My 2xgreat grand uncle Richard Daniel Stocking was born in 1857 and worked for a Tripe Dresser in Bermondsey. He married in 1880, but by 1895, he had been widowed. He lived until at least his 80s. Sadly, the same cannot be said of his children: of the eight born between 1880-1894, six had died by 1911, most in early childhood. Only two survived to live to old age, a son and a daughter.

Childhood and marriage

Richard was the second son and fourth child of my 3xgreat grandparents James Stocking and his wife Mary Ann Collins. His was baptised at St Mary Newington on 13 September 1857, his birth date – Aug 21 1857 – helpfully added to the baptism record (below).

The family was living at Chatham Place, Newington, on the edge of Hackney, his father James working as a Labourer. By the time of the 1861 census, the family has moved to 26 John Street, Southwark, a property they share with a Leather Dresser and his family. Richard is four years old and has three older siblings: Mary Ann (10), my 2xgreat grandfather James (8) and sister Caroline (6 1/2). The two youngest children are Robert (2) and Frederick, aged just two months. Five more children were born in the next ten years; by 1871, Richard is fourteen years old, but has no recorded occupation on the census of that year. He next appears in official records when he marries Martha Maria Goodman.

They married after the calling of banns on 22 March 1880 at St John the Evangelist, Walworth. Both are described as single, of full age, and of 12 Barlow Street. a ten-minute walk from the Church. While Martha signs the Register, Richard makes his mark.

Two years of marriage, two children lost

It seems that the couple did no quite make it to the church in time for their first child to be born in wedlock. In the 1881 census, just over a year later, they have a one year old daughter – Martha J – living with them at 26 Thomas Street, Walworth. I can find no birth registration for a Martha J Stocking at the GRO, but a Martha Jane Goodman‘s birth (with no mother’s maiden name) was registered in the Jan-Mar 1880 quarter at St Saviour, so it is likely that she was born just before they married. Sadly, she appears to have died the following year, as there is a GRO death index entry for a Martha Jane Goodman, aged two years, at St Saviour in the Jan-Mar quarter of 1882. Although she is shown with Richard’s surname in the 1881 census, both her birth and death show her mother’s maiden name. I have not ordered any of the relevant certificates, so cannot be certain that this is the right child. In any case, by the 1891 census, Martha has disappeared from the family household.

A search of the GRO birth index for other children with the surname Stocking, mother’s maiden name Goodman, reveal that another child was born and died within the first two years of their marriage: a son, Samuel Stocking, appears in both the birth and death indexes in the first quarter of 1881, before the census of that year.

More births and deaths

Already touched by the deaths of their children, Richard and Martha were mourning the loss of Richard’s father in October 1883 when their second daughter, Mary Ann Alice Stocking, was born on 19 October that year. She was baptised at St Mark’s, Cobourg Square, Camberwell, on 9 November 1883. She died aged six years in October 1889.

Richard and Martha had had at least three more children by the time of the 1891 census, and they appear with their parents at 32 Riley Street, Bermondsey: Florence Stocking (born 1886); Daisy Stocking (1888) and Richard William Stocking (1890). On 13 October 1891, Florence and Daisy are listed in the Webb Street School admission register (Ancestry.co.uk): father’s name Richard Stocking, address 4 Alice Street. Against Daisy’s name are the words ‘Too young, not yet three years old’.

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Webb Street School was, as the name suggests, on Webb Street, end-on to Tower Bridge Road; it now houses Grange Primary School. Bermondsey Boy’s website has some photos and memories from former pupils. The image below is from 1894, and shows children at Orange Street School in Southwark; the Stocking children’s class would probably have looked very similar.

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Son Richard died in late June 1892, and was buried, aged just two years old, on 4 July that year. Less than a month later, another daughter, Louisa Elizabeth Stocking, was born on 19 August 1892, and was baptised at St Mary Magdalene, Bermondsey, on 4 September. The family was still living at 4 Alice Street at the time.

Horace George Thomas Stocking, the youngest of their eight children, was born in 1894, his birth registered in the July-September quarter of that year. By the time Horace was one year old, the family had lost four of their eight children. Death then struck another blow, with the loss of their mother: Martha Stocking died in August 1895, aged 36, and was buried in Newham Cemetery.

Richard Daniel Stocking was left with their four surviving children, Florence (9), Daisy (6), Louisa (3) and Horace (1), to bring up alone. On 26 August 1895, around the time their mother died, Florence, Daisy and Louisa were all enrolled at Webb Street Infants School in Southwark. Louisa and Daisy are said to be living at 3 Marigold Court, while Florence is at 12 Hargrave Square. Had the family been split up? Whoever gave the children’s birth dates for the register got them wrong:

Hargeave Square was the home of the children’s uncle, Frederick James Stocking, his wife Rose and their (by then) six children. Marigold Court was where another uncle, George Thomas Stocking lived with his own growing family. It seems that widower Richard Daniel Stocking was unable to care for the children alone, and they had been taken in by his brothers to live with their cousins.

Daisy followed her mother to her grave aged just seven, and was buried in the same cemetery on 19 September 1896.

Later lives

I have been able to find no further trace of Florence Stocking, born 19 July 1886. She does not appear with her uncle Frederick in the 1901 census (or elsewhere), but I have not found an obvious death/burial nor marriage record for her. However, Louisa and Horace are still living with their uncle George Thomas Stocking and his family of ten children in 1901, but I have found no trace of their father in that year’s census.

