After their marriage in 1849 in Waterloo, South London, Aaron and Catherine Wales lived out their lives in Bermondsey and Southwark, close to the Leather Market South of the Thames. They raised nine children there, including my 2xgreat grandmother Alice Mary Wales. Aaron was originally from rural Norfolk, but married a girl from Newington. Were they a close-knit family? Did they stay in London or move elsewhere? What happened to their children?

Married life

My 3xgreat grandfather Aaron Wales (1827-1907) moved to London sometime between 1841, when he was enumerated, aged 14, as a Norfolk lad with his parents in Burnham Market near the North Norfolk coast, and November 1849, when he married Catherine Alice Stoney.

He was a Saddler and Harness Maker, and they set up home close to Bermondsey’s Leather Market, at 13 Perseverance Street (1851) and later 2 Cottage Row, Newington (1861) and 3 Northampton Street, Southwark (1871). In 1874, he was jailed for embezzling funds from a Friendly Society of which he was a Trustee. After his release, and by 1881, they have moved to Herman Road (later known as Bowles Road), where my 2xgreat grandfather’s Stocking family, and several of their adult children, had also made their homes. Aaron and Catherine remained there until their deaths, nine months apart: he died on 19 February 1907 aged 80, of senile decay, while Catherine died on 18 November 1907 aged 78, of ‘cerebral softening’ – both likely to be a form of dementia. In both cases, their married daughter ‘E. Lancaster’ registered the deaths.

The Wales children:

Their first child was Margaret Emma Wales, born on 15 November 1850, baptised a fortnight later at Christ Church, Bermondsey, and probably named after Aaron’s mother. Aged 19, she married Thomas William Goodchild (1846-1885), a Carman from Clapham. They had eight children, the youngest, James Frederick Goodchild, born the year before his father died. Margaret was just 35. She remained a widow, bringing up the children, until 1919, when she married her sister’s widower (and my 2xgreat grandfather) James Thomas Stocking.

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It seems that Aaron and Catherine were visiting his parents in Burnham Market when their second child was born. A boy, named for both their fathers, was baptised Aaron William Wales at Burnham Sutton and Ulph on 17 April 1853, son of Aaron and Catherine of Bermondsey, London. On 11 July 1874, he married Elizabeth Docker at St John the Evangelist, Walworth. His father was tried for embezzlement three days later. Aaron junior worked as a Carman, an occupation that ultimately led to his early death. Phil Stevens, the husband of my 3rd cousin x1 removed, found:

Aaron worked for Pickford & Co. On 8 June 1875 he was driving over London Bridge, standing on the shaft; he fell and the van passed over him. He died the following morning in hospital from a fractured skull. His Death certificate reports that a Coroner’s inquest held 18 June 1875 found he died from a fractured skull after falling from a van on London Bridge. The City Press of Saturday 12 June 1875 reported that the inquest was on 11 June and the accident on 8 June 1875.

Notes from Phil Stevens’ family research

FindMyPast only has articles from the London City Press up until 1871 and I have not found the accident reported elsewhere. It must have been a significant blow to the family.

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As was traditional for the Waleses, their second son was called Benjamin Wales (1855-1918). He was a Carman like his older brother, but fortunately did not meet the same fate. He married Mariner’s daughter Lavinia England at St George the Martyr on 19 October 1874, not long after his father was sent to prison. Their first child – Aaron William Wales – was born on 18 July 1875, just over a month after his brother’s death. Their second son was Benjamin Wales, born in 1877. They raised ten children between 1875 and 1894. In censuses and childrens’ baptism records up until 1901, he is described as a Carman, but by the 1901 census he is working as a Railway Market Goods Foreman. By 1911, his wife had died, but it seems he had a sense of humour. His address is given as ‘Buck House’ (the colloquial name for Royal residence Buckingham Palace); the census form shows this was actually no.9 Ossory Road, off the Old Kent Road.

The family survived WW1, but their son Frederick Henry Wales, b.1881, died suddenly aged 36 in 1917. He was a munitions worker, and newspaper reports of the inquest on his death say that his heart was three times the normal weight, the cause of death ‘rupture of the heart’. Benjamin Wales died a year later, in October 1918.

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Their fourth child was Alice Mary Wales (1857-1907), my 2xgreat grandmother, who married aged 17, had 19 children, and died before the age of 50. Their fifth child was another daughter, Emma Rebecca Wales (1860-1915). Aged 21 at the time of the 1881 census, she is still living at home with her parents at Bowles Road, working as a Fur Sewer. Two years later, on 7 October 1883, she married John William Sergeant, a Leather Dresser, at All Saints, Newington. The 1911 census shows they had been married for 28 years and had had six children, one of whom had died by then. Emma died at the relatively young age of 55, in 1915.

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William John Wales was born on 15 August 1862. In the 1901 census, he is living at 43 Bowles Road with his elderly parents, working as a Harness Maker like his father. In the same household is his married sister Elizabeth and her husband Henry Lancaster. Next door is his older sister Alice’s family, headed by my 2xgreat grandfather James Thomas Stocking. Ten and 20 years later, he is still at the same address with Henry and Elizabeth; he did not marry and continued working as a Harness Maker. He died shortly before the outbreak of WW2, on 22 November 1938, at the same address. Probate of his modest estate was granted to his brother-in-law Henry.

