Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

Isabel Maskell was born in Chelsea, London in the first quarter of 1887. Her parents were William and Sarah Alma (nee Clacy) Miller. Her father had been born in Theale in Berkshire in about 1857, but as a long serving railway worker he had moved to Chelsea sometime between his marriage to Alma in 1874 and the recording of the 1881 census in April 1881, in which his occupation was recorded as ‘Railway Porter’. In 1891 Isabel, who was now about 3 years old, was recorded on the census as living in Station Road, Linslade Buckinghamshire. with her father, whose occupation was given as a ‘Railway Signalman’, her mother, two brothers (Fred 15 and Ethelbert, 7) and three sisters (Lillian, 15, Evelyn, 6 and Gertrude, 1). By the end of March 1901 Isabel was living with her parents, younger sister Gertrude and younger siblings Alma May (9) and Leonard (7) in the railway cottages adjacent to Tring Station that housed railway employees and their families. The census of that year again records her father, William as being employed as a ‘Railway Signalman’. In the third quarter of 1909, Isabel was married to a Joseph Miller (born 21 June 1886 in Berkhamsted), who she had probably met through his occupation as another railway worker. Indeed, he had started his career on the railways at age 14 in Padbury, Buckinghamshire where he was employed at the (now closed) station there as a porter. It was a career that lasted throughout his working life, with him being recoded as the ‘Station Master’ of Hornchurch Station in Essex in 1939. By the beginning of April 1911, the couple were living together with their 1-month-old son, Harold Joseph in Bankside Cottages, Sunnyside, Berkhamsted. Joseph is recorded on the census of that year as being a ‘Railway Parcel Porter’. Little is known about Isabel’s life between April 1911 and her death on 17th May 1928, but we do know that her mother died the year before in Berkhamsted. Joseph went on to re-marry and died in Brent, London in 1976. He had also continued the family tradition of working for the railways, rising to the rank of Station Master by September 1939.