By 1911, he and his surviving children Louisa and Horace have been reunited. They are sharing three rooms at 7 Bermondsey Buildings, Tower Bridge Road. He is working as a General Labourer for a Tripe Dresser, Louisa is 19 but has no occupation, and Horace is a Biscuit Packer. We have to conclude that, as Richard says that six of his eight children have died, Florence is one of them.

Two weeks after the 1911 census was taken, Louisa Elizabeth Stocking married 22 year old Leather Dresser Henry John Stonestreet at St Mary Magdalen, Bermondsey. Her father makes his mark on the Register as a witness to the marriage.

He seems finally to have settled in one place, as he is still shown living at 7 Bermondsey Buildings on his son Horace’s WW1 attestation papers when he signed up with the 12th Battalion East Surrey Regiment on 11 October 1915. Horace George Thomas Stocking’s army career was short-lived: he is described as ‘struck off the strength as a deserter’ on 23 December 1915.

Richard is listed in electoral registers at the same address in subsequent years and is still there at the time of the 1921 census. He is described as a Cold Stores Labourer for a Glue and Size Manufacturer on Tower Bridge Road. Son Horace has managed to find his way home after his desertion from the Army, and is with his father on census night, working as a Leather Shaver for Barrow Hepburn, Leather Manufacturers of Royal Oak, Bermondsey Street. He states that he is married, although no wife is listed.

Louisa Elizabeth Stocking’s husband also worked for a Leather Manufacturers – Oastler & Palmer of Willow Street. By 1921, they are living at nearby Decima Street and have a nine-year old daughter, Louisa Martha Caroline Stonestreet. She died not long afterwards, aged 10, in the first quarter of 1922. Richard Daniel Stocking was still registered to vote at 7 Bermondsey Buildings in 1931, but by 1938, he is listed at 3 Keyse Road with his daughter and son-in-law. It is possible that he had become ill or infirm – he was about 81 – and had moved in with his daughter. His death was registered in the Jul-Sep quarter of 1938. A year later, in the 1939 Register, Louisa and her husband (a Stoker in a Food Factory) are at 5 Cadbury Road, Bermondsey. His record, however, has been over-written with the name Charles Henry Stonestreet rather than Henry John. A Henry John Stonestreet served in the Royal Engineers in WW1 and is recorded as having died in 1927. His address is shown as 40 Decima Street, the same road the couple were living in in 1921. Curious. A Charles Henry Stonestreet died in Southwark in 1965. Louisa Elizabeth Stonestreet died in Lewisham – where many of her aunts and uncles and cousins had settled – in the second quarter of 1971.

But what happened to Horace? The GRO has a marriage index record for Horace George Thomas Stocking and Mabel Maud Beck in the Oct-Dec quarter of 1919. They married at Walsingham in Norfolk; perhaps he had moved there after he deserted. However, he was still registered to vote at 7 Bermondsey Buildings on the electoral registers of 1919 and 1920. Their only child, a son, Gerald Walter Hugh Stocking was born in Walsingham on 28 November 1923. In 1935, Horace and Mabel are registered to vote at 22 Willow Street, Bermondsey. In the 1939 Register, they are at 22 Curtis Road, Bermondsey; he is still working as a Leather Shaver (Heavy) and Mabel is an Office Cleaner. Son Gerald is not at home; he is back in Norfolk, aged 16, living with his maternal grandparents in Little Walsingham. By the age of 21, he was listed as a Flight Sergent in the Royal Air Force Reserve (London Gazette) and married Jean Rix Groom in Walsingham in 1948. He died in 2007 in Norfolk.

The changing face of London and the lives of the poor

Richard Daniel Stocking was not the only one of my 2xgreat grand uncles and aunts to suffer the deaths of many of their children. The area of London where they all lived – Bermondsey, Southwark, Walworth, Newington – South of the River Thames was over-crowded and housing conditions were often insanitary, with many families sharing the same buildings and facilities (if any), crowded together in small numbers of rooms and offering a prime breeding ground for contagious and infectious diseases. Access to medical care would have been minimal. Without seeing their death certificates, I cannot know if the children’s short lives could be attributed to such conditions or simply the poor health and diet of their mother. Charles Booth’s Inquiry into Life and Labour in London, 1886-1903 gives some insight into the streets where the Stockings lived, many of which he described as ‘Coster Streets’, where itinerant hawkers and other sellers of foodstuffs, clothes and other goods lived (but plied their trades elsewhere).

Richard and Martha lived at at least seven different addresses in their 15 years of marriage (according to the censuses and baptism records of their children) all in the tightly-packed streets between the Old Kent Road to the East, Bermondsey New Road/Tower Bridge Road to the West and the docks and wharves of the Thames to the North. The area underwent significant change throughout the Victorian period, and particularly in the second half of the 20th century. Tower Bridge itself was opened in 1894, just round the corner from the children’s school at Webb Street and their later home in Bermondsey Buildings.

7 Bermondsey Buildings was, like others on Tower Bridge Road, a two-three storey house of multiple occupancy with rooms to let. The Stocking family shared it with a Wharf Labourer and his grown-up children, and widow Eliza White, ‘of private means’.