After the birth of five sons, one of whom had died, my 2xgreat grandparents Jesse and Harriet Ephgrave must have been pleased at the birth of a healthy daughter. Clara spent at least a decade working as a domestic servant for a small family involved in the hat business in Luton. She married in her early 30s and made her home for many years in the same house in Luton. Her life seems to have been quiet and steady; is there anything more to find out?

Route to domestic service

Clara was born on 15 August 1880, probably at Albert Street, St Albans, where she is enumerated with her parents Jesse Ephgrave and Harriet (nee Scrivener) in the 1881 census. Her parents had 13 children in all, although only nine survived infancy. She later moved with her family to her father’s home village of Redbourn, where he was a baker, and is listed with the rest of the family on the High Street there in 1891. Aged ten, she would still have been at school, although I haven’t located any school records that mention her. Newspaper articles indicate that Jesse was fined several times for not sending his children to school.

By the 1901 census, aged 21, she is working as a general servant for William Humphrey, a hat tip and lining manufacturer at 115 Wellington Street, Luton. This was a small household, with just Mr and Mrs Humphrey to care for. Almost everyone else in neighbouring houses worked in the hat industry in some form. It seems that the situation suited all parties, as Clara was still working for the couple, by then in their 70s, at the same address at the time of the 1911 census. The latter record shows that they occupied five rooms.

The Lloyd George Domesday Survey at The Genealogist shows that the property at 115 Wellington Street was a ‘house and shop’, owned and occupied by William Humphrey. The description is somewhat unexpected, given Mr Humphrey’s occupation, although the survey may have been taken 2-3 years later:

Extract from Lloyd George Domesday Survey (The Genealogist: Ref lr58_52086_0297, plot 9974)

It is a printers shop & works, a corner property in poor order, three [rooms] upstairs and an attic, shop and two [rooms] downstairs. There’s a wash house, small covered yard and a two storey, two up two down building at the end of the garden with side door into Dumfries Street, with gate. The five rooms of the main house match those mentioned in the 1911 census. Google Street View of Wellington Street today shows a somewhat sad-looking property on the corner with Dumfries Street. The numbers may have changed as this is shown as 111.

Two years later, in 1913, Clara married Scot Allan Lamb in the St Albans district. She was 32 years old, a fairly late marriage. Her husband, from Kilsyth in Stirlingshire, was five years younger. They do not appear to have had any children. He may have served in WW1, but I haven’t been able to verify any military records for him. The couple seem to have settled at 32 Ferndale Road, Luton, from at least 1919, and appear to have made their home there over several decades. In 1926, Clara registered the death of her father, giving her address as 32 Ferndale Road. The 1939 Register shows her and Allan there, he employed as a metal pattern filer for the Davis Gas Stove Co., Waller Road, Luton (an occupation he also had at the time of the 1921 census). According to Graces Guide, the company was established in 1875 and specialised in “gas and steam cooking appliances”.

Clara died in the last quarter of 1941 at a relatively young age of 61. Her widower remarried four years later, his bride named Martha L Scrivener. I haven’t researched her background to see if she is related to Clara’s mother Harriet Scrivener’s family, although at the time of the 1939 Register, she appears to be the wife of a William A Ephgrave, born in 1900.

Clara’s life does indeed seem to have been fairly uneventful, at least as far as documentary evidence goes, but she lived through WW1 and most of WWII, saw significant changes in Luton’s industry and suffered the loss of several siblings in her childhood. I’m sure there could be more to know, if only she could tell.