Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

Lucy Winfield

1837 –12/02/1892

A straw plaiter- mother of Emma Hulls

Relatives

Emma Hulls — daughter

Arthur Winfield (1058) — son

George Winfield — son

• Jenny Thorburn

Emma Hulls and Lucy Winfield

Plot X202

Emma Hulls (1869-1946) was the daughter of Lucy Winfield (1837-1893). Doreen Lee, Emma’s granddaughter may also have been interred in the plot

Lucy Winfield was born in 1837, in Northchurch to Henry and Sarah Sills. Her father was a labourer and when she was four they were living on White Hill in Berkhamsted. In 1851 Lucy was working as a straw plaiter, and living with her widowed mother and three younger siblings in Red Lion Yard in Berkhamsted High Street, a place she spent most of her life.

She married William Winfield on 6 November 1859 in St Peters, Berkhamsted. He was 33 and she was 24. William’s occupation was labourer, and Lucy’s servant. Although William signed his name on the certificate, Lucy only made a mark, suggesting she was unable to write.

In 1861 Lucy and William were living at Broadway Farm, in the parish of Northchurch (although it is on the east side of Berkhamsted town). He was working as a carter and/or ploughman. She worked as a straw plaiter, like many women in the area at that time. They already had two children. In the next two censuses, until after 1881, they were back in Red Lion Yard, bringing up their family of seven children, including Emma, born when Lucy was 32 years old.  

In September 1888 William died.  In 1891 the widowed Lucy was living in Victoria Road Berkhamsted, with her two youngest sons, who were working, and two boarders.

Lucy died on 12 February 1893 in Victoria Road, Berkhamsted. She was 56, and died of Influenza Pneumonia. There was a pandemic in early 1890s of ‘Russian flu’, which is thought to have been an influenza pandemic, although some people now suggest it was a coronavirus (see Wikipedia).

Emma Hulls

1869 –31/01/1946

Daughter of Lucy Winfield, a kitchen maid twice widowed

Relatives

Lucy Winfield — mother

Arthur Winfield (1058) — brother

• Jenny Thorburn

Emma Hulls and Lucy Winfield 

Plot X202

Emma Hulls (1869-1946) was the daughter of Lucy Winfield (1837-1893). Doreen Lee, Emma’s granddaughter may also have been interred in the plot.

Emma Hulls was born on 16 October 1869, and christened in Berkhamsted on 23 January 1870.

Her father was William Winfield, a labourer, and in 1871, when Emma was a baby, the family was living in Red Lion Yard in Berkhamsted, with her four elder siblings, Georgina, John, George and William. By 1881 she also had two younger brothers, Arthur and Walter.

Red Lion Yard was a collection of dwellings built during the 19^th century in the garden and yard of the Red Lion Inn on the High Street in Berkhamsted. The site is now occupied by the HSBC bank. Linda Rollit’s description of it in the 2015 edition of the Berkhamsted History and Local Museum Society’s Chronicle, describes it as a slum, overcrowded and dirty, with outbreaks of typhoid and antisocial behaviour. This was where Emma was brought up.

In 1891, when Emma was 22, she was working as a kitchen maid in the household of the Countess of Enniskillen in Hertford Street, London.

Three years later, on 13^th October 1894, she married Richard William Rogers at St Peter’s Church in Berkhamsted. Richard had been born in Little Coxwell in Berkshire on 16th August 1872, one of 16 children. In 1894 he was working as a porter at the goods station in Oxford. He left his job there in September 1896 and moved they moved to London.  Emma and Richard had three children. The eldest was Edwin, 26 July 1896 in Oxford, baptised 15 September in Berkhamsted. Victoria Florence, was born the following year in Kentish Town on 17 March 1897, and baptised in April 1897 in Berkhamsted. Their third child was Dorris May born on 29th April 1899 in Kentish Town, and baptised on 11th June 1899 in Berkhamsted. Sadly she died 8 months later on 11th February 1900 and was buried on 17th February in Camden.

 Only four months after loosing their youngest daughter, Richard died in the Boer War in South Africa on 30^th June 1900.

 By 1901 Emma was living with her two children in Holliday Street in Berkhamsted, on ‘her own means’.

 In 1904 Emma was back in London, as she had a daughter Lucy Doris who was born on 15^th August 1904 in St Pancras. On 6 August 1906 she married John Stanley Hulls, an organ pipe builder in St Pancras, London. They had another child, Arthur Sydney Owen on 22 January 1907 .

 In 1911 Emma was living in Wheelers Long Marston, near Tring with her two young children, Lucy and Arthur Hulls, aged 6 and 4. Her daughter Victoria Rogers, aged 14, was also living with her. Emma was working as a charwoman.  On the census form it states she is a widow, but it says her

present marriage has lasted 7 years. Her husband is not included on the census, but he did not die not until 1937. So maybe he was working away the day of the census and “widow” referred to her first marriage.

 On the 1939 register Emma is  back in Berkhamsted with Ivy Doreen Rogers, born 30 January 1919

When she died on January 31 1946, aged 76, she was living at 3 Cheddington Lane,  Long Marston. She died of heart disease.