When Alice Mary Wales married James Thomas Stocking in November 1874, she was just 17 years old (b1857). They were to become my 2xgreat grandparents, and parents of 19 children, 16 of whom survived beyond infancy. Her youngest son was just five when she died aged 49. Her early life proved difficult to piece together, and I only had one blurred photo of her until October 2025, when another of their descendants shared two more. Read on for what I have been able to find out.

A teenage shotgun wedding

At the time of her marriage, both she and her husband were living near the infamous Leather Market in Bermondsey, full of the smells and sounds of the tanneries at a time when London was reliant on horses for public and private transport. On the marriage certificate she is shown as the daughter of Aaro Wales, a Harness Maker. It seems that the wedding came just in time; 17 year old Alice was very heavily pregnant, and gave birth to their first child, a daughter Alice Caroline, 11 days later.

They went on to have 19 children together; but what of her early life, her parents and family? Had they always lived in London?

Census discrepancies

Alice Mary Wales was initially difficult to find in the 1871 census because of discrepancies in her recorded age at different times. It was her father’s name and occupation which helped to trace the family. The transcripts of the 1871 and 1861 records below show a marked difference in her age, although other family members’ details seem to correspond:

It seems that, while in the 1861 census, Alice’s age is in line with her age at marriage (born around 1857-8), the information recorded in the 1871 census is ‘out’ by six years, as she should be shown as 14. Did the family, or the enumerator, mix up Alice and her sister Emma’s ages?

Was her birth registered?

While civil registration of births, marriages and deaths was introduced in July 1837, some births were not registered until clarification of the law in 1874. I have not been able to find a birth registration for Alice Mary Wales. There is, however, a baptism record at Ancestry at Christ Church, Bermondsey for Alice Mary daughter of Aaron and Catherine Wales. The father is a Harness Maker, and their address is 1 Cottage Row, Locks Fields, Walworth. The baptism took place on 13 September 1857, and there is a helpful note in the margin that she was born on 25 August that year.

Her eldest sister Margaret Emma’s birth in 1850 was also unregistered, but her eldest brother’s, in 1853, was. He was born in the Docking Union district which included the Burnhams, their father’s birthplace, so perhaps he and his wife were visiting his family at the time of the birth. All their other children were born in London, but the next three’s births also went unregistered, only the youngest four being so.

Mapping the family homes in South London

Locks Fields was an area off Kent Road, near the Paragon (now Paragon Gardens), on the edge of Walworth New Town. 100 years before Alice was born, Rocque’s map of London shows the area as open fields, with Kent Street being the only main road. By 1857, the area would have become increasingly built-up with cramped housing for the thousands of people who had come to London to find work, including, perhaps, her father, who was originally from Norfolk. This map of 1861 at MapCo shows how the area had changed.

According to notes made by the social reformer Charles Booth towards the end of the 19^th century, most of the houses in Cottage Row and surrounding streets were being demolished to make way for extensions to the railway and the new Blackwall Tunnel (Charles Booth Archive). What is left of Cottage Row is then described as:

2 st(orey) cottages; forecourts; houses on W. side only.

Charles Booth’s Archive (B/364/Page 81)

In his classification of levels of poverty in Victorian London, Charles Booth classed Cottage Row as ‘light blue’, ie “Poor. 18s. to 21s. a week for a moderate family”.

It seems from census records above that Alice’s father Aaron Wales originally came from Burnham Market in Norfolk, an hour or so’s drive from where I now live. But he had moved to London before he married his Walworth-born wife Catherine in 1849, in Lambeth. The family moved home several times, although staying within a few miles of where Alice Mary was born. When she married as a 17 year old in 1874, her address is given as 2 Smith’s Street, Walworth (which Charles Booth classified as ‘purple’ in poverty terms, ie ‘some comfortable, some poor’). She spent most of her married life in Bermondsey and Camberwell, until her death in 1907.

The two photos below were shared by a descendant of one of their children, Susan Caroline Stocking (I have tried to enhance them in Photoshop/Photoleap as the left hand one in particular was very scratched). They show (left) James Thomas Stocking and Alice Mary, with an unknown baby – possibly one of their youngest children, or a grandchild. On the right is Alice Mary Stocking on her own with an unknown lad; he may be one of their children, although I haven’t been able to identify him. Perhaps he is in the large family photo from c.1904? I wish I could make out what’s written on the note on the door.

Both photos were probably taken in the late 1890s/early 1900s, when Alice was in her mid-late 40s.

An early death

After 32 years of marriage, and giving birth to 19 children in a 28 year period, Alice died at the early age of 49 years.

As her death certificate (above) shows, she died at home – 44 Herman Road, Camberwell – on 27 February 1907. She died of influenza and pneumonia, and her widower James Thomas Stocking registered the death.

She was buried at Camberwell Cemetery on 9 March 1907, oddly gaining an extra middle name in the record, where she is shown as Alice Maud Mary Stocking:

Her widower married again – to her widowed sister Margaret Emma Goodchild, in 1919 … but that’s another story.