Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

Florence Ada Bates

1881 –02/04/1924

Second wife of Josiah Bates

Relatives

Emma Bates (508) — other

• Melanie Hilton

Plot 508 Florence Ada Bates née Winch (1881-1924)

Florence was born in 1881 in Kingsland, London, an area now known as Dalston. Her father was William Winch, a gardener and her mother was Fanny Jane (née Webb).

At the time of the 1891 census the family lived in Colebrook Road, Walthamstow. Florence had an older sister and brother and two younger sisters.

By 1901 they had moved to 58, Romford Street, Barking. Her twenty year old brother Sidney was a self-employed oilman, her father continued to work as a gardener but nineteen year old Florence, had no occupation given. Emma, her younger sister Mabel and little brother William were also living at home.

Florence went into service and in 1911 was a parlour maid in the household of Edward Smith, the managing director of a brewing company[1] and his wife Margaret, who also employed a cook.

How Florence met her husband, fifty one year old widower Josiah Bates, is impossible to say. Josiah was living at 91, Cross Oak Road, Berkhamsted. Florence, aged thirty two, was living at  73, Victoria Road, Barking, Essex when they married on 5th April 1914 at St Margaret’s Barking.

In 1921 they were still at 91, Cross Oak Road and Josiah was working as “Wheelwright labourer” at the steam saw mills of East & Son, Gossoms End.

Florence died  2nd April 1924 aged forty three and was laid to rest here with Josiah’s first wife Emma.

Emma Bates (508)

1850 –09/12/1912

First wife of Josiah Bates and sister of Mary Ann Maulkin

Relatives

Mary Ann Maulkin — sister

Florence Ada Bates — other

Marie Antoinette Maulkin — daughter

• Melanie Hilton

Plot 508 Emma Bates née Maulkin (1850-1912)

Emma was born in 1850 in Aldgate, City of London. Her father Robert Maulkin was a butcher in Harrow Alley, St Botolph, Aldgate. Harrow Alley was one of the little courts that led south off Aldgate (High) Street. Now it is called Little Somerset Street, but in 1772 Daniel Defoe mentioned Harrow Alley in his Journal of the Plague Year “…from Harrow Alley, a place full of poor people, most of them belonging to the butchers, or to employment depending on the butchery…”

Harrow Alley used to be known as Blood Alley with as many as twenty butchers shops and an abattoir located there. In the 18^th and early 19^th century the City of London charged a tariff for driving cattle across the square mile which meant that a butchery trade grew up in Aldgate and Whitechapel, slaughtering cattle to supply Smithfield meat market. There still remains a landmark Emma would have known, the tiny Still & Star pub, drawn by Gustave Doré in 1869 for London: a pilgrimage. A fascinating post in the Spitalfields Life blog has a photograph of a Harrow Alley butcher’s shop and the Doré engraving. [https://spitalfieldslife.com/2016/12/17/the-still-star-is-saved/]

Both her parents were born in Aldgate and Emma’s mother was Mary Ann (née Jacobs). Emma was the youngest in the family with two older brothers and three sisters. She was baptised twelve years after her birth on 5^th January 1862 at St Botolph’s, Aldgate. This was not uncommon with families who found the fees a baptism too much for them at the time their children were born, or sometimes a new cleric in the district inspired, or chivvied, families into baptising their children, however late in the day.

By the time of the 1871 census two more children had been born, but Richard had died in 1864 and life was clearly very hard for the Maulkin family who were still living in Little Somerset Street. Mary Ann was working as a charwoman and three of her children were still at home. Emma, aged twenty, and her fifteen year old sister Eliza were employed as general servants and nine year old George was attending school.

Emma’s whereabouts between 1871 and 1891 have not been traced, but at the time of the 1891 census she was working as cook in the household of Edward Moore, the rector of Boughton Malherbe, a little village halfway between Maidstone and Ashford in Kent. The Reverend and Mrs Moore employed Emma, aged forty one, and two housemaids and also a groom, twenty seven year old Josiah Bates, the son of the farm bailiff who lived in a neighbouring lodge.

On 8^th July 1893 Emma married Josiah, by then employed as a coachman, at Boughton Malherbe church. Josiah stated his age, Emma, perhaps coyly, gave hers as “full age”.

In 1901 they were living at 35, Cross Oak Road, Berkhamsted and Josiah was employed as a wheelwright. They were still at that address in 1911 when Josiah was recorded as “carpenter at steam saw mills”, probably East & Company’s mills where he was employed in 1921.

Emma died 9th December 1912. Josiah married again two years later to Florence Ada Winch and both wives are buried here together.

Emma’s older sister, Mary Ann Maulkin died in Berkhamstead in 1925 and is buried in this cemetery in plot 493.