From the family home in Tunstall to renting in London

Is this a Bately, Crowe, Boult, Skinner or even Joyce picture? I don't know. It would fit in with Joe Joyce's uncle Frederick and two of his sisters, Cecilia and Emily, perhaps, who lived  at Burgh Castle. They are all there in the 1891 census, where he is most careful to point out he was a customs official in London and well and truly retired living in Norfolk. Or it could be a Neave, Page or Allard household.


What split the family up and forced them to leave Tunstall? The answers are in tantalising clues in those letters which Jane Betsy's daughter, Emma Jane, kept.
   Grandma Harriet Crow Bately, the one who I guess made Jane Betsy's son Harry a favourite, and was on the move in James Charles's 1870 letter to Harry, died at St George's Road Yarmouth in January 1876. The same year Harry married Emma Fill and his first daughter Gertrude Emma is born. 
    In 1880 Jane Betsy's sister, Charlotte Allard died in Park Lane Heigham. Her widower Francis Allard married again a few years later. Her brother in law, Alfred Neave sorts out Charlotte's probate.
   In 1881 Jane Betsy is still living at 1 Albion Terrace, Heigham Road, Norwich, with daughters Emma Jane, Mary Ann, who has married Frank Stebbings by then and Rosa May. Laura is working for a mourning warehouse. When I looked up the address it is Jarrolds today. Although it doesn't say so on the census, Emma Jane used to work at Jarrolds in Norwich as well.
   Jane Betsy's daughter Laura married Job Sharpe, ironmonger In 1882, and they moved to Gloucester to run their business there. The Stebbings move to Lowestoft and run a bookshop and stationers together.
   Emma Jane married Joe Joyce, 1883, and they move to Stoke Newington.
   By 1891 Emma Jane has two small children, May Gertrude, 6 and Alfred 4. She and Joe are renting 81 Aden Grove, Stoke Newington and taking in a boarder to help with the household expenses.
   In 1891 Jane Betsy is a visitor in Lowestoft with her daughter Mary Ann (Polly) and Frank Stebbings living over their bookshop and stationers.
   Early in 1893 Jane Betsy makes a new will. No doubt impressed with Alfred Neave's handling of her late sister Charlotte's estate, she appoints him as sole executor and uses a Yarmouth firm of solicitors to draft it for her. It is signed and witnessed by Edward James Coffee, the neighbour, who lives at 79 Aden Grove and Frederic Rigden of the Bethnal Green Workhouse, whose relative, Percy Rigden is a boarder at number 81.
   There is a letter from the Yarmouth solicitors which advises against a codicil and takes Mr Huke's name out of the will. In one of the letters Emma Jane kept, from Georgie Lesbini, she is incredulous because she has heard Mr Huke was intending to marry Ann Boult. It indicates Jane Betsy has developed a distrust of the Wickhampton and Moulton St Mary side of the family, (Crows and Boults) in favour of the Yarmouth relatives (Skinners). The omission of Sherwood Page as a trustee may be because after her older sister Harriet Virtue Page died in 1856, the widower, Sherwood William Page married her younger sister Louisa Crow Bately in secret in London, although they always insisted she was still his sister in law. I have descendants of the Page family to thank for that piece of information. Sherwood William died in 1894 and his will is dealt with by G.F.D.Preston. This is the same man, who, a few months later, tries to help Jane Betsy's nephew Stephen Bately Skinner with his problems at Corporation Farm at Thrigby. Preston advises them to turn to Mr Rising for advice.
   By 1901 my direct ancestors are still at 81 Aden Grove. Joe is a gelatine warehouseman, Emma Jane is looking after her boarders, Percy Rigden, a mercantile clerk and her nephew from Lowestoft A. F. Bately Stebbings, also a mercantile clerk. Jane Betsy's granddaughter May Gertrude is a telephone operator and her grandson, Alfred, is an assistant in a warehouse (Probably fish, but I can't read it). Not to be outdone, by the rest of the family who are all helping to pay the rent, Jane Betsy makes sure the census clerk knows that she is busy with 'Home Duties'. It may be significant she is not listed as having private means or as an annuitant.   Below is a picture of Emma Jane and Joe Joyce taking a bit of time off from work. Emma Jane is always standing up in the pictures, outside the farmhouse in Tunstall and here, with her husband Joe. It's because she is not very tall. My guess is she was under five foot in height.
   

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Barbara Critchley said…
I realise I had thought in terms of great grandmother Emma Jane buying the house where she and her family lived in Stoke Newington and also renting it. It could have been expensive living in London, which would explain why she took in lodgers, and the rest of the family all went out to work. There have been some interesting facts illuminated by my research. I lived, for the early years of my life with May Gertrude, my grandmother. In spite of this, her long hours working at London's first international telephone exchange was a complete revelation to me. My aunt mentioned that May Gertrude had been a telephone receptionist and was delighted when a friend sang the musical hall number "Kitty the Telephone Girl" for her at at concert. in the 1980s. My aunt also mentioned Emma Jane's employment at Jarrolds, when she was living in Norwich. My mother said she read "Pip Squeak and Wilfred" in Emma Jane's Daily Mirror and liked the coral ring supposedly given to Emma Jane by her sailor who died at sea. My favourite description from my mother is of Emma Jane holding up her umbrella in Stoke Newington High Street to stop the traffic when she wanted to cross the road. Neither my aunt, nor my mother, mentioned anything about Norfolk horses. Although the Fabb family, which whom they stayed for holidays, had bought horses bred by the Skinners at auction in 1883 it was a detail they had either forgotten or they never knew about. Except for Emma Jane, all my mother's antecedents on both her mother and father's sides were from London, going back at least to the 17th century or earlier.
September 6, 2023 at 3:27 AM
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