The Descendants of George Zachariah Wombwell

If this side of the Wombwell family knew anything, they knew cows, and James Wombwell's eldest son was to prove no exception. Born in 1843 in Hackney, George Zachariah married Eleanor Barber (1850-1928) in 1867 at St John the Baptist Church, Shoreditch. From London, George Zachariah and Eleanor made their way up to Bradford, Yorkshire where they settled down, and George set up business as a tripe dresser, patiently preparing cow's stomachs to a point where they would be fit for human consumption.

When, later in life, he and his family had tired of tripe, he took a leaf out of his Uncle George Wombwell junior's book and attempted to establish himself as a photographer. He died in Boroughbridge in 1936.

George Zachariah Wombwell and Eleanor Barber's children and grandchildren, in other words, the fourth cousins x1 removed, and fifth cousins, respectively of Hetty Jane Owen were:

i. Ellen Sophia Wombwell (1869–1941). Ellen was born in Islington and died in Buckrose, Yorkshire. She married Ben Ewart Charlesworth, and they had two children, George Wombwell Charlesworth (1896-1900) and Gertrude Charlesworth (1900-1971). Gertrude married an Arthur Clarkson.

ii. Elizabeth Augusta Wombwell (1871–1938). Elizabeth was born at 12 Trees Court, Bower Street, Horton, Bradford. She married Joshua Bywater in 1896 at St Peter, Bradford. They had five children: Samuel Bywater (1896–1896), May Evelyn Bywater (1897–1987), Irene Bywater (1900–1901), Eleanor Wombwell Bywater (1902–1981), who married George Pearson, and Chrissie Bywater (1912–2000), who married Alfred James Beardmore. They were all Yorkshire born and bred, and lived out their days in the county.

iii. George Henry Wombwell (1875–1881).

iv. Ernest Wombwell (1877–1948). Ernest married Sarah Ann Clayburn at St Clement, Bradford in 1900. Their four children were: Percy Wombwell (1901–1972), who married Louisa Dean; Edith Wombwell  (1903–1989), who married James William Flatt; George Wombwell (1905–????), who married Hilda Pickles; and Winifred Wombwell (1910–1998). This line too remained rooted in Yorkshire.

v. Percy Wombwell (1883-1852). Percy married Christiana Wood. Their children were William Henry Wombwell (1908–1978), who married Irene Proudfoot, and Nellie Wombwell (1911–1986):, who married Wilfred L. Binns. The family remained in Yorkshire.

vi. Gertrude Wombwell (1885–1962). Gertrude married Lawrence Gilbert Mountjoy Hardy (1881–1944). Their children were: Annie Hardy (1910–1910), Sydney Hardy (1911–1977), who married Muriel Ferguson; Dudley Wombwell Hardy (1914–1965), who married Audrey Wilkinson, Gilbert Percy Hardy (1916–1941), Fred Hardy (1918–2003), who married Mary Moss, and Geoffrey Hardy (1923–2002), who married Mona Teresa Webster.

Interestingly, the third, fourth and fifth children were all born in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, so sometime after 1911, the family must have emigrated there only to return to Yorkshire after the First World War in 1919.

Dudley Wombwell Hardy must have acquired a taste for life on the other side of the Atlantic. He died in Santa Clara, California.

Able Seaman Gilbert Percy Hardy meanwhile was lost on HMS Diamond on April 26th, 1941 when it was attacked and sunk by German fighter jets whilst evacuating UK military from Greece. 

HMS Diamond in Hong Kong before the war.
Taken by a Warrant Officer Class 2 in The Royal Scots (British Army) who died in world war II. Submitted by Aileen & Bernard Trinder - Submitted to OTRS, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3604020

vii. May Wombwell (1886–1893), and
viii. Doris Evelyn Wombwell (1891–1892) both died young in Bradford.

Lordship Road 2017

Lordship Road is still there, and so too is the Red Lion pub, rebuilt when Church Street was widened in 1924, and with not a hint of its venerable history on display. Outside however, in the small beer garden, a pair of large closed off gates hint at an entrance that could have been used long ago by horses and overseen by a certain Mr Webster, who was to inherit the livery stable business of Maria West after her death in 1846. A Red Lion pub has been on this site since since 1697, and by 1839 was reportedly a meeting place for 'respectable tradesmen'. Somewhere very close by were the homes of the Wombwells and the elephant house that Zachariah Wombwell was to convert into his living room.

Maria West Adds a Codicil

When Maria added a codicil to her will shortly before her death in 1846, she chose, for whatever reason, to remove George Wombwell senior as her executor, and made a number of other alterations in her dispensations. 

Maria may have had sound reasons for this. George senior was not getting any younger, and was still living an itinerant life on the road. Furthermore, both her daughters were now married, and the family was by in possession of a very reasonable independent income from their lands in County Down, Ireland. In this context, who was there left who would want to take on the all the highly demanding animal husbandry responsibilities generated by the Wombwell menagerie?   

In an abrupt turn-around, Maria decided to pass on many of the items in the livery stable business, such as the harnesses Hetty Jane Owen's direct ancestors with the menagerie business.and saddles, to John Webster, the proprietor of the Red Lion public house nearby. And that was the end of the involvement of Hetty Jane Owen's direct ancestors with the menagerie business.  

The Red  Lion

The Will of Maria West

Maria West's will remained for a long time remained one of the more puzzling documents to emerge out of this research, not least because before discovering her origins and background, the complexity and detail in the arrangements she made seemed so out-of-tune with what was then known about her from the 1841 census which simply records her as a widowed stablekeeper of Stoke Newington, Middlesex 

Maria was however, as it turned out, the grand-daughter of Dr. Seneca Hadzor of County Down on one side, and on the other, a descendant of the Anglo-Irish West family with a father who was a member of the Grand Lodge of Freemasons. She counted amongst her forebears and relatives distinguished medical practitioners, army officers and businessmen.

Codicil to the will of Maria Wombwell. Note the bequests to John Webster of the Red Lion, George Wombwell, and her daughters Harriett Wombwell (Robinson) and Sophia Wombwell (Wallace, spelled here 'Wallis'). The complete will has been added to the archive section of this Blog. Maria was living in Lordship Road, Stoke Newington at this time.

And yet, there she was, in 1798, a woman we may take it of no little education and knowledge, embarking on an illicit relationship with a man of English farming stock, who was when she met him, to put it very simply – a complete nobody. 

We must conclude therefore that Richard Wombwell was a man of no little charm and persistence. Given though the marriage and inheritance laws of the day, in succumbing to their passions, Richard and Maria  managed to immeasurably complicate not only their own lives but those of the next generation as well.

Perhaps, as the nineteenth century approached, Maria West had found herself in a position in her early thirties where she felt she had little left to lose. How she might have landed herself in this quandary is, as we have already noted, anybody's guess.