Henry Bradley Junior

The eldest son of Henry Bradley and Maria Robinson, was naturally named after his father (if nothing else, the naming conventions of the era saved everyone hours of agonizing deliberations and debates about what to call new born children). Henry junior was born in 1854 in Paddington. He got married in 1878 to an Islington girl, Louisa Elizabeth Fairbrother, and by 1881, they were living in Stoke Newington with their newly born son, Ernest Harry Bradley, then four years old. Henry junior followed in his father’s footsteps, and had started out his professional career as a Managing Clerk for a Builders’ Company – just exactly as we found his father back in 1851.

The address of Henry Junior and Louisa in 1881 - 44 Winston Road - is interesting too. This must have been some kind of family property, because two years down the line, the daughter of Henry's younger sister, Maria Rosetta Bradley, and her husband Edward Owen was to be born in this very house.

What is more, living with Henry and Louisa was Louisa’s step-sister, aged 15. Her name was Edith Chapman. Remembering that Ann Jane Chapman was the wife of Henry senior’s brother, Thomas Edward Bradley, it looks again like the extended Victorian networking system had come into play.

Louisa died young, on the 23rd February 1882 at 44 Winston Road, and it must have been this event that led to the house transferring down to Maria Rosetta Bradley. Where the widowed Henry Junior then took off to, and what happened to young Ernest Harry remain unknowns. There is however a death record for a Henry Bradley for 1900 in Poplar.

Marriage of Hetty Jane Owen’s Uncle Henry Bradley and Louisa Fairbrother

Victorian Surveillance

Blackwall, Monday Night,

My Beloved Maria,

I have just finished your Aunt’s ….. and hope dear Maria you got home quite safe and from all surveillance from those at home. I hope dear aunt was not hurt at my not going… but you know dearest my reasons for not doing so………… I hope you will be able to come on Wednesday to my brother’s. They dine about 2… so will meet you a little before 2 by Bromley Church. I think you know the way dearest – get down at Byford Corner – at the side of Bow Church – thro’ the gates – to the left …. Where I hope to meet you dear Maria – could, dear you let me know if you can come… in the meantime believe me in haste my affectionate tho’ saucy (?) little Ria.. Your own affectionate and faithful Henry.

Maria Robinson and her family in the 1841 census for Poplar

Henry, it appears, was keeping up his contacts with elder brother, Thomas Edward, the baker, and one may guess that with the baker’s ovens fired up, a good meal was always to be had over with brother Thomas and his family. Of course, all these issues of surveillance remain quite intriguing, and Henry and Maria’s pre-marital relationship was certainly conducted in cloak and dagger fashion. But for now, Maria was to be introduced to Thomas Edward, his wife, Ann Jane Chapman, and approval and comfort sought.

Strange to consider too as Henry and Maria sat down for their dinner with Thomas Edward and Ann, that their son, Thomas Edward junior, aged just six, and gazing with fascination up at the young and perhaps beautiful Maria, would, before too many years had passed, be treading the aisle with Maria’s sister, Rosetta, herself, a mere child safely monitored at this very moment no doubt under the keen eye of Elizabeth Parker, Harriett Wombwell’s house servant and factotum.

Not that Maria was precisely a fountain of wisdom, maturity and experience at this point, and it is worth just reminding ourselves that as Maria took her place at Thomas Edward’s dining table on that Wednesday afternoon in 1848 most probably she was not yet twenty years old. If so, there may indeed have been good reasons for the surveillance that Henry snarls at, and one wonders even more what Maria, the silent and enigmatic Maria, whose replies to these letters have never come down to us, made of all Henry’s effusive communications. She was after all still just a teenager.

It may be then that Harriett Wombwell’s major concern was that Maria was in the time-honoured phrase simply ‘too young’. However, you can’t help but feel that there was more to it than this. Harriett herself had married young, and all the evidence suggests she was extremely keen on finding good husbands for her children. Henry, as he seems to have been resentfully aware, somehow did not fall into that category.

1851 Census Record for 65 Four Mills Lane in Bow, where Henry’s brother Thomas Edward ran his bakery business and provided refuge to Henry, and periodically, Maria.

