George Wombwell Junior and Elizabeth Adella Cresey

After this lengthy digression into the missionary career of Ann Fanny Wombwell, it may be worth repeating that after the death of Fanny Eliza Kienlen in 1863, and the disintegration of his menagerie and subsequent imprisonment for bankruptcy, George Wombwell junior dusted off his cornet, and began his musical career in the menagerie bands. Our last sighting him was in the North of England, in Stockton, in 1871, and having exerted, at a guess, a certain roguish charm and ability to turn a good tale, he had succeeded in seducing an impressionable girl still in her early twenties into marriage. This was Elizabeth Adella Cresey (1849-1897), a Suffolk girl from Bury St. Edmonds, the daughter of a miller's carter. They got married in Yarmouth, Norfolk in 1869, Elizabeth just twenty years old at the time, with George junior now closer to fifty than forty. Ann Fanny Wombwell's step-mother was hence just a mere two years older than her. 

In the 1881 census, George and Elizabeth were back in London living at 132 Provost Road, Hoxton Town, Shoreditch:

1881 census

Not much seems to have changed when the 1891 census came round. The family were living now at 107 Provost Road. George continued to play his cornet, and Elizabeth supplemented their income by working as a dressmaker. Their daughter, Amelia Gertrude Wombwell, born in 1870 in South Shields, Durham, had by now been trained up by her mother as a shirtmaker. Not for this side of the family, the adventures of a missionary life in China, nor indeed the glamour of the menagerie.

1891 census

Rather, the endless enervating struggle to make ends meet in the unforgiving environment of the East End. Elizabeth Adella Cresey as we know from the Daily Mail profile ended her days in the infirmary in 1897, worn out no doubt by the challenge of keeping the family afloat.