Sophia Wombwell: The Sister of George Wombwell Junior

The Red Lion in 2017 from Church Street. To the left is Lordship Road. 

Sophia Wombwell was born in 1818 in Stoke Newington, and was hence just four years older than her brother, George Wombwell junior. She was still living there in 1851 in Lordship Lane, next door to the same John Webster to whom Maria West had bequested her livery stable accoutrements back in 1846 and who was the proprietor of the Red Lion public house on the corner of Church Street. Sophia was working as a charwoman. By 1851, she had moved to Hornsey and was working as a monthy nurse.This increasingly popular job of the period basically entailed looking after mothers and their new-born babies in the period just following birth. It was a profession that was to disappear with the onset of modern midwifery. This is to say that while monthly nurses may have had experience (largely their own), they basically had no qualifications or training in such care of any kind. 

Sophia had three children. Note that these three children all carried their mother's name, and there is no sign of a father in the 1841, 1851 or 1861 censuses. Sophia died in 1865. The three children, third cousins x2 removed of Hetty Jane Owen were:

i. Emily Wombwell (1839–1902). Emily married William Best, a labourer, and died in Hackney in 1902. They had no children.

ii. Matilda S Wombwell (1843–????) seemed to move round London, never married and died finally in Hackney in 1931.


iii. Robert Wombwell (1846–????)