The BIG question
What happened to my 3x great grandfather who disappeared?
Kathryn Bennett’s forebear was widowed in 1854 – what became of his family?
QI am trying to find my 3x great grandfather Henry Roberts Clark, born in 1821 in Southwark, and his children. He married Elizabeth Smith Pittard in December 1841 and they had Alice Clark Pittard in 1841, followed by Henry Roberts Clark (1843), Jessy Elizabeth (1846), Catherine Emma (1848), Alfred Percival (1850) and Walter Percival (1852). I’ve found the family in Bermondsey in the 1851 census, and know that Elizabeth died in 1854, but what happened to the widowed Henry and his children after this? Kathryn Bennett, by email
AOn Ancestry, I found two workhouse records relating to Alfred Percival Clark: admission and discharge records for St George’s Workhouse, Mint Street, Southwark. Alfred was admitted on Saturday 12 December 1857, aged six, and discharged on the following Tuesday to “Mitcham School”. A note on his admission record states: “Orphan. Passed from Milton next Gravesend. Brother at Mr Hedginton’s, 17 Smithfield Bars, City.”
In the mid-19th century, ‘orphan’ could mean a child who had lost one of his parents, but not necessarily both. Milton was a workhouse near Gravesend in Kent, where another relative may have lived. Thomas Edgington (possibly an alternative spelling of Hedginton?) had a company selling marquees, tents, and so on, according to various adverts in Findmypast’s newspaper collection.
The ‘brother’ would seem to be Henry junior. In the 1861 census, there is no sign of him at 17 Smithfield Bars (using the address search on Findmypast). There is a Henry Clark at number 11, though, who is 17 (the right age), an errand boy, and was born in Great Dover Street, which is in Southwark.
You can read a description of Mint Street Workhouse (published in 1865 in the medical journal The Lancet) and view a photo of it taken around 1910 on Peter Higginbottom’s website
workhouses.org.uk/ Southwark. On the same page is a photo of Mitcham Industrial School, built in 1856, which was associated with Mint Street.
The index of civil registration deaths recently made available via the General Register Office ( www.gro.gov.uk/gro/ content/certificates) proved helpful in locating the probable death of Henry Clark senior. The index gives the age at death right back to 1837, and lists a Henry Clark whose death was registered in the district of St Olave, Southwark, in the March quarter of 1859, aged 37. This Henry could be your 3x great grandfather, which would explain why he doesn’t appear on any of the later censuses. The same applies to Alfred, who may be the Alfred Clark whose death (aged seven) was registered in the West London registration district in the March quarter of 1858.
I found two possible census records for Alice Clark: an 18-year-old servant from Walworth living in Lower Tulse Hill in 1861, and a 29-year-old servant from St George’s lodging at 42 College Place, St Pancras, in 1871. Using the marriage search on Findmypast, I found the marriage of an Alice Clarke and James Phillips in the June quarter of 1878 in the Pancras registration district. The trail then goes cold in 1881 and following censuses.
Possible census entries for some of Alice’s siblings include two for Jessy (or Jessie) Clark in 1861: a servant aged 16 from Surrey, living at 14 Tottenham Grove in West Hackney, and a 17-year-old servant at 3 Tamlain Terrace in Camberwell, place of birth unknown. In 1871, Walter P Clark, an 18-year-old clerk from London, was a visitor in a hotel in Southampton, while another Walter P Clark, a 19-year-old painter also from London, was living in a lodging house in Finsbury. I could find no sign of Catherine at all.
You may wish to look for the Clark children with Henry senior and Elizabeth’s siblings, although many of them also seem to disappear. Elizabeth’s sister Olivia (who married Frederick Coates in 1847) is in the 1851 census with her husband and two young children. By 1861, however, her daughter Clara is alone as a ten-year-old servant at 19 Bolton Terrace, Newington.
In the 1850s and 1860s, there were a number of serious cholera outbreaks, of which Elizabeth died in 1854, according to a death notice in The Era. It may be that other members of the Clark and Pittard families died in these epidemics too. Alan Stewart
In the mid-19th century, ‘orphan’ could mean a child who had lost one of his parents, but not necessarily both