Snapshot of a Workhouse in 1901

 

Inmates listed in Guildford Workhouse on the census of 1901

Once every 10 years, the census records give us a window into the ages and occupations of Workhouse residents.  In 1891 at Guildford Workhouse the Master, Duncan MacDonald, lead a team of 10 officers, including only two nurses.  On the night of April 5^th 1891 there were 276 full time resident paupers and 10 casual poor sleeping at the Union Workhouse.

By 1901 there were 396 inmates but we are not informed as to how many were casual paupers.  By 1911, this number had risen to 418, but whereas in 1901 there were 22 members of staff, in 1911 there were 29 officers and the Master, Charles Henry Bessant, had been given his own personal servant.

It is only by 1911 that a Superintendent for the Casual wards is listed and the Superintendent nurse of the 1901 Infirmary has been replaced by a married couple, who are Sick Attendants.  Miss Edith Hughes, the Superintendent Nurse of 1901, who had trained in Liverpool and held a certificate of the London Obstetrics Society, was assisted by 7 Infirmary nurses and 2 ward maids.  In 1911 the two Sick Attendants were helped by 10 hospital nurses, 2 probationer nurses and 2 infirmary wardmaids.

But I am going to concentrate on the 1901 census, which was recorded on March 31st. We find that the inmates range in age from newborn baby, Kate Hall, to 94 year old, Sarah Balchin, from Bramley.  There were 179 men sleeping in the Union Workhouse that night and 120 women.  107 children under 15 were resident, including 19 babies under 3.  Twelve of the inmates were described as imbeciles, one as an imbecile who was blind, one lunatic and one deaf and blind.  As 133 of the men and women were over the age of 68, the Workhouse was providing an old people’s home, as well as accommodation for the homeless and a children’s home.  Yet the one thing they all had in common was the definition, “pauper.”

But we learn much more about these, “paupers,” by looking into their lives.  Many families are listed far apart on the census because they are male or female regardless of the fact that they were married couples.  In the case of the Standing family, Priscilla, aged 39 is separated from her 3 sons, Harry, aged 5, Thomas, aged 4 and Edwin, aged 2.  Although the 3 brothers had each other, they were taken from their mother at a very young age and she must have missed them terribly.

You can read the story of  Priscilla Cinderalla Cooper and her family here                                    

Another sad inmate of Guildford Union Workhouse in 1901 was Alice Clair.  Intriguingly, her birthplace in 1856 was listed as, “born at sea.”  Alice became a dressmaker but in December 1880 she gave birth to Julia Alice Clair at Marylebone Workhouse.  Tragically, little Julia died in 1882 and we presume that Alice returned to her work as a dressmaker until we discover her being admitted as a patient to St Peter’s Memorial Home in Woking on 11^th November 1889.  This was a women’s’ care home for poor patients run by Anglican nuns.  Once again in 1901 Alice is in an institution, this time the Workhouse in Guildford, and eight years later, she died in Guildford.

It is probable that Alice was born, “at sea,” because her father was a soldier.  Another Guildford inmate, John Bridger, had an exotic birth in Demerara, Guyana, West Indies in 1835.  At that time the British army were active in the establishment of British Guyana and the abolition of slavery there so it is likely that John was also the son of a soldier.  We do not know when he arrived in England but in 1866 he married Mary Ann Wells in Guildford.  In 1871 he was living in Thursley with his wife and two sons and was working as a wheelwright.  By 1881 the Bridger family had moved to Godalming where John was a Cowman and Mary Ann had given birth to a third son.

Something catastrophic must have occurred during the next few years, as by 1891 John Bridger was resident in the Guildford Union Workhouse, listed as married, but his wife Mary Ann was living in Peperharrow with her youngest son and was working as a housekeeper.  Perhaps John had become incapacitated by accident or illness and Mary Ann was unable to look after him as well as supporting her family?  John Bridger was still at the Workhouse in 1901 but by then he is listed as a widower.  His son, Charles, age 29 was living in Godalming, working as a Leather Dresser and next door was younger brother, John A. Bridger, a railway porter.  Yet again John Bridger senior is listed as an inmate in the Workhouse in 1911 before dying in Guildford in 1914.

