In writing an article about the poorhouse in Peldon and the subsequent building in 1837 of the Stanway Union Workhouse which took in the poor of Peldon, I found the names of many who had ended up in the workhouse, through no fault of their own. I felt compelled to see whether they made good lives for themselves after such a beginning, it was particularly hard to read of orphans or single mothers with a new baby.

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Edith Mary Harvey was in Stanway Union workhouse with both her children at the time of the 1911 census on 2nd April. She had given birth to her second son only days before on 31st March and it is very likely she had given birth to him in the workhouse while the child's birthplace was registered as his mother's parish of Peldon.

Edith was born in Peldon to parents Frederick George and Margaret Annie Harvey in 1889 so she was only 22 when listed as being in the workhouse in 1911. She is also listed as being single. From a family tree posted on Ancestry we learn that the two boys were Alfred Leslie (1909-1979) and his half-brother William Lewis (1911-1958).

In 1924 Edith married a Woodbridge man, Stanley Thomas Thurston (1899 - 1990), and had two more children; the family lived in Colchester.

Her son, Alfred Leslie lived to the age of 70 and lived and died in Bury St Edmunds. In the 1939 Register he is listed as an engineering worker. He married and had a son. His brother, William Lewis, went on to marry in Liverpool and can be found there in the 1939 Register with his wife, and possibly two children. He was working as a steel erector. He died in 1958 at 47.

Edith was to live into her 80s.

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My next story is of (Frances) Emma Bailey née Osborne and eight of her children who in 1891 were to be found in Stanway Union after her husband, Alfred Robert Bailey, an agricultural engine-driver born in Layer de La Haye, died. He was older than his wife and he died in 1887 aged about 52 when she was 33.

They had a daughter Emma who was born in 1876 and had left home by the time the family entered the workhouse. Alfred aged 14, Daniel and Benjamin aged 12, Horace aged 11, Joshua aged 10, Adam aged 7, Ethel aged 5 and Jessie aged 3 were all in the workhouse with their mother in 1891.

Alfred, the eldest boy was born on 26th December 1876. At the age of 14 he was with his family in Stanway Union in 1891 subsequently enlisting in the Royal Navy on 4th January 1897 for a twelve year period. His papers describe him as 5' 5" with light brown hair, hazel eyes and fair of complexion. Following his discharge he married in Dovercourt in 1910 and appears in the 1911 census living in Dovercourt with his wife Adelaide. He is listed as a quay labourer. Sadly both their children, a boy and girl died as infants.

His brother, Daniel was born on 17th August 1878 and enlisted in Colchester on 26th September 1914 as a Private serving in the Royal Defence Corps. His attestation papers say he had a previous history of military service and was working as a labourer at the start of WW1. He served for 3 years and 91 days and was discharged on 25th December 1917. He was to marry Selina and had two boys, Harry Augustus and Horace. In the 1939 Register he is found, a widower, living with his younger son, Horace, in a C of E Schoolhouse in Dovercourt. Daniel was working as a quay porter and Horace as an Admiralty dockyard labourer. Daniel was to die in Dovercourt aged 78 in 1957.

Sadly, brother Benjamin, born in 1879, can be found in Tendring workhouse in 1911 aged 32 and described as formerly a stoker for the Royal Navy. A note tells us that he has been an imbecile since the age of 31. Although the workhouse gives his place of birth as Dovercourt this is likely to be 'our' Benjamin. It is quite possible that his brother, Daniel, took him in when he clearly must have had a breakdown or an accident.

Horace Oscar Bailey was born in 1880 in Peldon. From January 1897 he served in the Royal Navy being discharged on the eve of his 30th birthday in May 1910. He served on several ships and at the time of signing up he was 16 and working as a farm boy.

In 1911 together with younger brother, Adam, he was living with their older sister, Emma, her husband and five children in Poplar. Both Bailey boys were single, Horace a dock worker and Adam a carman.

Between 1914 and 1920 Horace was a Sapper for the Royal Engineers working during the war for the Inland Waterways and docks section. In September 1915 he was listed on the Roll of medal winners as a sapper in the Royal Engineers.

In 1939 he was listed as an inmate of Dunton farm, Billericay. Unfortunately, this was an extension of Poplar workhouse. It was known as the Dunton Farm Colony which had experimented replacing the traditional workhouse labour with outdoor farm work. By the time Horace was there it was simply part of the regular workhouse and only single men were housed there. His occupation was given as a Bargeman. He died in Camberwell in October 1944.

Joshua was born in 1882 although his name may have been written incorrectly in the workhouse census and he was in fact called Josiah. It is possible he ended up in Portsmouth, married with two children.

Adam was born in 1884 and is found in Poplar with his older sister Emma's family and his brother, Horace in 1911. Beyond that census he disappears. There is a likelihood he served in WW1 and possibly emigrated.

