Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

Samuel Cannon

07/05/1843 –26/12/1915

Brewer at Locke & Smith Brewery

Relatives

Sarah Cannon (814) — wife

Charles Cannon — brother

William Charles Cannon — son

Rosa Cannon — daughter

Herbert John Cannon — son

• Christopher Dolton

Samuel Cannon; 1843 – 1915

Samuel was born in Gilston, east Hertfordshire, on 7^th May 1843. His parents were Charles and Ann Cannon, and Samuel was the second of six children[1], all boys, born to Charles and Ann. The 1851 census reveals that Samuel’s father worked as a labourer, but by 1861 the family had moved to Berkhamsted and were living in the lodge at Ashlyn’s Hall where Charles was the lodge keeper.

Samuel married in 1864. The marriage took place in Berkhamsted and Samuel’s bride was Sarah Pearce, who had herself been born in the town. Samuel and Sarah set up home in the High Street and by 1871 Sarah had given birth to two children, William Charles, born 1867 and Samuel, 1869. Four more children were to follow; Rosa 1871; Ernest 1874; Ruth Elizabeth, 1878; Herbert John,1881. In 1871 Samuel was working as a brewer, an occupation he was to follow until his retirement.

In 1868 Locke & Smith had acquired the Berkhamsted Brewery in Water Lane from Alfred Healey. The Swan Brewery was a second smaller brewery in the town, but we know that Samuel worked at Locke & Smith’s brewery as Locke & Smith employees regularly fielded a cricket team, playing other teams in the town and locality. Newspaper reports of various matches give the names of the players. Both Samuel and his brother Charles were regular members of the Locke & Smith team. Three of Samuel’s sons also went on to work in the brewery. In 1891 Samuel junior was a brewer’s assistant and Ernest was a brewer’s labourer. By 1901 Herbert was working as a brewer’s clerk. (The oldest son, William, had died in 1890 at the age of 23.)

By 1881 the family had moved from their home in the High Street and were living in Victoria Road. In 1891 they were living in Chapel Street.

Sarah died in 1907 and in 1911 Samuel, then 67 years of age, was living with his unmarried daughter Rosa at 8 Shrublands Avenue. He was living at that address when he died on 26^th April 1915, age 72. His estate was valued at £150 18s 1d. and he was buried with his wife Sarah.

Sarah Cannon (814)

07/12/1844 –17/04/1907

Wife of Samuel cannon; as young woman worked as rag cutter

Relatives

William Charles Cannon — son

Samuel Cannon — husband

• Christopher Dolton

Sarah Cannon: 1844 – 1907

Sarah was the fifth of seven children born to William Pearce and Hetty Pearce (née Loader). Sarah was born on 7^th December 1844 and was baptised in Berkhamsted on 3^rd March 1895. The Pearce family lived on Berkhamsted’s High Street and Sarah’s father was a sawyer, no doubt working in one of the town’s timber yards.

We learn from the 1861 census that the family had then moved from the High Street to The Pightle (now Highfield Road). Whilst Sarah’s elder sister, Ann, like many other young working class women in the area, was working as a straw plaiter, 16 year old Sarah was working as a rag cutter.

Whilst today tons of discarded clothing are dumped in countries like Chile, in Victorian times, old rags and clothing were in fact imported into Britain to be cut up for a variety of uses. Rags were used to help make manure, poor-quality flock bedding and for making shoddy (shoddy was low-quality cloth remanufactured from woollens). However, the paper industry was the chief user of rag. Such work was mainly carried out by women aged from fifteen or sixteen years upwards, although a few boys might also take part. Some people might work for decades as rag-cutters, particularly those in rural districts.

The rags were often filthy and it was well known that consignments of rags sometimes included contaminated material, which led to a number of outbreaks of smallpox amongst rag cutters. In 1865 an eminent physician, Dr John Syer Bristowe (1827-95) produced a report on the rag trade for the Privy Council concentrating mainly on the use of rags within the paper industry. As one might expect, Bristowe found that working conditions were dirty and unpleasant.

‘The rag-cutters work for the most part in a large room or rooms, which of course vary much in their size relatively to the number of occupants, and vary much in their ventilation, in their other arrangements, and generally in their suitability for the purposes to which they are applied. They are always dusty, and always have a more or less musty if not more offensive smell. They generally, however, appear to me to be fairly ventilated.

 ‘As regards cleanliness, it may be added that rags collected in country districts are, as a rule, cleaner that those collected in large towns…, that Irish rags are generally very filthy, and that many foreign rags (such as Italian, Spanish, Russian, and especially Egyptian) are often not only dirty, but stink’.

 ‘Each rag-cutter, while at work, stands at a board with a knife fixed in it in front of her vertically, with the cutting edge forwards, provided on the one hand with an adequate supply of rags, and on the other with a kind of bin furnished with compartments, into one or other of which she throws, according to their character, the rags as she cuts them’

(Friel, I., “The Victorian Rag Trade, Smallpox and a Sussex Paper Mill”, 2020)

For a short time during 1861 the firm of Curtis & Ulrich, wholesale rag merchants, operated a rag mill in Berkhamsted, and it must have been there that Sarah worked. At the time of the 1861 census William Curtis was living at Sarratt Mill where his father, a paper manufacturer, employed 44 men. Also present at Sarratt Mill was a visitor, Carl Emile Ulrich. However, in October 1861 William Curtis, rag cutter of the firm Curtis & Ulrich was declared bankrupt. In a matter of a few months William had set himself up in trade, found a partner and premises in Berkhamsted and was declared bankrupt, all by the age of 22. 

Given the unpleasant nature of rag cutting, one cannot but wonder why Sarah, had not, like her older sister, taken up work as straw plaiter, work that was more congenial than cutting rags and which was also paid well. A woman working at home plaiting straw could earn more than a labourer.

In 1864, Sarah at the age of 19, married Samuel Cannon. Samuel’s family had originally come from Gilston in the east of Hertfordshire, but the Cannon family moved to Berkhamsted where Samuel’s father became lodge keeper on the Ashlyn’s estate. Samuel worked at the brewery in Water Lane. Sarah no doubt gave up rag cutting to keep the home she and Samuel set up in the High Street and by 1871 she had given birth to her first two children, William born 1867 and Samuel, born in 1869. Four more children were to follow, Rosa in 1871; Ernest, 1874; Ruth Elizabeth, 1878 and finally Herbert John, born in 1881.

Sarah and Samuel and their growing family had moved by 1881 to Victoria Road, and again by 1891 to 8 Chapel Street, at which address Sarah died on 17^th April 1907. She was 63 years old.