30/07/1871 –13/07/1923
Daughter of Samuel and Sarah Cannon, dressmaker who never married and cared for elderly father.
Relatives
Research:
ROSA CANNON; 1871-1923
Rosa was the third of six children born to Samuel and Sarah Cannon. Her father had been born in Gilston, in the east of Hertfordshire, but the Cannon family had moved to Berkhamsted sometime between 1851 and 1861 when Rose’s grandfather became the lodgekeeper on the Ashlyn’s estate. Rose’s mother came from Berkhamsted.
Rose was born in Berkhamsted on 31st July 1871 and she was baptised at St Peter’s church on 8th October that year. When the 1881 census was taken, the family were living in Victoria Road and Rose’s father, Samuel, was working as a brewer in Locke & Smith’s Brewery in Water Lane. Rosa was then 9 years old and attending school.
Ten years later the family had moved to Chapel Street. Rosa, then 19, was single and living with her family; indeed she never married and remained a spinster until her death in 1923. She had started working on her own account as a dressmaker, an occupation she was to follow for most of her life.
Whereas today we are used to buying ready-made clothes “off the peg”, that was not the case in Victorian and Edwardian times. Clothing was made for the individual wearer. Cloth would be purchased from draper and then made up into clothing by seamstresses and tailors The poor who could not afford the cost of newly made clothing bought clothes from second, third, or fourth-hand shops. Dressmaking was one choice of occupation for a working class girl at a time when choice of occupation was limited. Working conditions varied; at one extreme were those who worked as high class court dressmakers, at the other extreme were those who worked in “sweat shops”, enduring long working hours for pitiful pay. Others, such as Rosa, worked privately, often from home.
By 1911, Rosa was living with her 67 year old father who had by then retired from his work at Berkhamsted Brewery. Rosa’ s mother, Sarah, had died in 1907 and all her siblings had moved out of the family home, leaving Rosa to keep house and look after her elderly father, as well as continuing to earn money from dressmaking.
Rosa’s father died in 1915 and when the 1921 census was taken, we find Rosa had moved to the High Street. She was no longer working as a dressmaker. She was engaged in “home duties,” but had taken in a lodger no doubt to provide herself with an income in lieu of dressmaking. Her lodger was Laetitia Dickson, who was headmistress of the infant school in Chapel Street.
Rosa died two years later on the 13th July 1923 at West Herts Hospital in Hemel Hempstead at the age of 51. She was buried in Rectory Lane Cemetery with her older brother William who had died in 1890.
A National, Church of England, elementary school had been opened behind the Court House in 1838. As the number of pupils grew the school expanded including the opening of the infant school in Chapel Street. The Chapel Street school closed in 1956.