Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

Charlotte Harrowell

13/11/1885 –1908

Born in the workhouse, endured a life of poverty and died in workhouse age 23 years

• Melanie Hilton

Unmarked grave Charlotte Harrowell (1885-1908)

Charlotte was born 13 January 1885 and baptised 7 November in Tring. Her father was Edward Harrowell, a sweep born in Tring. Her mother was his wife Mary Elizabeth (née Hobbs).

In October 1887 a report in The Bucks Herald gives some indication of the conditions the Harrowell’s were living in at Canal Side, Berkhamsted. The Sanitary Officer appeared in court in support of summonses by the Sanitary Authority against five people including Edward Harrowell, tenants of Mrs Halsey at Halsey Cottages, Canal Side. They had not complied with an order to quit the cottages which had been deemed unfit for human habitation. Mrs Harrowell was amongst the wives who attended the hearing.

Mrs Halsey, their elderly landlady, said she had the cottages “done up” as well as she could afford. She had been “brought up a lady” and “not among such rubbish as those [the tenants].” The cottages, she said, “were good enough for poor people.”

In 1891 Charlotte was living with father – still at Canal Side. Her mother is not in the same household, but was recorded two cottages away in the home of single man George Humphrey a “Labourer (soot sower).” Presumably his job was to spread soot as a soil conditioner and it may be that Mary was simply visiting to deliver soot at the time the census was taken. Charlotte is described as being a “scholar sometimes”. Her place of birth is given as “Berkhamsted Union”, although others recorded on the same page who were born in the town simply have “Berkhamsted” as place of birth. It may be that her father was anxious to establish her claim on parish relief.

In 1895 Edward died, aged 55.

In 1901, aged 16, both she and her mother were inmates of the Berkhamsted Union Workhouse at 241 High Street. There is no reason given for her being there, but possibly she was suffering from some kind of physical disability or chronic illness. (At this time, in a way we now find shocking, those inmates with a mental illness or a learning disability were labelled “imbecile” on the census.)

In November 1888 an item in The Bucks Herald may give a clue. Under the heading “A Cowardly Assault” it reports that William Hawkins of Berkhamsted was charged with assaulting “Edward Harrowell, a diminutive sweep, who was deaf…” If Charlotte had inherited her father’s small stature, possibly a form of dwarfism, or his hearing impairment, that might account for her residence in the Workhouse.

Charlotte died in November 1908, still in the Workhouse. She was 23.

In 1911 her mother was recorded as an inmate of the Union Workhouse, described as a widow whose occupation was “field work”. Despite her hard life she lived until the age of 88, dying in 1941 in Hempstead House “Public Assistance Institution”, Hemel Hempstead where she had been an inmate since at least 1939.