A frequently occurring surname amongst the inmates of Guildford Union Workhouse was Mayo.  This family can be found, in the census of 1871, living in Summers Lane, Godalming in a caravan.  William Mayo, his wife and two of his daughters give his occupation as pedlar.  Most of the family, including 5 year old Susan, were born on the south coast.  By 1881, Susan Mayo was living in the District Village Home for Orphan, Neglected and Destitute Girls in Barking, Essex near to the residence of her married sister, Mary.  In 1891 Susan had returned to Godalming where her daughter, Rose Mayo, was born.

Susan had two more daughters, Ellen (Nellie) born in 1898 and Ivy in 1900.  She and her daughters were all residents of the Guildford Workhouse by 1901 and Susan remained there in 1911.  Rose was 20 by 1911 and had moved to Shepherds Bush to work as a housemaid.  Her sisters, Nellie and Ivy had been moved to Providence House Scattered Home in Artillery Terrace, Guildford under the care of a Foster Mother appointed by Guildford Union Board.  Susan Mayo died in Guildford in 1926.

The Master of Guildford Union Workhouse in 1901 was William James Hill, aged 42.  His wife Mary Ann Hill was Matron and they had two sons, Percy and Stanley.  William Hill had been born in Polruan, Cornwall.  In 1878 he received his Mate’s Certificate in the merchant navy and this was followed by the Master’s certificate issued in Fowey in 1880.  However William later made a change to his career and by 1891 he was acting Master of the Union Workhouse at Liskeard in Cornwall.

Among the nurses in the infirmary were Hannah Howard, aged 36, Florence Watson, aged 21 and Marie Lambourne aged 43.  Hannah Howard had been born in Hertfordshire and as a child she lived with her father William, a greengrocer, and his family in East Barnet.  By 1881, Hannah’s mother, Mary Howard, had been widowed and the family had moved to Richmond in Surrey where Mary was a charwoman and Hannah a dressmaker.  In 1891 Hannah was working as a nurse in Sussex at the County Lunatic Asylum in Wivelsfield, before moving to Guildford.  As she grew older she gave up nursing and became the cook for a family in Hornsey, Middlesex.

Florence Watson was born in 1880 in Boroughbridge, Yorkshire, the daughter of Alfred Watson, a saddler and harness maker.  After working in the Infirmary in Guildford she moved to Lancaster where she nursed an elderly retired engineer.  Marie Lambourne was born Maria Lamburn in Emsworth on Chichester harbour, daughter of Hezekiah Lamburn, a carter, and his wife Elizabeth Crees.  In 1881, Maria was working as a cook for a Canon of the Cathedral church in Chichester.  In 1891 she was a charge nurse at New Broyle Infirmary Isolation Ward, Chichester, before moving to Guildford Infirmary.

We often believe that our ancestors rarely moved from their home village but the life histories of inmates and staff of Guildford Union Workhouse clearly show how widely travelled many of them were.  We can also see how easily individuals rose and fell in status and poverty due to circumstances frequently beyond their control.

My McKinnon Family

 

When I started to research the McKinnon side of my family in 1999, the easiest way to access information about them was a set of CDs of the 1881 Census issued by the Church of Latter Day Saints. Here I found my great grandmother and all her siblings working as house servants (the girls) or farm servants (the boys).  Meanwhile her parents John Mckinnon and Mary Barron were at home in Petty, Inverness-shire looking after 3 illegitimate grandchildren.

