The Charles Booth Archive paints a grim picture of the area where my great grandmother Susan Caroline Hill (1875-1951) lived with her family until her marriage in 1900. Her parents were far from rich, and the areas south of the Thames where she grew up were over-crowded, with people living cheek-by-jowl with the expanding railways and the smells and sounds of tanneries and factories. Much of it has since been demolished and it is difficult, walking around, to get a sense of what it might have been like. Perhaps I can find out more?

Growing up in London slums

Susan Caroline Hill was born on 16 December 1875, as shown on her (hard to read) birth certificate. She was born at home at 29 Vauban Street, Bermondsey, London. Her birth was registered by her mother Elizabeth Sarah Hill (formerly Windebank) a month later, on 17 January 1876, in St. Olave Southwark (sub-district of St James). Susan’s mother – my 2xgreat grandmother – could not write, so made her mark in the register. Her father is shown as John Hill, a General Labourer.

As can be seen from a contemporary map from the National Library of Scotland’s collection, Vauban Street was surrounded by tightly packed streets of housing, glue and size works, tanneries and other industry. Charles Booth’s survey of life and work in London in the late 1890s records Vauban Street as:

St: very poor, costers casuals, every door open; ? workers; women rough and dirty, children dirty & boots bad. One little boy of about 6 absolutely naked exc for a pair of boots. faces filthy.

Charles Booth’s Survey

The family was at 29 Vauban Street when Susan was baptised at St James Church, Bermondsey on 12 January 1876. This historic church’s website has a number of old photos and images which give a sense of what it might have been like at the time.

By 3 April 1881, when the census that year was taken, five year old Susan is shown as a ‘scholar’ living with her parents at 94 Blue Anchor Lane, Bermondsey. Her father, John Hill, is described as a ‘Labourer, Bricklayer’ from Elsted, Sussex, while his wife Elizabeth is from ‘Charvey’, Berkshire. The couple have another daughter, Mary, aged 2. Also in the household on census night is Susan’s Aunt Caroline (Windebank), her mother Elizabeth’s sister. Caroline was from Reading in Berkshire, a ‘cuff trimmer (shirt maker)’ aged 27. They share the building with four others: a Margaret Sullivan, formerly a laundress, and her son Patrick, a dock labourer, and two lodgers, Charles Jennet, a Smith’s Labourer, and John Reynolds, a Leather Dresser. It’s possible that the Hills occupied one or two rooms in the house, with the Sullivans and the lodgers in two others.

Blue Anchor Lane does not seem to be much of an improvement on Vauban Street, according to its description from the Charles Booth Archive:

This with adjacent courts mainly occupied by a poor coster class. The cottages on the East side have large garden fronts

Charles Booth’s Survey

Bordered by the arches of the railway, and running parallel to what is now The Old Kent Road (then Kent Street), Google Street view now shows the area dominated by post-war flats, so we do not know how big or small no.94 would have been. In 1857, Mr Peek and Mr Frean opened their biscuit factory in nearby Drummond Road. In 1875, the year Susan was born, they launched the Marie biscuit.

Just a few years earlier, in 1872, a horrific murder took place in Blue Anchor Lane when a local barber slashed his wife’s throat. Black Cab London’s blog has much more of the area’s history and how it looks today, including the Blue Anchor pub (below), built in 1875, which still stands on Southwark Park Road.

The London Picture Archive has images of Blue Anchor Lane from the late 1920s, showing slum housing made mostly of wood.

By the time of the 1891 census, the Hill family has moved house again, further South and West of Blue Anchor Lane, to occupy four rooms at 25 Herman Road, sandwiched between the wharves of the Surrey Canal to the South, and Gasometers to the East, and abutting the Old Kent Road (see map below).

By this time, Susan is aged 15, with parents John Hill (a General Labourer from Elsted, Sussex), Elizabeth from ‘Churvey the Slough’ (!), and four younger siblings aged 6 weeks to nine years. In two more rooms are widowed Rebecca Wilkinson, her 12 year old daughter and six week old son, and two further lodgers. It seems that Susan Caroline Hill was born to parents who moved to South London from their respective homes in Sussex and Berkshire, probably in search of work, ending up in London’s slums, joining the poor labouring classes.

Building a future

Susan Caroline Hill married James Aaron Stocking at St Philip the Apostle Church, Avondale Square, Camberwell, on 3 June 1900. The bride is shown on the marriage certificate as the daughter of John Hill, a Labourer. Both parties signed their names, were single and aged 24, and at the time of the marriage were living at different addresses in Herman Road, Southwark (see extract from their marriage certificate, below).

The groom was working as a Builder, as was his father, James Thomas Stocking. The witnesses were Charlotte Sarah Hill (who I later found to be Susan’s sister), and William Joseph Schofield, the groom’s brother-in-law, and probably his best man.

The marriage was solemnized by the relatively new curate of St Philips, the Reverend Benjamin Hinchcliffe, appointed at the beginning of 1900. The Parish Magazine of February that year (included in a notebook at Charles Booth’s London), welcomes him to the parish, noting that a grant of £100 is available for his stipend, but a further £60 has to be raised. The Vicar of St Philips, Dr Leary, is described in the notebook as a very thin, bent old man, unable to do much in the parish (BOOTH/B/281).