We know from her entries in the 1851-1881 censuses, that my 4xgreat-grandmother Susannah Griffin was born in Loudwater, Buckinghamshire, 2.5 miles from High Wycombe. Her age in the censuses varies, indicating a year of birth around 1805-1808. By 1824, aged around 20, she had found her way to London, where she married Charles James Topper at St George, Hanover Square. Around the time of their marriage, her husband had stopped working as a Thames Lighterman and started a ten-year career with the London police force.
In the 1841 census, she is enumerated on her own with
four young children aged 4 months to ten years; they are living at Stanford in
Berkshire and she is described, aged 35, as ‘Independent’. I have yet to find
her husband elsewhere in the census, but by then he was already working as a
Foreman Porter for the Great Western Railway at Brentford Docks. In the 1851
and 1861 censuses, she is with her husband at Botwell, Hayes,
Middlesex.
In 1871, in Hayes Village, she is described as a ‘Monthly Nurse’ to the family of 30 year old brickmaker William Smith and his wife, and their family of seven, including a five year old son, as yet unnamed. She moved with Charles James Topper to 36 Catherine Wheel Yard, near the Brentford Docks, and was still living there in 1881, two years after he died following an accident at work. She is still described as a monthly nurse, but is not living with any particular family at the time.
Victorian Monthly
Nurses, Midwives & Wet Nurses : (genealogystories.co.uk) offers some
insights into the nature of the position of Monthly Nurse, the qualities
required (according to various books of advice to mothers of the day) and the short-term
nature of employment. Presumably Susannah Griffin – by now aged in her
mid-late 70s – had a reasonable reputation, but was ‘out of place’ at the time
of the 1881 census.
Her death was subject to a coroner’s inquest, like her
husband’s, and was reported in the newspapers of the day. On 28 February 1882, it
seems that she got out of bed and fell downstairs, fracturing her thigh. The
fall proved fatal to the elderly woman, and she died just over a week later on
8 March 1882. The coroner was the same Dr Diplock who oversaw the inquest on
her husband three years earlier; it took place, as did his, at the Catherine
Wheel Inn, High Street, Brentford.
Her son appears to have given evidence to the effect that
she had been able to explain to him how the accident had come about; his name
is not given in the newspaper report, but is presumably her only son, Charles
James Topper, named after his father.
Her death certificate describes her death as ‘Violent’ and
gives the date of the inquest.
Her age at death is shown as 76 years, indicating a birth
year – like the censuses – of around 1806. A search for her baptism in
Loudwater, Buckinghamshire, five years either side of 1806, finds nothing
obvious at Ancestry, but FindMyPast has a Bishop’s Transcript
that could be the right one. It is in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and shows
that a Susanna Griffin was baptised on 11 March 1804, daughter of Samuel
Griffin and his wife Lezey. Loudwater was a ‘chapelry’ within High
Wycombe, the brick built St Peter’s church dedicated in 1788 (and still
standing), so there may be other registers available that are not online. Buckinghamshire
Archives only has Loudwater baptism records from 1866, so earlier records
may not have survived.
For the sources mentioned in bold, see blogpost: MyRoots: Lesly's family history: Sources and resources: A quick view
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