The McKinnon (or MacKinnon) family originated on the islands of Mull, Coll, and Tiree n the Hebrides and later Skye and Rum.  For hundreds of years the MacKinnons held offices of importance in both the military and civil administrations of the Isles. A MacKinnon chief was the marshal of the island fleet that transported Robert Bruce and his army at the start of the campaign that ended at Bannockburn in 1314. MacKinnon chiefs were respected members of the Council of the Isles and from 1357 until 1498 the MacKinnon clan supplied the abbots and priors for the monastery on Iona.

After the Act of Union between England and Scotland, Clan MacKinnon supported the Jacobite cause especially in 1715 and 1745. Following those failed uprisings, the clan members were reduced to poverty. Their land was sold off and many emigrated. The Highland Clearances, moving people to make room for sheep, caused more McKinnons to scatter round the globe.

The first McKinnon we can trace in our family is William MacKinnon, a weaver, living in Stronaba, Kilmonivaig, Invernesshire.  He and his wife, Ann Cameron had two children, Christian (female) and John MacKinnon. By 1841 William had died and Ann McKinnon (Cameron) was in misery (on charity). In 1851 she was listed as a parish pauper. Later that year John, a labourer, married Mary Barron, a servant maid working at Glenfintaig House, in Kilmonivaig. 

John McKinnon and his wife Mary, who spoke Gaelic and English, soon moved to Elgin, Moray where their first 2 children were born, but by 1854 when their son William McKinnon was born, they were living in the village of Petty on the edge of the Moray Firth near to the town of Inverness.  John worked as a railway surfaceman until he died of a heart attack aged 82. His wife Mary Barron died 8 years later in Inverness and was buried at Tomnahurich Cemetery in Inverness.  Of the 10 children of John McKinnon and Mary Barron, my great grandmother Eliza was their 6th child.

Eliza was later called Elizabeth. Her son Alexander Stewart was born in 1879 when she was 17. By 1881 she was working as a nursemaid in Inverness but at some point, during the next 7 years she moved to work in Dunbartonshire over on the west coast. There she met Northern Irishman, Robert John Hughes, a mason, but by the time they married in 1888, he was a postman. On the 1891 census they are listed living in the village of Row (Rhu) on the Gareloch. The couple had 9 children including Elizabeth Hughes, my grandmother born in 1900. Of Eliza McKinnon’s 7 sisters, two, Catherine and Mary, moved to Australia with their husbands, the two brothers, William and John, were farm labourers and Johanna never married.

Eliza McKinnon

The Sad Tale of the Paupers Nobody Wanted : Proving the right of a British Citizen

 

In recent years, recent days even, we have heard people in this country denouncing refugees crossing from France because, “the British Taxpayer has to provide for them.”  In 1834 the government passed the New Poor Law to reduce the burden on the rate payers in England of providing for paupers with out relief by replacing it with indoor relief within the Union Workhouse.  The old rules of Settlement, where birth in a parish was necessary to receive help no longer applied so clearly but gradually the right of aid within a union of parishes was established.

However, in one sad case in Surrey and Hampshire no rights of support were legally allowed. It concerned a family where the wife, Catherine Stringer, had been born in Prussia (Germany), the daughter of a British soldier, and her husband, Michael Stringer, the son of a freed slave who had been born in Jamaica was considered a foreigner even though he received a soldier’s pension after more than 20 years’ service in the British army.

In November 1854, Catherine Stringer, who with her husband, Michael, had given birth to 14 children, presented herself at Guildford Union Workhouse, with her youngest 3 children because her husband had seduced their adopted orphan child, who at 18 was expecting his baby. Catherine was a British subject in every census record but had no right to poor relief.  Her husband was stationed in the barracks in Guildford, but when the Guildford Board of Guardians discovered she had a son-in-law in Portsmouth (where Catherine had once lived) who could take her in, they bought her train tickets so she could remove herself and her youngest children to Portsea.  Mr Ames, Master of the Workhouse took them to Guildford station and accompanied them in the carriage to Woking station where he put them on the Portsmouth train.

Subsequently the Poor Law Board in London ruled this removal from Guildford to Portsmouth was illegal.