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Henry Thomas Wales (1864-1926) also followed the family tradition of harness making. On 25 April 1886, he married Agnes Margaret Dellow, the daughter of an Engineer, at St Stephen’s, Walworth. Interestingly, it seems no-one noticed that his father’s name on the marriage register was recorded as ADAM Wales, Harness Maker. His brother Benjamin Wales and his sister Elizabeth Wales were witnesses.

The couple had eight children according to the 1911 census, (five boys, three girls). The eldest three were born in South London (their first son, Henry, dying in infancy), but by the 1891 census, the family has moved to Walsall, Staffordshire, where they lived for the rest of their lives. Sadly, their fourth child, Alfred, was born and died towards the end of 1891. Henry continued working as a Harness Maker, his daughter Jeannette Margaret Wales (1890-1933) working in the same trade, as a Harness Machinist (1911 census). In the 1921 census, he gives his employer’s name as John Leckie & Co., Goodall Street, Walsall, Leather Goods Manufacturers. The Story of Walsall website describes the evolution of leather working in the area, including many adverts from manufacturers. Of John Leckie & Co, they say:

John Leckie & Company made saddles and leather goods at London Saddlery Works in Goodall Street.
The firm also had London showrooms at  84 Fore Street. Products included saddles and harness, fancy leather goods, bags, cases, waist belts, leggings, leather scout and girl guide equipment, and footballs, which were sold at home and abroad.

The Story of Walsall website.

I had no idea that Walsall was one of the foremost centres for leather goods in the country after WW1; clearly it was an ideal place for Henry to move his family in search of work, and Leckie & Co appear to have been a prominent and successful employer. He died on 20 April 1926, probate granted to his widow.

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Their youngest daughter was Elizabeth Bridgetina Wales, who was born in 1868. 20 years later, her sister Alice would give one of her own daughters the same first names. Before her marriage, on 2 June 1895 to Printer Henry John Lancaster, she made her living as a Needlewoman. She and her husband lived out their lives at Herman/Bowles Road, between her own parents and her sister Alice’s Stocking clan and, later, with her unmarried brother William. They only had one child of their own, a son, Henry Alfred Lancaster, born in 1905. Henry was his father’s name, but that and Alfred were also the names of her two older brothers who died in infancy. She was widowed in 1925, and some between then and the outbreak of WW2, she moved to live with her son, by then an Aircraft Fitter, and his family at 19 Monkleigh Road, Merton, Surrey. She died in the same area in 1955 and perhaps spent the last years of her life with her son.

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Archibald David Wales was their youngest son – and again, his much older sister Alice called her own son by the same first names (by then she had had 13 children so was perhaps running out of inspiration). He was born in the Summer of 1872 in London, and in 1891 was at home and working as a Harness Maker, but by 1895 he had followed his brother to Staffordshire. He married Martha Lockley at St Paul’s, Walsall, on 14 April 1895. By 1901 they are living at Warwick Street, Walsall, his occupation shown as Leather Bridle Cutter. Their neighbours are almost all working in the leather trade, as Cutters, Curriers and Saddlers. It seems that the beginning of the 20th century was a time of civic improvements, building work and population increase in Walsall. A new town hall and a theatre were built, and the first cinema opened in 1908. Poverty in some areas was still rife, and child health and schooling were major concerns. Archie and Martha had five daughters and one son between 1897 and 1908 and perhaps those concerns affected them too. By the time their youngest, Irene Wales, was born in 1908, they had moved North to Birmingham.

They are in Birmingham at the time of the 1911 census; Archibald is still working as a Bridle Maker. Their daughters are all at home, but there is no sign of son Archibald Wales, born in 1901. I found him as a nine-year old (born Walsall, Staffs) and a patient at the Moseley Hall Convalescent Hospital for children in Birmingham. Wikipedia has a short article about the history of the Hall, its use as a children’s hospital and its current use within the NHS.

Whatever was wrong with young Archie, he recovered. In the 1921 census, he is at home in Birmingham with his parents and sisters, working as a Hub Turner (whatever that is). Their father is a Harness Maker for D Mason & Co., Leather Goods Manufacturers, his older sisters a Gold Polisher and Lady Clerks (and the youngest, Irene, still at school). He is still living with his parents (and his wife Patricia) at the time the 1939 Register was taken. His father has an intriguing occupation: ‘Leather and Canvas cutter for motor muffs’. Motoring must by now have largely overtaken traditional horse-power, so he has turned from making bridles to motoring gloves. Archibald Wales senior died in Birmingham on 26 January 1952, probate granted to his son-in-law James Britton, a Post Officer Supervisor. Martha predeceased him in 1941.

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The Waleses were clearly a tight-knit family, living and working closely together in London, with two of their sons taking their harness making skills to other major leather working areas in the Midlands. The Waleses were clearly also close to the Stocking family, and naming patterns passed down through the Wales line filtered through to the Stockings after Alice Mary Wales married James Thomas Stocking.