotte Ann HUDSON and to Walter James and Phoebe BRYER.

Father Walter Hudson was born in 1845 in St Martin’s London. He was a Smith by trade who later turned to plumbing, fitting hot water and gas systems. He married Charlotte Ann MORRIS on 22 April 1867 at St Luke Chelsea; they had 6 children before Charlotte’s untimely death on 26 Feb 1881 at the young age of 33. Her last child was a daughter, Maud Vivian, born in 1878 (confusingly named Jane on the 1881 census).

So the families finally meet up in 1892 with the marriage of their children, or so it would seem. However, I was unable to find Walter James BRYER in the 1891 census; why was he not living with his wife or his daughter in Rufford Street? And where was Phoebe, she wasn’t in Rufford Street either. Well, I did eventually identify Walter James living in the Bethnal House Lunatic Asylum in Bethnal Green in 1891. And Phoebe was found in 1891 calling herself Phoebe Hudson and was living with Walter HUDSON (born 1845) and his daughter Maud, plus her youngest daughter Phoebe (born 1886) now named Phoebe Hudson. I can’t find any marriage for Walter and Phoebe, either before or after Walter James Bryer died in 1896.

It would appear that the families had converged a little earlier than I had assumed. Subsequent digging brought up this tragedy. On 3 July 1890, Walter James Bryer had been admitted to Ishmael’s Ward for alleged lunatics in Islington Workhouse, was assessed, and then committed on 5 July. The admission documents gave his wife’s name, Phoebe, and their address 4 Rufford Street, so it is definitely the right Walter James. Thereafter he was transferred to the Bethnal House Lunatic Asylum in Bethnal Green, where I found him in the 1891 census. So he was committed in July 1890, and the following April, at the time of the 1891 census, Phoebe was living with Walter Hudson and calling herself Mrs Hudson.

Walter James sadly died in 1896, in a psychiatric hospital called Claybury Mental hospital, or London County Lunatic Asylum, Ilford; this establishment existed as a hospital until 1997, but has since been converted into luxury flats called Repton Park. There is more information on the hospital itself in Wikipedia. The Wellcome Collection has a number of interesting photographs. The cause of Walter’s death was given as Exhaustion of General Paralytic Seizures. I’m not a medical expert, but this sort of illness sounds like a brain injury or tumour.

Walter and Phoebe continued living together, through the 1901 census and the 1911 census. Walter Hudson died 2 Jan 1919 at Westminster Hospital MDX, aged 73; his home address was given as 47 Mornington Road St Pancras. In the 1921 Census, completed for her by her son in law Thomas J PECK (daughter Phoebe’s husband), Phoebe was widowed and living alone at 47 Mornington Road NW1; Thomas got her birthplace slightly wrong (he put Bury St Edmonds not Dalham). Phoebe died 2 Oct 1924 at 47 Mornington Road St Pancras, MDX, aged 76.

It is hard piecing together the joys and tragedies that affected relatives distant in time though not in blood. I try to imagine what it must have been like living 11 to a couple of rooms (Rufford Street was a slum), sharing a sink and an outside toilet with half a dozen other families. 130 years may seem like a long time in human lifespan terms, but it is only 3 or 4 generations ago. Phoebe Bryer nee Bishop had a hard life, bringing up so many children in a dismal and depressing place; no wonder, when her husband and provider was committed with little prospect of a cure, she seized the opportunity to improve her life and that of her youngest child. I am surprised, however, that she does not seem to have married Walter Hudson, despite the fact they were both legally able to from 1896.

Family Group Sheets for the people mentioned:

Walter James Bryer and Phoebe Bishop

Walter Hudson and Charlotte Ann Morris

Thomas James Peck and Phoebe Bryer

Family memories, a new beginning

I haven’t posted to this blog for some years. Somehow the sadness just heaped up, until I didn’t want to think about it. But the sense of life being fragile has spurred me on to delve more into my family history, continuing what I started 23 years ago. The vast amount of data now available on the internet is amazing, undreamt-of 20 years ago, when the only UK census widely available was 1881, and only bits of the other censuses had been laboriously transcribed by family history groups around the country in a noble but spotty effort. Now, every census from 1841 to 1921 is available at the click of a mouse (although the transcriptions are a little dodgy in places), voter registers, baptisms, marriages, death records, immigration – all can be had (for a price). This explosion of data has allowed me to uncover several, shall we say anomalous, circumstances found in my family tree.

The first story concerns my great-great grandmother, Phoebe Bishop, and to give a little background, this is how I first learned about her.

Present day Dalham showing the location of the Lower Mill

My grandmother, Victoria May Hudson, told me on more than one occasion, that her grandmother had come from a wealthy family in Suffolk, and had run away with and married one of her father’s grooms. They ran to London, and there had a large family. This story appealed enormously to me, it sounded so romantic. Well, the reality was a little different.

Phoebe Bishop was indeed born in Suffolk, in the little village of Dalham, not far from Newmarket. But her parents, Robert Bishop and Mary Ann Ely, were married in Dalham in 1841, perfectly legitimately and presumably with parental consent. Nor was her mother from a wealthy family. Mary Ann’s father William (1788-1835) had been a labourer; her mother Sarah Mould (1790 -1862) I have yet to discover anything about. Phoebe’s father, Robert, was the son of a Dalham miller, Frederick, admittedly a very important person in a small village, but not exactly gentry. Frederick may have been miller at the Ashley or Upper Mill, demolished in the 1930s (the existing Dalham Lower Mill was built in the 1790s and Frederick is not listed as one of the millers).

Robert and Mary Ann left Dalham for London in about 1850. They are listed in the 1851 census as living in the Tottenham Court Road area of London. Robert gave his occupation as Miller, but he later changed jobs to become a hackney cab driver.

When Phoebe married Walter James Bryer, on 28 Apr 1867 at Trinity Church, Trinity Gray’s, Holborn, both gave Gray’s Inn Road as their place of residence. When their first child, Walter John, was born later that year they were living at 28 Gresse Street St Pancras. Gresse Street runs behind Tottenham Court Road, almost at the junction with Oxford Street, and number 28 is now a graphics design/advertising company office. They lived at this address until at least November 1872. My great-grandmother, Rosina Jane, was born at 28 Gresse Street on 25 Jan 1869.

21st century map of Gresse Street

By June 1874, when their fifth child Albert Ernest was born (and died), they were living at 10 Little Guilford Street St Giles. St Giles was a notorious area of London, known as the Rookery; full of thieves, drunks and wastrels. A history of the area, with some 19th century sketches, describes the poverty ridden homes of thousands of people in the space of a few acres of London. It does not seem like a happy place to live after the wide open skies of Suffolk.

When Amelia Elizabeth, their seventh child, was born, in 25 Jan 1877, they lived at 1 Little Coram Street, St Giles, still within the area of the Rookery.

Copyright Alan Godfrey Maps

The full family group for Walter James and Phoebe can be found on the Bryer One-Name Study website, together with links forwards and backwards through the generations. The site is update regularly as new information is always coming to light.

The next post will cover what happened to Walter James and Phoebe after their nine children had been born.