Michael Springer is described on his pension documents as 5 ft 8 inches tall with dark brown hair, grey eyes and a swarthy complexion. He had a good military record and was a Sergeant as well as a Bugle Major. He retired aged 38 because of arthritis, probably caused by many years of service in Ireland after his upbringing in the warmer climate of Jamaica where he was born. In 1821 Michael married Catherine after meeting her in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where her father was also serving as a soldier.

Michael had served as a Bugle Major for 19 years with the 2^nd Battalion 60^th Infantry Regiment but prior to that he had enlisted in Jamaica at the age of 12. After being discharged in Ireland in 1834, where many of his children were born, he moved to the more favourable climate of Portsmouth. Unfortunately in 1851 he was convicted of the felony of larceny, which is why the 1851 census lists Catherine as Head of the house.

On finishing his sentence in 1852, Michael joined the Surrey Militia in Guildford until his discharge in 1854 when like his estranged wife he moved back to Portsmouth where some of their adult children lived. Soon his itchy feet took him back to Cork in Ireland but in 1861 Catherine is still in Portsmouth with some of her children.

I believe Michael remarried in Cork, probably bigamously but in 1875 Catherine died in poverty in the Union Workhouse on Portsea Island.

The problems the couple had in establishing rights as British citizens despite valid parentage, being born abroad as a result of her father's army service and in Michael's case owing him reward for his duty to Britain as a soldier, reflect the experiences of the Windrush generation and also of the difficulty experienced by some of my generation in obtaining a British passport because they were born in Singapore or Malaysia due to their father's military service. No wonder they had such tempestuous lives.

Prisoner in Wandsworth in 1873

I have been taking advantage of the free Lockdown Downloads from Discovery/national archives to browse two albums of Prisoner details from Wandsworth 1872-73. Among them was this rather engaging photo of Sidney Attfield so I decided to research his life. I was excited to find him living in Guildford Union Workhouse in both 1851 and 1881 since I have been a volunteer researcher there for several years.

Born in 1840 in the rural village of Albury in the Surrey Hills, he had 5 sisters and 5 brothers as well as 6 older half siblings. In 1848 his mother had died so by 1851 he and his older sister Sophia were in the Workhouse while the other children, younger and older, were still with their father.

Looking at Sidney’s prison record I discovered he was also in the Workhouse in 1858 when he absconded with workhouse clothing, and prior to that he had stolen a saucepan and a pair of shoes in 1856 and 1857.  There is a gap in his record of crimes until 1873 when he was listed as homeless and had stolen onions.

 His longest sentence was for the following crime in his home village.

So where was he in those missing years, since I could not find him in the 1861 or 1871 census? The answer lay in the Royal Chelsea Pensioner Discharge Records. Private Sydney Attfield attested at Shorncliffe Barracks, when he was 19, in October 1860. He is recognisable from his matching date and place of birth and also his physical description matches, including the scar. He was discharged as medically unfit in April 1867 after six and a half years of army service, two of those in India.  The reason for his unfitness was Epilepsy, which apparently was hereditary.  The surgeon added that this condition had worsened due to excessive use of tobacco and he was concerned about the effect of intoxicating liquor.

It may be that his hereditary epilepsy was the reason why 9-year-old Sidney was sent to the Workhouse in 1851 after his mother had died, while his 3 younger brothers stayed in the family home with his father John Attfield who was receiving Poor Relief.

Soon after his army discharge in 1867 Sidney was imprisoned for 3 months after stealing two shillings and then he spent 17 days back at Guildford Union Workhouse. The following year due to illness he was admitted to Camden and St Pancras Workhouse for 6 months.

After 3 months imprisonment at Wandsworth in 1873 for stealing onions, Sidney’s next appears briefly in the record book of Holborn Workhouse on July 20th 1874 and he is back at Guildford Union Workhouse in 1881 as a Vagrant which meant that he had to earn his bed & board by breaking flint stones into shingle.  I would like to tell you when he died but I have been unable to end his story as yet and perhaps I never will.

