Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

Alfred Joseph Boulton

28/12/1874 –04/05/1918

Printer and metallic powder manufacturer who moved to Berkhamsted a few years before dying at age 43

• Christopher Dolton

ALFRED JOSEPH BOULTON; 1874 – 1918

Alfred was born on 28^th December 1874. His parents were Joseph and Annie Boulton. Alfred’s birth was registered in Edmonton, Middlesex, and the census taken in 1881, when Alfred was six years old, tells us that the Boulton family was then living at Rose Cottage, Lower Fore Street, Edmonton, moving by 1891 to 15 Hyde Side, also in Edmonton.  Alfred was one of eight children born to Joseph and Annie. The oldest, a daughter, born c.1864 was named for her mother. Annie. She was followed by four more daughters, Rosa born c.1865, Adelaide, c.1867, and Agnes c.1869 before the couple’s first son, William, was born c.1871. William was followed by Selena, c.1873, Alfred c. 1874 and finally Victor, who was born 12 years or so after Alfred, in c 1887.

Alfred’s father was a publisher and printer and sufficiently well to do to be able to employ a servant in 1881 and two in 1891. Alfred was to follow in his father’s professional footsteps When he married in 1900 his occupation noted on his marriage certificate was that of printer. It may well be that Alfred started work in the family business.

Passenger lists reveal that in 1897 one A. J Boulton, a single male, took passage on a ship named The Danube to Vigo in Spain. The Danube stopped at Vigo enroute for Rio de Janeiro and Montevideo. No address, date of birth   or occupation is given to positively link the A.J. Boulton on the Danube’s passenger list to Alfred, who would then have been 23, but there is circumstantial evidence to suggest it is indeed Alfred. The youngest of Alfred’s three children, born in 1909, was named Inez Vida Boulton, her Spanish forenames suggesting at the very least some association with Spain. If Alfred did travel to Spain, we can only now guess at the purpose of his journey. Although we have no record of his return to England, return he must have, as he married at St Martin’s in the Fields on 24^th February 1900.

His bride was 25 year old Mabel Harvey. Her address as given on the marriage certificate was Chingford in Essex, but she had been born in Birmingham in 1875. Her parents were Eric Mackay Harvey and Adelaide Harvey who married in Birmingham in 1872. Mabel had an older sister, Adelaide, who was born c.1873. She had a younger brother, Eric, born in 1879, but he did not survive infancy, dying that same year. Mabel’s father left for America the following year. Rather than taking his wife and two daughters with him, he was accompanied by his mother. Life must have been hard for Mabel’s mother who was left with two children to bring up. In 1881 we find her and the two girls in lodgings in Birmingham, Mabel’s mother made paper boxes. Like many of the ‘sweated trades’, workers in the paper box industry were predominantly women. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, before it became a factory- dominated industry, paper or cardboard boxes were made by low paid workers who assembled boxes at home.

Happily, Adelaide Harvey’s fortunes took a turn for the better. Early in 1891 she married Robert Jolly in Lambeth. Robert, 38 years old in 1891, was six years Adelaide’s junior. Adelaide and Mabel’s older sister are recorded in the 1891census living with Robert in Leighton in Essex. Robert was a bank clerk (and ten years later had been promoted to bank manager) who was able to employ a cook. Mabel wasn’t in the household at the time the census was taken; she was visiting the Maud family in Birmingham.

Given that the errant Eric Harvey did not die in America until 1920, unless the couple divorced, or a declaration was made after seven year’s absence that Eric was presumed to have died, Adelaide’s marriage to Robert was bigamous. Divorce, although made easier following the introduction of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1859, or an application for presumption of death, was expensive (probably well beyond the means of a paper box maker). Tellingly, Eric himself in the US census of 1900, is incorrectly noted as a widower. One suspects that Adelaide too claimed she was a widow; with her husband and mother-in-law across the Atlantic, who but she and the girls would be likely to know any different?

After their marriage, Alfred and Mabel first lived with Mabel’s mother and Robert Jolly in Leyton, but by 1908 they had set up their own home at Chestnuts, Lower Park Road, Loughton. Three years later, at the time of the 1911 census, Alfred and Mabel had moved to Ferne Park Road in Hornsey.

Mabel gave birth to the first of three children in c1902, a son, Alfred Robert Macgregor Boulton. Alfred was followed by two daughters, Adelaide Alda May Boulton born c. 1902 and Inez Vida Boulton born c. 1909. The 1911 census confirms that Mabel gave birth to three children, all of whom were living in 1911.

Whereas Alfred’s occupation on his marriage certificate and also in the 1901 census is noted as “printer”, by 1911 he had moved into a different, albeit related business.  His occupation in the 1911 census is “Manager (Bronze Powder manufacturer).”  Gold and Bronze powders were used to stamp titles and decorative motifs onto the covers of books.  The Post Office Directory of 1915 under the heading “GOLD BLOCKING POWDER MANFRS” gives Alfred’s address as 58a, City Road, which no doubt was the address from which he carried on his business.  Alfred was to continue in this business until his death, his occupation being noted on his death certificate as “metal merchant.” The business was sufficiently lucrative for Alfred to be able to employ a domestic servant in 1911.

We don’t know exactly when Alfred moved to Berkhamsted with his family, but the 1913 Electoral Roll reveals that he was then still at Ferne Park Road in Hornsey. The family had, however, definitely moved to Berkhamsted by September 1915 when Alfred joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. His RNVR record card gives Mabel as his next of kin and her address as “Alabel”, North Road, Berkhamsted.

Alfred’s name appears in 1918 in The Berkhamstedian, Berkhamsted School’s journal, in a list of subscribers to a fund for the purchase of playing fields for the school, suggesting an association with the school and this may provide a clue as to why Alfred and Mabel moved to Berkhamsted. Did they move to the town in order to educate their children at Berkhamsted School?

Sadly, Alfred was not to be a resident in Berkhamsted for long. He died on 4^th May 1918 at the age of 43.  His death certificate records the cause of his death as “Failure of the heart following after auricular flutter”. Alfred must have been in poor health for a while. Although he volunteered for the RNVR in 1915 and was rated AB – Able Seaman – he was evidently far from being able, as he was discharged for ill health on 13^th January 1916, less than 3 months after joining the RNVR.

A death notice published in the Bucks Herald in May 1918 gave the bald facts as to his death.

“BOULTON. – At Berkhamsted, on May 4^th ALFRED JOSEPH, husband of MABEL BOULTON, aged 43.”

Alfred’s estate was worth £3,757 5s 11d.

Mabel initially remained in Berkhamsted following Alfred’s death. The Electoral Roll for 1919 places her in North Road and her address in the Electoral Rolls for 1922 and 1923 was 109 Gossoms End. However, she had left the town by the following year, as the Electoral Roll for 1924 gives her address as St Michael’s Road in Bournemouth and she evidently remained in Bournemouth the rest of her life, dying there in 1959.