02/03/1849 –10/05/1920
A draper's assistant who married Alfred Rodwell
Relatives
Research:
AGNES SOPHIA RODWELL née MEADOWS: 1849 – 1920
Agnes was born in the first quarter of 1849 in Bluntisham, near St Ives, Huntingdon. She was the second of six children born to William and Hannah Meadows. Her father was a tailor who employed an apprentice, but by 1861 as well as tailoring, he had also started trading as a draper selling cloth and material.
At the age of 22 Agnes had left the family home. She, like her father, was also working in the drapery business, in this case that of William Hall, a draper who had his home and shop on Market Hill in Woodbridge, Suffolk. William Hall employed 11 indoor assistants. Agnes not only worked for William but also lived on the premises with the Hall family, another assistant, a milliner and two domestic servants.
Agnes married on 14th March 1873. She married Alfred Rodwell, also a draper’s assistant. In 1871 he had been working in a drapery in St Albans. It is not clear how Agnes in Suffolk and Alfred in Hertfordshire met, but it was presumably through their common work as drapers. Perhaps both Alfred and Agnes had moved to work in London, for that is where their marriage took place at the Church of St John of Jerusalem in South Hackney.
Agnes gave birth to her first child, Charles in 1874. Charles was born in Hayes, London. Their second child, Bertrand, born in 1876, was born in St Albans and the third, Eva, 1879, in Acton.
By 1881 Agnes and Alfred and their three children moved to Chesham where their next child, Winifred was born. Alfred had changed career; he was no longer a draper but was working as a commercial traveller in the wholesale clothing business, an occupation he was to be engaged in for the rest of his working life.
Ten years later, Agnes and Alfred and their growing family had moved to Berkhamsted and were living on the High Street. It was in Berkhamsted that Agnes gave birth to her last two children, Ethel Daisy, born in 1884 and Agnes Louise, 1887.
The family had moved to Upper Kings Road by 1896, when in January that year Agnes received a nasty shock. A horse,“a fine high-spirited hunter,” pulling a cart “started off against the police station, and the driver, Mr Beck, a very careful and capable man, was quite unable to control it.” The horse and cart careered up Kings Road and turned right into Charles Street and ran its length. At that time Charles Street ended at one of Lane’s fruit tree nurseries. The runaway dragged the cart through rows of young apple trees six or seven feet high, knocking some down and barking others in its mad career. Then it turned and raced back again, and, rushing down the incline against Kings-Road, dashed with fearful force against the dwarf wall and iron railings of the residence of Mr Rodwell, commercial traveller, which adjoins the Butts Meadow. The iron fence was shattered to pieces, the pillar end of the wall and stone coping, with two or three yards of brickwork were carried away, and the windows of the villa was broken by the horse’s head.” The horse badly cut and with a broken leg did not survive. Beck was thrown into the garden but was otherwise unhurt, but when he realised the horse was dead “…it was too much for him and he feinted and was kindly accommodated by Mrs Rodwell.” Agnes, not surprisingly, “…was herself terribly alarmed by the crash.”
At a time when infant deaths were not uncommon, Alfred and Agnes were fortunate in that the six children Agnes had given birth all survived childhood. However, like many other families across the country, the outbreak of the First World War brought with it tragedy for the Rodwell family. Their oldest son Charles was killed in action in 1916.
Agnes herself died on 10th March 1920. Her estate was worth £879 10s 8d. She was buried in Rectory Lane Cemetery and was joined there by Alfred when he died in 1932.