Jean Baptiste Debret: the man who painted slaves

 

In 1807 during the Peninsular War when Napoleon’s troops invaded Iberia, King João VI of Portugal fled his country taking his entire court of almost 15,000 to live in Brazil. A few months later, seventeen fishermen from the small fishing town of Olhão in the Algarve crossed the Atlantic to tell their King that the French had been defeated but he stayed in Brazil for another 13 years. In Rio de Janeiro he created many new titled nobles among the local Brazilians, he encouraged the development of manufacturing industry and modernised the city with a sewer system, public libraries, botanic gardens, an opera house and of course palaces. A bureaucratic civil service was established and every day life depended upon the labour of African slaves.

Meanwhile in Paris, Jean Baptiste Debret, was training at the French Academy of Fine Arts, as a pupil of the famous Jacques-Louis David. In 1816 after the defeat of Napoleon, Debret travelled to Brazil as part of the French Artistic mission to create an arts and crafts lyceum in Rio de Janeiro. Later this became the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts where Debret would teach.  Favoured by Dom João VI, Debret painted his portrait and a painting of the arrival of his new wife Maria Leopoldina of Austria prior to them becoming Emperor and Empress of Brazil. But Debret also used his Romantic style to sketch details of the lives of the slaves and the persecuted indigenous people. The pictures show us an honest view of their suffering and their day to day lives.

Indian creek

The gypsy's house

On his return to France in 1831 Debret published his lithographs in a book entitled Voyage Pittoresque et Historique au Bresil but although it depicted such important images of early 19^th century Brazilian life it was not successful and Jean Baptiste Debret died in Paris in 1948 in poverty.

Bird Sellers

The Coronation of Dom Pedro I

Where there's a Will #Genealogy

For many years, my great great grandmother Sarah Ann PETT was a brick wall in following my family tree.  Apart from her marriage to John LINFER(D)  in Wisbech and the fact that her brother William PETT is listed in the 1871 census as living with her in Walpole St Peter, Norfolk, I was unable to find any other reference to her family.  It was as if these two PETTs were orphans who had popped out of nowhere

Finally I was able to travel to Walpole St Peter where I found the gravestones of Charles and Henry PETT in the churchyard but I was still unable to connect them with Sarah Ann.  From my early days of family history research I have listed queries on surname websites such as Genforum.  I had no reason to believe that I had connections in the US or Australia but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Out of the blue, in 2002, I received an email from someone called Mark in Missouri, concerning a will he had in his possession, dated 1876.  The will of Joseph PETT, who had died without children, in Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen, contained a long list of beneficiaries including William PETT and his sister Mrs LINFORD.  It also listed four other large PETT families, including Henry and Charles, whose tombstones I had seen in Walpole St Peter.  The will contained the married names of the female members of the extended PETT family enabling me to connect to other families in Cambridgeshire, and Norfolk.

Soon Mark and I were collaborating with another distant cousin in the UK and one in Australia. Two more cousins joined our mailing list via Genes Reunited.  All instigated by the wealth of connected surnames in Joseph PETT’s will.  Hard times farming in East Anglia in the 1840s had caused most of the PETT family to emigrate to the States or to Australia. However, from 1850 to 1875 farming in Britain thrived.  Grain was the predominant crop in East Anglia and due to the Crimean War and the American Civil War, there were not yet large surpluses of cheap wheat to threaten the British grain farmers.  Wheat prices rose from 40 shillings per imperial quarter to 57s between 1850 and 1871.  

After Joseph's death the solicitor had to calculate all the expenses involved in the funeral and running costs for his 91 acre farm. There were wages to be paid including boys at a lower rate. The seasonal tasks such as threshing, harvest and wood cutting involved extra labour and there were local taxes such as the poor rate, Highway rate and church tithe to be paid, not to mention fire insurance. As the farm was in the Fens digging drains and maintaining banks was an important necessity.

