Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

Mary Ann Lane

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MARY ANN LANE; 1835 – 1894

Mary was the second of seven children born to John Edward Lane and his first wife Sarah. Mary’s memorial tells us her date of birth was 23^rd May 1835 and she was baptised on 21^st June that year.

John and Sarah Lane had married in Berkhamsted in 1833. The Lane family had been established in Berkhamsted for at least two generations. John’s grandfather had started a nursery business in the town which John’s father, Henry Lane had continued. On Henry’s retirement John was himself to take over the family business and under his stewardship the business grew further and earned a world-wide reputation.

In 1841 Sarah and John were living on the High Street, together with the four oldest children, including Mary. The 1841 census does identify where on the High Street the family lived, but the 1839 Tithe records do identify John Lane as the owner and occupier of two cottages and gardens on the High Street, opposite John’s Well Lane and the family nursery.

Mary’s mother, Sarah, died in 1848, leaving her father with six children to bring up. (The seventh and youngest, George Septimus Lane had died in 1847, the year in which he had been born.) Mary’s father, however, soon remarried. In 1852, he married Hannah Foster, a widow who herself had seven children. Hannah’s first husband, James Foster, was Sarah’s brother and had been the innkeeper and brewer at The Swan on Berkhamsted’s High Street. Following his death, Hannah had taken over both the inn and the brewery and when she and John Lane married, John moved into the Swan, where, in addition to his interest in Lane’s nurseries he also developed a business as a brewer and publican.

The 1861 census reveals that whilst John had joined Hannah at The Swan, Mary remained living in the High Street with her brother Henry and two of her younger sisters. The census return tells us that Mary was then 25 years old and was unmarried. She was to remain unmarried throughout her life. No occupation is noted against her name.

As an unmarried woman, a spinster, Mary was fortunate that her family was sufficiently well off that she did not need to work, not even to do the housework, for which purpose a housemaid was employed.  British society of the mid-nineteenth century raised and educated its girls with the sole aim of their becoming good wives and good mothers. As Trollope’s Lizzie Eustace put it in his novel “The Eustace Diamonds,” an unmarried woman’s strength lay solely in the expectation of approaching matrimony.  Victorian Society, however, contained a large excess of single and widowed women over single and widowed men. To the Victorians, one important consequence of this situation was a major "spinster problem, " which was focused especially on difficulties in finding suitable occupations and homes for single women as they aged. Employment was a major issue for women in the Victorian age, especially for the middle-class woman who were restrained by Victorian notions of respectability from leaving home or engaging in the trades open to working-class women. Such women were dependent and without vocation. Hence the need for women to marry, so as to avoid being a burden for their parents. Single women did not meet the traditional standards for women at the time and were simply not fitting in the Victorian family model. Such women, like Charles Dickens’ Miss Havisham, mouldering in her wedding dress, became objects of pity because they were unable to fulfil their domestic role, as a wife and a mother. Their situation was often precarious for they either depended on the men in their families for the rest of their lives or ended up in a situation of poverty. Had Mary’s family not been able to support her, as a young woman she would probably have ended up in domestic service and a recipient of Poor Relief as an older woman.

But we cannot simply make the assumption that Mary did not marry because she could not find a husband. Whilst the Victorian ideal may have been marriage and motherhood, not all Victorian women shared that aspiration. In 1889 Tit-Bits magazine asked for responses to the question “Why am I a spinster?” Replies included the following:

“Because men, like three cornered tarts, are deceitful. They are very pleasing to the eye, but on closer acquaintanceship prove hollow and stale, consisting chiefly of puff, with a minimum of sweetness, and an unconquerable propensity to disagree with one.”

“Because I have other professions open to me in which the hours are shorter, the work more agreeable, and the pay possibly better.”

At the time of the 1871 census, Mary was present at The Swan, but as a visitor, not a resident. Mary’s step mother Hannah had died in September 1861 and Mary’s father had moved out of The Swan and was living in the High Street, presumably with Mary Ann and others of his children. The Swan was then in the care of Hannah’s son, Henry Foster.

Mary and her father were living in the same house at the time of the 1881 census together with her two youngest half-brothers and two domestic servants.

Mary’s father died in 1889 and in 1891 Mary had moved to Boxwell Road where she was living on her own, apart from a domestic servant. She was then 53 years of age and was financially independent, “living on her own means.”

Mary died on her 59^th birthday, 23^rd May 1894. She was buried in Rectory Lane Cemetery in the grave in which her younger brother, John Edward Lane (junior) and her half-brother Arthur Lane had been buried when they died in 1868 and 1870 respectively.  Her coffin was carried by men from the family nurseries as well as undertaker’s men. Floral tributes from family members, including Miss Q. Lane, “Auntie’s favourite flower” and employees of the nurseries adorned the coffin.