My great grandparents James Aaron Stocking and Susan Caroline Hill were born in mid-1870s London, around the time Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India. By the time they married on 3 June 1900, the old Queen had been dead for nearly six months. Their early married life played out under two new monarchs. By the time they died, they had lived during the reigns of one Queen and four Kings of England. What were their later lives like, and what family occasions might have coincided with royal ones?

End of an era

Queen Victoria died on 22 January 1900, her state funeral taking place on 2 February. She died at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, so her coffin had to be transported by ship to the mainland, and then on to London by train. From there it was taken to Windsor Castle, where the late Queen was buried next to her husband, Prince Albert, who had died nearly 40 years earlier. James and Susan were at that time close neighbours in Herman Street, Camberwell. I wonder if they – or any of their extended families – joined the crowds in London to see the cortege parade through the streets from Victoria Station, about four miles from Camberwell, to Paddington Station before its final journey to Windsor?

In the year after their wedding at St Philip the Apostle, Avondale Square, Southwark, the 1901 census shows the newly-married James Aaron Stocking and Susan Caroline (formerly Hill) living at 268 St James Road, St George, Camberwell, not far from St James’ Church where Susan was baptised (See OS Map). James is working as a Paper Hanger. They occupy two rooms in the house, alongside Marcus Maskell, Carver and Grill Cook (!), and his family.

My grandfather James Aaron Stocking, would be born on 20 May 1901 at the same address, four months after Queen Victoria’s death, and two months after that year’s census was taken.

The Edwardian era

The new King, Edward VII, started to usher in the short-lived Edwardian age after his coronation in August 1902. James’ parents had their youngest child that October and named him Alexander Edward, perhaps after the new King and Queen. Edward VII was three years into his reign when James and Susan’s second child, Susan Caroline Stocking, named after her mother, was born on 30 January 1904 and baptised at St Philip’s on 24 February that year. By then, the family had moved back to the same road where their families lived, in Herman Road (no 22); James is still described as a Paper Hanger.

I do not have many photos of James and Susan Stocking. These are taken from a much larger family photo of them with his parents and family around 1904, in the middle of Edward VII’s reign.

The new Georgians

By the time of the 1911 census, taken on 2 April 1911, Edward VII has died and his son George V was to be crowned two months later. James and Susan have moved further south out of London to the suburbs of Catford, close to where I grew up. The census form shows that they are living at 16 Beechfield Road, have been married for ten years and have had two children, both still living. James is still working as a Paper Hanger, and the children, my grandfather James (9) and his sister Susan (7) are both at school. They are shown to occupy three rooms in the house, one of a terrace of very large buildings (as can be seen from Google Maps and StreetView). This is one of the first censuses in England where the original householders’ schedules survive; the census form was completed by James, with several crossings-out, ages written in the wrong columns, etc., but in a neat sloping hand.

The couple’s third child, Dolly Hannah Stocking, was born on 5th October 1913 in Catford.

In 1917, the country’s experience of the First World War and rising anti-German sentiment led King George V to change the royal family’s name to Windsor. In 1935, he celebrated his silver jubilee. He died on 20 January 1936, and his son Edward VIII acceded to the throne, abdicating in December that year.

George V: The Royal Family

Electoral rolls show that James and Susan lived at 16 Beechfield Road for the rest of their lives, with other family members either in the same household or adjacent houses 14 and 18. My father recalls visiting relatives there as a young child in the 1930s, including his Uncle John Stocking (actually his great-uncle), who played the piano.

I wonder what they all made of the King’s abdication and subsequent coronation of King George VI?

Death and widowhood

James and Susan Stocking are listed in the 1939 Register, which was taken on 29 September 1939, the information used …

…to produce identity cards and, once rationing was introduced in January 1940, to issue ration books. Information in the Register was also used to administer conscription and the direction of labour, and to monitor and control the movement of the population caused by military mobilisation and mass evacuation.

The National Archives

Also at 16 Beechfield Rd is their married daughter Dolly H Humber and John A and Hannah Stocking. The two redacted records beneath Dolly’s name may be for the records of her two oldest children, Peter and Brian, born in the 1930s. Their daughters Patricia and Jacqueline were born later. James Aaron Stocking is shown as a Builder’s Handyman (Heavy worker). Extra rations were to be given for heavy work. The couple’s eldest daughter, Susan Caroline, married Leonard Elias in 1925; they do not appear to have had any children and are not living with her parents at the time.

James Aaron Stocking died at home in Catford on 22 October 1939, four weeks after the 1939 Register was taken. He was 63 years old. By then, the family had been living at 16 Beechfield Road for around 28 years. His death certificate records his occupation as Builder’s Foreman. His son (my grandfather) James Aaron Stocking of 71 Brightside Road, SE13, registered the death the next day, and is shown as present at the death (see below). James Aaron junior would have been 38 at the time. The cause of death is a heart attack:”1(a) Coronary thrombosis, (b) Arterio sclerosis, certified by B. Rowlands”. He was buried on 27 October 1939 at Hither Green Cemetery.

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In the electoral roll of 1949, Susan Caroline was still living at 16 Beechfield Road with her daughter Dolly and son-in-law Teddy (Alfred Edward) Humber, and brother and sister-in-law John and Hannah Stocking. John Arthur Stocking was my great-grandfather James Aaron’s younger brother, born in 1882, the ‘Uncle John’ my dad remembers from his childhood.

I believe that the older couple in the photo are my James and Susan with – possibly – their daughter Dolly (standing right), and daughter Susan (seated right). The children may be Dolly’s sons Peter and Brian. The other two adults could be John and Hannah Stocking. The photo may have been taken in the summer of 1938 or 1939, not long before James died. However, it does not look like Beechfield Rd, unless it is the back of the house.

Susan Caroline Stocking, died aged 75, on 10th October 1951, also at 16 Beechfield Road. Her death certificate describes her as ‘widow of James Aaron Stocking, a Builder’s Foreman’. Her son, James Aaron Stocking, of 71 Brightside Road, registered her death, as he had done for his father.

Susan also died of heart disease: “Atheroma of coronary arteries, ?cardial fibrosis, degeneration, cardiac failure, certified by WRH Heading?, Coroner for London, Eastern District after postmortem without inquest.” She was buried in the same grave as her husband.

The photo below (enhanced and repaired at MyHeritage and then cropped) shows Susan Caroline in later life, in what looks like a wild garden, park or field, probably in the late 1940s.

A year after her death, King George VI died and his eldest daughter was crowned Elizabeth II in 1953. Until her death in 2022, she was the world’s longest reigning monarch, having been on the throne for 70 years.