The very long expenditure list (4 times the lists shown above) included fees for mole catching, a boy leading the horses, crow keeping and hoeing.  As Joseph was a landowner, a list of receipts from local tenants gave added colour to his story. Other receipts include the sale of sheep and bullocks. Joseph may have had no surviving children but he left quite a dynasty.

She would like to know her birthday ~British Home Children #Canada

We know very little about the girls who arrived at the Guthrie Home in London, Ontario before it closed in 1893.  But the records of the Inspectors who visited them in their new habitation, for some a home, for others a place to endure, provide a few phrases about the experiences of these lonely girls.

SS Parisian

In 1881, wheelwright, Benjamin Sink was living with his wife Jane and their three little girls in Farthing Lane, Wandsworth, but Benjamin came from Ockham, Surrey where most of his family still lived. By 1883 the lives of Ruth, aged 7, Beatrice, 6, and Ada Sink, aged 3 had been turned upside down. Their mother Jane had died and Benjamin was imprisoned in Wandsworth jail. The family in Ockham took in the three girls, but their grandmother was 64 and nearly blind so they were soon given up to the Union Workhouse in Guildford.

An earlier group of Middlemore girls who arrived in Canada in 1877

Miss Spottiswood, the only female Guardian on the Poor Law Board, was a wealthy educated woman who had taken some of the workhouse teenagers to work  as staff at her home. Each summer she invited the children to a picnic in her garden at Shere and she arranged for Christmas visits to a pantomime.  Always anxious to give young people a better start in life, she had studied closely the migration of "orphans" to Canada where they would be employed as farm servants in homes around the country.  Despite the misgivings of some of her fellow Guardians she began to entrust children to Mr Middlemore's organisation to start a new life in Canada.  So in June 1884 the sisters set out from Liverpool on the Allan Line steamship Parisian, with 115 other girls from various parts of Britain.

Guthrie House

At first they were taken to Guthrie House in London, Ontario and then they were taken to their new "homes" or a habitation where they would work very hard until they were 21. Along with Alice and James Hart, who were also from Guildford, they were placed with families who had requested a young person. Beatrice and Ada seem to have been lucky in their positions but Ruth, whose name was misspelt by the government inspector, was not so happy.

It is recorded in Ontario that Mark Smallpeice, Clerk to the Board of Governors of Guildford Poor Law Union, requested feedback on the children's situations, as did other workhouse Boards and thus we have it on record that Beatrice, "would like to know her birthday if possible," that Ada, "thinks she has a brother in the Union, (Guildford Workhouse) while poor Ruth is so unwell she has been returned to Guthrie House. We do not know whether Beatrice discovered her birthday or whether Ada really had a brother "in the Union (workhouse)".

Update

Thanks to Maureen Salter, a descendent of the Sink family, I now have a little more information.  

Beatrice Sink was adopted by the Burton family and took their surname. Later she married a cousin of her adopted family.

Ada also went to a caring home in Ontario where, at the age of 6, she was adopted by Ephraim Snell. Sadly in 1893 she died of typhoid fever.

The children's birth father Benjamin Sink died in Richmond Workhouse, Surrey in 1938.

There is no record of a brother in Guildford Union Workhouse, and we do not know whether Beatrice was given her correct birthdate.

Shandon Hydro - A Scottish Gem

 In 1833, Robert Napier, a Scottish marine engineer and shipbuilder bought land on the edge of the Gareloch at West Shandon to build a summer cottage, but soon like many of the Glasgow merchants he looked for an architect to build him a fairytale castle.  John Thomas Rochead had won a competition to design the Royal Arch in Dundee and would later design the Wallace memorial.  Napier commissioned him to create a mansion.  This was to be West Shandon House which cost £130,000 to build and was completed in 1852.  No expense was spared to build a quality house and Napier and his wife Isabelle Denny filled their new home with paintings by artists such as Rembrandt, Rubens, Vandyke and Titian, hung Gobelin tapestries and displayed objet d’art such as Sevres porcelain. They lived there happily until Isabelle died in 1875 and Robert in 1876.