Brotherly Concern

...Then, dearest, Maria, pledge me your troth that as true as I am to you so you will be to me – in a word constant to me, Maria – and, when dearest we have given each other our word to this… we shall be able to stand all trials with ease and fortitude – you know, beloved, I have proved my love to you both in word and in deed, and now pledge it to you as I have done before – why, dearest, why should you… why not frankly confess with me that our love is knitted together and that our happiness depends on the other. – I hope dearest your next sweet note will not be silent on this point, as we know not when we may… do let me entreat you beloved Maria to settle this question – when you write next. You know, dear Maria, we have been expecting to hear from my brother, Ted. The ship has been… ever since last Tuesday – they have lost their anchors and had very bad weather. I have just heard my dear brother has been ill the whole of the voyage home and is not able to write, so as you suppose, our dear mother is low in spirits – we expect him up at 6.00 tonight as she was just below Gravesend this morning.

A little incident happened on Sunday which you will hear of no doubt as it will give an opportunity to make mischief. When I got to the bottom of the stairs…. Miss ??? was standing on the other side and I went over to shake hands with her …. He coloured beautifully red as I walked by her side along with … and Miss Chapman – as far as the end of the lane – he seemed … cross over it but I was all the more pleased at that you may suppose..

It would seem that even Thomas Edward Bradley’s line of business took him out to sea periodically, and more than evident that like it or not that the Bradleys and Robinsons moved in the same circles, and that Victorian gossip, furthermore, was transmitted at lightning speed. Note as well that the 1848-49 cholera outbreak in London was to kill over 14,000 people. Reports of ill health therefore were no trivial matter.

London Fog: From the 1849 London Illustrated News:

http://www.victorianweb.org/science/environment/1.html

Surplus Women

The last entry brought to a close three generations of the descendants of Thomas Edward Bradley and Anne Jane Chapman. During this period the focus of the action quietly moves away from the docks and The East End, and from Middlesex into the lower-middle class surburbia of Forest Gate and West Ham in Essex, with many of the men starting to take up clerical and office work. The adventurous days of the mariners and menagerists of Rosetta Robinson’s family are left far behind as the Bradley clan settles down into more serious and respectable pursuits with not a hint of the scandals that had permeated the lives of previous generations. In short, it all starts to look a little serious, if not downright staid.

Of course the First World War is an ever constant in the background. Four years of bitter struggle led to the death of some 700,000 British soldiers, and brought the reality of conflict into the homes and households of virtually every family in the country, in a way that can never have happened before. The whole national psychology must have changed.

Furthermore, the war had created a gender imbalance with the post-war press referring to ‘superfluous’ or ‘surplus’ women. Mabel Louise Bradley (Auntie May) and her sister Maud Bradley were just two of many who lived out their lives as slightly eccentric spinsters, perhaps as a consequence of these changes. There is a photo somewhere of Maud and May taking a promenade somewhere on one of the southern English coastal resorts. Prim and proper in their hats and long black raincoats, they look ready at any instant to swing their handbags at anyone who steps out of place, or lets slip a misplaced word. They knew more however, one suspects, about the Bradley, Robinson and Wombwell skeletons in the cupboard than we ever will.

Surplus Women? Maud drops May a line at the beginning of 1914.

