The Later Years of Henry Smale Bradley and Maria Harriett Robinson

Henry’s baking career, as may have been expected all along, was soon put to one side. By 1851 Bradley the baker of Bow had become Bradley the builder of Chelsea. The very next year, in 1852, the first of Henry and Maria’s children arrived and was born a Chelsea girl, but it should be no surprise with Henry to find that the family did not remain there for long. Their second child was born in 1854 in Paddington, their third in 1857, in Marleybone, and by the time the fourth came on the scene in 1861, the family was back in Bow, living at 8 Coborn Street, with their own live-in servant, Susannah Roberts. Their travels were by no means over yet, for the youngest daughter Kate was born in Camberwell, south of the river in 1867, and by the time of the 1871 census the family were esconced at 79 Clifden Road, Hackney, along with Henry’s mother, Elizabeth Hounsell, and Henry’s sister, the widowed Louise Jones. With all the children still at home, this now made for a crowded household of ten people.

Coborn Street. Painting by Harold Steggles. From: http://www.artvalue.com/auctionresult--steggles-harold-1911-1971-unit-coborn-street-bow-2134685.htm

It will be remembered from Henry’s letters that the subject of in-laws had been raised before, and perhaps Henry as well as contemplating the snobberies of Harriett Wombwell should equally have been considering what to do about his own domineering mother, whom he had promised to keep out of the marital home. But what was the subject of pre-nuptial friction, did not apparently take very long to become post-nuptial fact. Even as early as 1861, Elizabeth was firmly entrenched in the Coborn Street home. And, ominously for Maria, she appears at the top of the census list, described in black and white as ‘Head of the Household.’ Who exactly ruled the Hackney kitchen is of course not reported in the census, and nor is where Henry might have chosen to hide out.

1861 Census: Elizabeth Hounsell takes control