Of the girls, Ethel born in 1886 and Jessie born 1888, I can find no biographical details apart from the fact that Jessie was born after the death of her father.

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The 1901 census reveals another family's desperate situation, listing six children from the Claydon family in the Stanway Union workhouse, not listed as orphans, but with no parent present. Walter aged 13, May aged 12, Stanley aged 11, Alice aged 6, Elizabeth aged 3 and Arthur aged 1 are all in the workhouse; where their mother Emma was, is not known. An entry in the Peldon School logbook on 16th November 1900 marks when the family left the village and the four oldest children left the school

The Claydon's family have all gone to the Union (4)

The death of the children's father, George Claydon, who was buried in Peldon Churchyard in 1899, must have spelled disaster for the family.

George was born and bred in Peldon, his father James also, and they were employed as agricultural labourers. He married Emma née Owers in Kelvedon in 1886. Their daughter, Louisa Emma, sadly died in 1897 at 2 or 3 years of age but six of their children were to end up in the Stanway Union workhouse where they can be found in the 1901 census.

In May 1901 both Elizabeth and Alice Claydon died in the workhouse, aged 4 and 7 respectively, and their names appear in the Burials Register for Peldon.

Walter George Claydon born in 1887 can be found in the 1911 census in West Ham living with his mother's brother, Fred Owers, a painter and decorator. At 24 years of age, Walter was working for a coal merchant. He went on to marry Vera Horsnell in West Ham in 1916 and had a daughter Marjorie who was born in 1919.

Sister Annie May who was 12 in 1901 at the workhouse went into service and can be found in 1911 working as a housemaid, one of three servants, in the household of barrister, Roland Butler, in Hampstead. At the age of 26 she married Fred Bellchambers in Hammersmith and her older brother Walter signed the register as a witness. Fred Bellchambers was an ironmonger and he and May can be found in Willesden in the 1939 Register with a son and daughter. She died aged 70 in Willesden.

Stanley who was eleven years old in 1901 married Lily Grace Berry in West Ham in 1912 and had a son Frederick Stanley Claydon in 1915. In 1911 he can be found in East Ham aged 21, a lodger and a painter.

Arthur who was only 1 when in the workhouse can be found ten years later in the census for Dedham as a boarder but at school. Another boarder worked for the GER [Great Eastern Railway] and on Stanley's marriage certificate he is listed as a railway porter. He married Helen Octavia Herrington in 1927 in Greenwich.

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Three orphaned brothers appear in the 1861 census for the Stanway Union workhouse, Alfred, Arthur and John Instance. They were the sons of James Instance and Susannah Talbot both from Peldon. I discovered their mother had died in 1858. Their father did not appear in the 1861 census. By 1871 he was living in Tillingham with a new wife and three young children.

Of the three boys, Alfred who was born in 1849, also known as Peter Alfred Instance, was 11 when in the workhouse in 1861. He appears aged 2 in the Peldon 1851 census with his parents, his father listed as an agricultural worker. Following his time in the workhouse, according to an indenture dated 1864, Peter Alfred, aged 13, was apprenticed as a merchant seaman to John Larkin in Tollesbury on board the Colchester vessel, MYSTERY. He ended up in Cornwall, married in about 1874 and had a big family, one son becoming a shipwright. In all the censuses he is listed as a mariner and in 1891 is part of a 100-strong crew on board the ship, CRESSIDA, on the night of the census moored in Argyll, Scotland. In 1901 he was Master on board LADY RUTH, a sailing yacht and pleasure-craft moored in Southampton on the night of the census. It became evident that both brothers, Peter Alfred and Arthur moved to Cornwall and in a Falmouth Directory of 1912 both are listed as mariners. Peter Alfred died aged 77 in Falmouth in 1928.

In 1871, Peter Alfred's brother Arthur was living with an uncle and aunt at West Mersea aged 16, his uncle was a mariner. By 1891 at 34 Arthur is in Cornwall with a wife and two sons. In the 1911 census aged 56 he is listed as a merchant seaman living in Flushing, Falmouth with a Cornish-born wife, they have three sons and a daughter and the eldest son is also a mariner. Arthur lived to the age of 75 and died in 1929 a year after his brother.

The third brother, John, was born in 1856. He can be found in the 1871 census for Tillingham, aged 15, living with his father, James, his second wife and their three young children. John went to Queensland in Australia and married in 1879. In the 1870s there were assisted passages to Queensland which many labourers from Essex took advantage of given the shortage of jobs here. John and his wife had two children although his little boy died in childhood. John himself was to die in Australia at only 40 years old in 1896.

Watching the BBC News one evening in 2019, a coastguard, James Instance was interviewed in his capacity as the Manager at the Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Cornwall. Could he be a descendant of Peldon's Instance brothers?

Elaine Barker
Peldon History Project

If you are related to any of the families above and can add to (or correct!) any of the information above, I would love to hear from you via the Mersea Museum website. We'd also be delighted to receive any photographs.

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