The house was soon sold to a Glasgow based syndicate who intended to turn it into a hydropathic hotel.  Hydros, providing water cures in a luxury hotel, were particularly popular in Scotland at this time with more than 20 opening in the latter part of the 19^th century.  Shandon Hydro, as it was called, included a heated salt water swimming pool, Turkish baths, a bowling green, a croquet lawn, a golf course and tennis courts.  There was a library full of popular books and greenhouses provided fresh flowers.  Smoking was strictly forbidden except in the Conservatory.

Safe pleasure boats were provided on the loch and broughams or landaus could be rented to take visitors on trips to Loch Lomond or Loch Long.  The Hydro proved extremely popular, until it was requisitioned early in World War One as an experimental submarine base and naval hospital.  Although restored to its role as a Hotel between the wars, its position next to the deep sea-loch on the Clyde made it essential to the navy once again in 1939.  Its popularity declined until it was destroyed in 1957 to make way for the Faslane naval base.

An interesting article on golf in Shandon can be found here

The disappearance of Mabel Love #Edwardian actress #wwwblogs

Mabel Love, a beautiful child star from a theatrical dynasty, caused consternation in 1889 when she suddenly disappeared in the middle of London.  The Star newspaper reported, “The Disappearance of a Burlesque Actress.”  Only 14 years old, she was described as, “of fresh complexion, with light grey eyes and fair hair, curling and hanging loose over the shoulders. She was wearing, when she left home, a black and white striped fish-wife skirt, Oxford patent shoes, black plush hat and feathers, and a terra-cotta coloured cloak trimmed with white fur round the collar and cuffs and with large metal buttons.”

She had already been on the stage for two years, appearing in the first play version of “Alice in Wonderland,” in a Christmas pantomime at Covent Garden and had recently been contracted by George Edwardes at the Gaiety to dance in the burlesque "Faust up-to-date".  A very pretty girl, she had many admirers and a great deal of pressure.

But she had been spotted by several people after leaving her parents house in Arundel Street, The Strand with her payment from The Gaiety Theatre.  Luckily she was traced a few days later in Dublin and returned to Euston Station to crowds of admirers.

Article from "The Era" newspaper 

Mabel was the granddaughter of entertainer and ventriloquist William Edward Love and the daughter of actress Kate Watson (Love). Mabel's father was the brother of Robert Grant Watson, who served in the diplomatic service and had held the posts of First Secretary to the British Embassy in Washington, and Charge d'affaires in Japan.

Sadly Mabel still suffered from a distressed state of mind as a few months later she made a suicide attempt.

Mr Vaughan showed great sympathy for her and gave her the following advice.

Subsequently she was able to return to her career and no more dramatic events were recorded.  By the age of 20 she was even more popular with the public as well as young Winston Churchill and Edward the Prince of Wales.  She appeared in musical comedy and burlesque and when photographer Frank Foulsham produced postcards of her, they were widely bought and sent.

In 1913 Mabel gave birth to an illegitimate daughter, Mary, later called Mrs Mary Lorraine.  There is mystery about Mary’s father but she was acclaimed for her bravery during the second world war. Originally an actress like her mother, she became a secret agent for the SOE in France and was captured and tortured by the Gestapo.  After the war she suffered from mental health problems and died in poverty, unaware that her mother had left her a substantial legacy.

After retiring, Mabel Love continued to enjoy visits to the theatre. She moved into an hotel in Weybridge with her best friend Vesta Tilley and died there in 1953 at the age of 78.

©Elizabeth Lloyd

More tales of scandal on the Edwardian stage:

Jean Alwyn the lady Harry Lauder

The notorious Maud Allan

Lily Elsie the most photographed woman in the British Empire

The murder of William Terriss