7.2 The interesting lives of the children of David Windebank and Elizabeth Topper

I always like to research the children and siblings of my direct ancestors, because they (generally) didn’t live their lives isolated from family or their family environment. Of the ten children of David Windebank and Elizabeth Topper, several lived fairly ordinary but nonetheless interesting lives, while one married into a place in history, and at least one ended in tragedy.

Interesting: 2^nd great grand aunt Susan Windebank was their third child after Elizabeth Sarah Windebank, born in Dorney, Buckinghamshire, in 1851. By the 1871 census she is working as a servant in the household of a Charles Brooks, Chemist, at 355 Wandsworth Road, Lambeth. In the July-September quarter of 1878, aged nearly 30, she married widower John Davis, who was around ten years her senior. I was surprised to see her husband’s occupation in the 1881 census as ‘London City Missionary’ and, in 1911, US Naval Pensioner, US Citizen by naturalisation’. Intrigued, I googled the Mission and the man’s name, only to find that he was a well-known character at the time.

John Davis was born in Meonstoke Hampshire on 23 November 1839. An article on the Internet recounts that he ran away to sea aged 14, and that “By his mid-twenties, his life consisted of drinking, gambling and womanising. Penniless and with little option, he signs up for the Unionist side of the American Civil War”. Aged 29, in 1864, he found himself thrown from the USS Tulip into the Potomac river after an explosion that killed 47 men. He later found his way to Australia at the time of the gold rush, and then found rather more prosaic work as a dock worker in London, where it is said he was inspired by the preaching of evangelist Dwight L Moody. He gave up drink and joined the London City Mission, later founding a branch in Gedling Street, Bermondsey, for US Civil War veterans like himself.

After his brush with death in the US, John came to London and in 1867 married Martha Maria Aulert, daughter of a mariner, and possibly one of John’s former naval colleagues. They had three children before Martha died (probably in childbirth) after their third child was born in 1877, a year before he married Susan Windebank.

John Davis and his wife Susan lived at Blue Anchor Lane, Bermondsey, for several decades, close to Susan’s parents David Windebank and Elizabeth Topper and Susan’s married sister Elizabeth Sarah Hill. In the heart of Bermondsey, there were no doubt many who John and Susan reached out to as part of the Mission. John died in 1917 and was buried in an unmarked grave in Nunhead Cemetery. A memorial was placed there by his great great grandson recently. Several of their children emigrated to Canada, married and had families there. This may have been related to their father’s missionary work with the London City Mission, as the Ragged School movement (Davis set up his Association for US Civil War Veterans at the Gedling Street Ragged School) sent Victorian poor children to Canada to start a new life.

Tragic: Charles James Windebank was born in Reading in 1854 and followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a Farrier. He married Adelaide Tilley in 1875 in Newington, and they had four children, the youngest, Lillie, in 1890. Sadly a year later, Charles is recorded on the 1891 census at the London Lunatic Asylum as a patient. He was said by one of his descendants to have been kicked in the head by a horse just before Lillie’s birth, and spent the rest of his life in institutions. He is recorded in the 1901 census as a patient, as he is in 1911, (record at The Genealogist) this time at Cane Hill Asylum in Coulsdon, Surrey. Only his initials are shown, as was often the practice with institutions in the censuses, but the entry reads starkly: ‘CJW, Patient, 56, Married, Farrier, b.Berkshire, Reading, Lunatic 35 years’.  He died in the asylum in 1919.

The rest of the children led fairly ordinary, generally respectable lives, for relatively poor Victorian Londoners:

Caroline Windebank was born in Reading in 1853. By the 1871 census she is working as a servant in the household of Norman Beklin from Hamburg, a Tutor in languages, in Kew. In the 1881 census she is visiting her married sister Elizabeth Sarah Hill at Blue Anchor Lane, Bermondsey and gives her occupation as a ‘shirt trimmer, cuffs’. In 1884, she married John Stratford, then a commercial traveller but who, by the 1901 census, is a ‘baker/confectioner on own account’ at 1 Juxon Street, Lambeth Walk, Lambeth. She is assisting her husband in the confectionary business, still at the same address, by the 1911 census, where they record that they have been married for 27 years and have had no children. She died aged in 66 in Lambeth in 1920.

Charlotte Sarah Windebank was born in 1858 in Turnham Green, the first of her siblings to be born in London. She married Charles Jenner, a Blacksmith’s Labourer, in 1883 (perhaps he worked for her father?). They are living with her parents and their six year old son in Blue Anchor Lane in the 1891 census. By the 1911 census she is recorded as a widow (her husband died earlier in 1911) and working as a cleaner for the LCC (London County Council). She had been married for 28 years, and four of her eight children had died (I have only found records for five of them). On the census, 19 year old daughter Rosetta is shown as ‘fits, 5 years’. Perhaps she suffered from a form of epilepsy.

Thomas Windebank married twice. He was born in Lambeth just after the 1861 census and married for the first time in 1885 to Jane Warburton. At that time he is described as a ‘Provisions Dealer’. Jane died (presumably – record not found) before 1891, as Thomas married for a second time – as SINGLE, not a widower - in March 1891 in Hendon-cum-Kingsbury to Annie Beatrice Kirby. His occupation is given as Milkman. His signature and father’s name and occupation match those on his first marriage certificate. He is recorded as a Milkman in the 1891 census at Derby Buildings, St Pancras. I haven’t found them in later censuses.

Sarah Windebank married George Gilham, a Hop Porter, in 1889, when she was 26. They had nine children in the 21 years of marriage up to the 1911 census, all of whom had survived. She died in Lewisham in 1931.

Question marks: I haven’t been able to trace 2^nd great grand uncles David Windebank (b1850) nor William G (b1859) in later censuses. More research to do.

For the sources mentioned in bold, see blogpost: MyRoots: Lesly's family history: Sources and resources: A quick view