The Line of Thomas Edward Bradley and Ann Jane Chapman: The Third Generation

The Line of Thomas Edward Bradley and Ann Jane Chapman: The Second Generation

The Line of Thomas Edward Bradley and Ann Jane Chapman: The First Generation

First Generation
		Thomas Edward Bradley (1816-1857) m. Ann Jane Chapman (1817-1899)
2.	i	Thomas Edward Bradley (1843–1927). The key point about Thomas Edward Bradley (the second) is that he married Rosetta Robinson (1842-1928), daughter of Harriett Wombwell and Charles John Robinson. He was thus both nephew and brother-in law of Henry Smale Bradley. And Hetty Jane Owen by extension had a ‘double cousinhood’ relationship with him.  Thomas and Rosetta had seven children. Their timeline is as follows: 1843: Thomas was born at 4 Hill Street, Bow. 1851: Thomas, aged eight was a boarder on the West Ham Lane, Church Street District at a Classical and Commercial Scholary. 1861: Thomas was back living with his family at 4 Richard Street, Bow. 1865: He married Rosetta at the Holy Trinity Church in Mile End Town. He was then working as a licensed victualler in Brook Green, Hammersmith. 1871: Now married to Rosetta, he was living at 12 Baggally Street in Mile End Old Town and was a clerk in the wool trade. 1881: They were living at 14 St. James Road, West Ham. Thomas was now working as a commercial clerk. 1901 and 1911: They were living at 99 Caistor Park Road, West Ham, with Thomas working as a ship’s clerk. Memorial card for Rosetta Robinson, daughter of Harriett Wombwell, from the Box File
3.	ii	Ann Jane Bradley (1845–1891) was born in Bromley St. Leonard. She married Charles Norman in 1866 in St. Mary, Whitechapel, Tower Hamlets. They had seven children.  Charles was the elder brother of Edmund Norman, who married Alice Sophia Robinson, the youngest daughter of Harriett Wombwell. 1871: They were living at 4 Elizabeth Cott Fields, Forest Gate, West Ham. 1881: They were living at 55 St James Road, in the same street as Thomas Edward Bradley, above. 1891: They had moved on to 137 Boleyn Road, West Ham. This was the year of Ann Jane Bradley’s death.
4.	iii	Edwin Bradley (1849–????) was born in Four Mill Street (later to become St Leonards Street) in Bromley by Bow. He married Martha Downton in 1876 in Mile End Old Town and they had four children. In 1901 he was living at 35 Hampton Road, Forest Gate and was a Carriers Manager. He was made a Freeman of the City in 1917.
	iv	Louisa Mary Bradley (1850–????). No further information has been located about Louisa Mary or her two younger sisters below.
	v.	Rosetta Amelia Bradley  (1852–????)
	vi	Emma Bradley  (1855–????)

The Children of Thomas Bradley and Elizabeth Hounsell

The children of Thomas Bradley and Elizabeth Hounsell were:

i. Elizabeth Bradley (1814-????). Elizabeth was born in Tower Hamlets. We know nothing more of her.

ii. Thomas Edward Bradley (1816-1857). He was living in Four Mill Street (now St Leonards Street) at the time of the 1851 census with his wife and family and, like his father, working as a baker. He married Ann Jane Chapman in 1840 in Poplar.

The Sun Flour Mills, St Leonard Street. Probably the Bradleys sourced their flour from here.

iii. Maria Bradley (1817-????). She was living with her brother Henry and his family in 1861 in their house in 8 Coborn Street, Bow. She married Francis Benjamin Boyd Fleuret in 1841 St Dunstans and All Saints Church. He died in 1846, and the couple had two children.

iv. Louisa Bradley (1822-????). She married William Jones, a master mariner, in 1844 at St Dunstans and All Saints Church. Her younger brother, Henry Smale Bradley witnessed the ceremony. We know nothing of what happened to them. However, by 1851, Louisa was living with her recently widowed mother and youngest brother Edwin at 59 Canton Street, Poplar. Her husband may have been at sea or already deceased.

v. Henry Smale Bradley (1825-1880). He was a builder’s manager’s clerk in 1851 and was living in Chelsea with his wife and family.   It was this Henry that on the 20th August 1849 at the Shadwell Parish Church married Maria Harriett Robinson, the eldest daughter of Charles John Robinson and Harriett Wombwell.

vi. Edwin Bradley (1831-????) also became a mariner. He too vanishes from the scene after the 1851 census.

These children all grew up to the east of the Robinson parishes, specifically in in the Bromley-by-Bow and Poplar area. The bakery must have turned over a good profit, and may well have been a major supplier to the docks, since the children as they reached adulthood seemed to have both financial resources and to have been well-educated.

Of these children, Henry Smale Bradley was Hetty Jane Owen’s grandfather, and the other siblings her great uncles and aunts.

The lines of these children will now follow, starting with the rather extended line of Thomas Edward Bradley and Ann Jane Chapman.