My great great uncle George was one of several in his family to leave rural Hertfordshire for a life in London. There he worked, like his brothers Frederick and William, for a large dairy company. He became an electrical engineer involved in milk sterilization. He and his wife had two daughters. He died at the young age of 50. What was the transition from countryside to city like for him?

Rural childhood in Redbourn

George was the ninth of my 2xgreat grandparents’ 13 children. His father, Jesse Ephgrave, was a master baker, his mother, born Harriet Scrivener, a straw hat sewer. George was born in the first quarter of 1885 in St Albans. The previous year, his parents had lost their seven month old daughter, his father had suffered financial losses and had been summonsed by his brother Eli (a baker of Redbourn) for assault. By 1891, when George was six years old, his uncle Eli had moved away, and George’s father brought his family back to his home village of Redbourn, a few miles from St Albans. They lived on the High Street, the bustling centre of the village.

By the time he was 16, in 1901, George was working as a straw binder’s labourer, living at home with his parents. St Albans and Luton in neighbouring Bedfordshire were major centres of the straw hat trade throughout the 18th-19th centuries, although the industry began to decline in the first quarter of the 20th. The Redbourn Village website has a history of straw plaiting and related businesses which gives an insight into the work George’s mother and other women in the village would have undertaken. George, however, would more likely have been gathering and tying together straw for use in thatching roofs. Thatching.info provides a discussion, with illustrations, of thatch styles in Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire.

It seems that the rural way of life was not for George. By 1908 he has found his way to Islington in London, where he married Florence Jane Skelton at St Jude’s Church on 29 November that year.

Extract from parish marriage record for George Ephgrave and Florence Skelton 1908 (Ancestry)

She was born in Islington, the daughter of a whitesmith, and worked as a tie maker before their marriage. He describes himself as an engineer. Their daughter Evelyn Florence was born the following January, so the marriage was just in time. When she was baptised on 21 February that year at St Peter’s Church in Hackney, her father gives the same occupation and the family address as 66 Buckingham Road. The baptism record shows her birth date as 30 January 1908, but her birth was definitely registered in the first quarter of 1909.

London life and family

Their homes in Islington and Hackney were close to those of George’s older brothers Frederick (my great grandfather), William and Arthur. Fred had moved to Hackney in 1896 and had worked for a dairy company there, involved in the sterilisation of milk as an engineer. William drove lorries for the same company, whereas brother Arthur only lived in London for a few years before moving to Luton, Bedfordshire. Did George follow his brothers into the dairy trade as an engineer? Did they keep in touch while he was still in Redbourn, and encouraged him to move to London? It seems that the brothers lived and worked in fairly close proximity. With family close by, George must have decided that the move was worthwhile.

Annoyingly, I have not been able to the locate George in the Lloyd George Domesday Survey, or him or any of his family in the 1911 census, despite using variations of spelling, no surnames, and known addresses. Another family were at Buckingham Road in 1911; by the time their second daughter, Doris Edna, was born in February 1913, the family has moved to Shelgrove Road in Islington (but they weren’t there in 1911). She was baptised at the same church were her parents married.

When WW1 broke out, George would have been 26 years old. I haven’t found any verifiable service records for him. Electoral registers from 1918 show George and Florence registered to vote at 163 Culford Road, Hackney, where his older brothers had lived whilst working for the large dairy business at 178. By the time of the 1921 census, it seems that George has followed suit, and is described as a machinery attendant for a milk sterilising company. His earlier occupation of ‘engineer’ may have referred to sterilizing equipment too. They continue to appear in electoral registers at this address into the 1930s.

George was still alive, and signed as a witness, at the marriage of his eldest daughter Evelyn to fitter and turner Joseph Richard William Hillum on her 24th birthday in 1932, when he is described as an electrical engineer. The family address is still 163 Culford Road.

However, when daughter Doris Edna married tailor’s presser Alfred Stanley Dean in Stoke Newington in 1938, her father is shown as ‘deceased’. The 1939 Register shows Florence Ephgrave described as a widow, living with Doris and her husband – who are both working for a tailors – at 7 Wellington Mansions, Hackney.

There is a death index record for a George Ephgrave, aged 50, in Islington in the first quarter of 1935 which may be him.

Florence continued to live with her daughter and son-in-law Doris and Alfred Dean at various addresses in Hackney and Stoke Newington until her death in the Jul-Sep quarter of 1963. Alfred Stanley Dean served as a gunner in WWII, in the 61st heavy regiment of the Royal Artillery, and was entitled to the Defence and War medals with 1939-45 star, and stars reflecting his service in Africa and Italy.

Medal index card for Alfred Stanley Dean (Ancestry/Fold3)

This may account for the fact that their first child – that I have been able to find – wasn’t born until the first quarter of 1947. Another son was born in 1950. Alfred died in 1979, while Doris lived until the age of 82, dying in 1995.

Her older sister Evelyn’s marriage to Joseph Hillum produced at least two children born in London in the 1930s, neither of whom seem to have had children. There are other possible births of children with surname Hillum, MMN Ephgrave born in Luton between 1943-1947, but I do not know if these were born to Evelyn and Joseph. There is an electoral register record for an Evelyn F Hillum at 41 Brook Street, Luton in 1945, but Joseph is not listed in the same household; he appears to be living in Balham. The couple would seem to have divorced at some point, as there is a marriage index record for Joseph RW Hillum marrying Beatrice J Lyons in Southend-on-Sea in 1953. They may have had four children. Evelyn married her second husband Charles Welsh in Hampstead in 1959 but I have not found any children from the marriage. Evelyn died in Redbridge, London, in 2000 at the grand age of 91.