Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

Esther Hodby

1837 –1911

A lacemaker and laundress; died in Berkhamsted in home of her daughter and son in law

Relatives

Lizzie King — daughter

• Melanie Hilton

Unmarked grave Esther Hodby (née Cox) (1837-1911)

Esther was born 1837/8 in Milton Ernest, Bedfordshire, the daughter of William and Charlotte (née Offard) Cox. William was thirty years older than his wife and an agricultural labourer. Charlotte, like many women from poorer families in the area, was a lace maker. They had four sons and three daughters of whom Esther was the youngest.

Charlotte died in May 1843 and in 1851 Esther was living at Pleasant Place, Milton Ernest with her father, by then a pensioner aged 71, her older sister, who was a servant, and their younger brother, a labourer. Esther was a lace maker.

She had a son, William Cox, in 1857 at Milton Ernest. The father is not known.

She married Hoham Hodby, an agricultural labourer from Knotting, Bedfordshire, on 29 April 1859 in Milton Ernest parish church. Hoham was a widower whose first wife Martha had died in 1855 after only three years of marriage.

George (1860) and John (1861) were probably both born at 3, Church Lane, Knotting, where the family were living in 1861. Three year old William Cox was with them, described as Hoham’s son-in-law.

Shortly afterwards they moved to Raunds, just over the border in Northamptonshire, where Edward was born in 1864 They then moved back to Bedfordshire to Yelden where Alfred (1866), Priscilla (1868) and Walter (1870) were born.

On August 26 1870 The Bedfordshire Mercury reported that Ann Cowley of Yelden was found guilty of assaulting Esther. She was fined 5s 6d.

The 1871 census shows the family still in Yelden. Hoham was a labourer, as was 13 year old William who had now taken his surname.

Their final two children Charles (1874) and Lizzie (1875) were both born in Yelden but by

1881 the family was living at Bencroft Grange, Rushden, Northamptonshire.

Hoham died in 1885.

In April 1891 Esther was living in Park Road, Rushden and working as a washerwoman. Fortunately seven of her children, all in employment, were still at home. Four of the men were labourers, Priscilla was a servant and Lizzie and Charles were employed in the shoe making industry. By that date the town had over sixty shoe factories.

Daughter Lizzie married Thomas King, a gas stoker, and in 1901 Esther was living with them, their two young children, Thomas’s father and two of his brothers at 7, Park Place, Rushden.

On 2 April 1911 she was living with her unmarried daughter Priscilla at 10, Montague Street, Rushden. Both were said to be living on “private means”.

Esther died in June 1911 at Gas House Cottage, Berkhamsted, the home of Lizzie and Thomas King. She was 74.

Lizzie and Thomas King and their daughter Mabel are buried in plot 723 in this cemetery.