Case Study
Judith reveals how much you can find out about a 19th-century London family
Methusalem Woodcock, a shipwright, and his bride, Mary Ann Ford, married at Christ Church, Watney Street, in the parish of St George in the East on 25 September 1864. The couple then spent the first years of their married life living at Patterson Street in Mile End, where their daughter, Hannah, was born. She was baptised at St Thomas, Stepney, in 1866. Sadly, both of the churches were destroyed by bombing in the Second World War. There is also no trace of Patterson Street on any modern-day map.
To find these locations and see where they were in relation to each other, I consulted an Ordnance Survey map of Stepney, surveyed between 1868 and 1871. I also found information about Christ Church, Watney Street, on the parish website of St George in the East. Electoral registers from the 1870s revealed that the Woodcocks did not stay in Stepney for long: they moved further east into Poplar. Methusalem’s address was given as 32 Gough Street and 64 Gough Street.
A Post Office directory of London for 1875 revealed that he was running a chandler’s shop at 64 Gough Street. Today, the street has gone, but modern georeferenced maps show Gough Walk, a pedestrian walkway that largely follows the path of the old street.
By 1877, the Woodcocks had moved again to 723 Commercial Road, as it was here that their son, Stanley, was born. A search of the 1911 census reveals that two families were resident at this address: one lived in eight rooms while the other only occupied two rooms, perhaps in the basement. This indicates that it was probably a terraced townhouse, very much like those in a terrace still standing at 703–711 Commercial Road.
By the time of the 1881 census, the Woodcocks were living at 81 Locksley Street in Limehouse. They finally seem to have settled down, as this was the family home for the next 20 years or so. Charles Booth’s Poverty Map reveals that it was a respectable street where the residents were “Fairly comfortable with good ordinary earnings”. Censuses show that many residents were employed at the docks or worked at nearby engineering works or shipbuilding yards. More detailed information about industries in the neighbourhood can be seen by looking at Goad’s fire-insurance map of 1894. Even though a park is now where the Woodcock’s house once stood, the London Picture Archive has a photograph of the terrace that features their home.