My 2xgreat grandparents had a total of 19 children. Richard Henry was their 12th child and one of three to die young. His life was cut short when he was just 14; the family was very close and his death would have had a big impact. Here is what little I know of him, and his two sisters who died as babies.

Family life in London

When Richard Henry Stocking was baptised St Mark’s Camberwell on 19 October 1890, his family home was 44 Bowles Road and his father was working as a Labourer. He had been born on 30 September that year, according to a note on the baptism record.

Extract from St Mark’s Camberwell parish register (Ancestry)

He was the 12th child of a total of 19 born to my 2xgreat grandparents James Thomas Stocking and Alice Mary Wales.

Like most of his siblings, he attended Rolls Road School. The admission book from Ancestry (below) shows the family address as 44 Herman Road, and his date of birth as 30 September 1890. He was admitted to the school on 1 July 1898, and was still at school at the time of the 1901 census.

Extract from Rolls Road Admission books (Ancestry)

The large family photo taken around May 1904 could show Richard shortly before his death a few months later. He would have been 13 years old. Could this be him? Or is this boy much younger? There are no others in the photo who look to be in their early teens, but perhaps he was already unwell, and did not attend his young nephew’s christening.

Richard died in St Thomas Hospital in London, described on his death certificate (extract below) as the son of James Thomas Stocking General Labourer of Old Kent Road. The cause of death is septic arthritis of the right elbow joint, pyaemia abcess of lung. His father, of 44 Herman Road, was present at the death.

Extract from death certificate for Richard Henry Stocking (GRO)

His father, James Thomas Stocking, makes his mark in the register, as he couldn’t write. He was present at the death, so had probably been at his son’s bedside, perhaps with other members of the family.

He was buried on 15 August 1904 at Camberwell Old cemetery, Southwark.

The loss of two baby sisters

A year before Richard Henry Stocking was born, his mother gave birth to her 11th child, a daughter named later as Mary Alice Stocking. For me, she was ‘the missing child‘, one of the three their father recorded as having died when he completed the 1911 census form. She was born and died on the same day of Asthenia, or general debility, and seems to have been the only one of 19 born in a hospital rather than at home.

The third of the 19 children to die young was another girl, Mary Ann Susan Stocking. Her birth was registered (as Mary Ann S) in the Apr-Jun quarter of 1895, her parents’ 15th child. I haven’t found a baptism record for her. Her life was cut short when she was nine months old. She died at home on 11 January 1896 of convulsions caused by Measles, which she had had for 24 hours.

Extract from digital image of death record of Mary Ann Stocking (GRO)