Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

Winifred A. M. Strouts (1073)

1876 –06/12/1944

Managed a boarding house for female school teachers before becoming housekeeper for her nephew

• Melanie Hilton

Plot 1073 Winifred Agnes Murton Strouts (1876-1944)

Winifred was born in 1876 in Clerkenwell, London, to Edward and Agnes Strouts.

In 1881 she was living in Brightside, Sheffield, with her parents and siblings. Her father is described in the census as “common brewer”. At that date there were five girls and two boys in the family.

Her father died in 1888 when she was twelve and by 1891 her mother had moved to Kitsbury Road, Berkhamsted with her five daughters, son Cecil, and a live-in domestic servant.

Winifred never married and in 1901, after the death of her mother in 1897, she was living with her brother Cecil Marton Strouts, a stock jobber, and their sister Elsie Lucy Marton Strouts at “Littlehurst”, Gravel Path. Elsie was a governess.

In 1911 Winifred was employed by the governing body of the Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School, Mansfield, Notts, to manage a boarding house for female teachers at Queen Elizabeth’s Lodge. Originally established in 1561, the school is now an Academy. In 1911 ten teachers were living there along with a cook, housemaid and kitchen maid.

In 1926 Winifred and her sister Elsie, a governess at a private school, were living together in “Beech Cottage” in Chipping Morden, a village near Banbury. They were burgled on the night of 2 June by a sixteen year old office boy who broke a window. At 2am Winifred was woken by the dog barking and went downstairs with a candle to find a man crouching behind a chair. When challenged he rushed past her and escaped. She and Elsie went outside, but he had fled. They then had to climb back in through the window as the door had jammed. The young man was arrested the next morning by the police and admitted to stealing a purse with 16 shillings in it.

In 1939 she was acting as housekeeper to her nephew, Edward A Strouts , a farm manager, at Bishopsdale, Cranbrook, Kent

Winifred died 6 December 1944 at 42, Kings Road, Berkhamsted.