8.3 Thomas Stocking & Susan Brown: A second marriage? Later lives and deaths

 By the 1861 census, my 4xgreat grandfather Thomas Stocken is living at 4 Ann’s Place, Kent Road, Aged 52 (b.1809) with ‘wife’ Hannah, b1808, from Cork, Ireland, with 15 year old son William (b1846). What had happened to my 4xgreat grandmother Susan Brown?

I found her death record at the end of 1851. The death certificate shows that Susan Stocking died on 18th November 1851 at 1 Castle Street, Kent Road, aged 48 (b1803). She is described as Wife of Thomas Stocking, Mat Maker. The cause of death was ‘fever, 3 weeks certified’ and the informant was Mary Ann Stocking, her daughter-in-law, wife of James Thomas Stocking, who was also living at Castle Street at the time.

Three years later, in 1854, there was a significant cholera outbreak (see report at The Wellcome Library). Her ‘fever’ may or may not have been related, or was simply a bad bout of influenza or other infectious disease.

The marriage banns (At Ancestry) for Thomas Stocking (widower) and Hannah Lee (widow) were called twice, first on 9^th-23^rd March 1856 at St Mary Newington, and then again on 13-27 July of the same year, in the same church. I have not, however, so far found any record of the marriage taking place.

Widow Hannah Lee is described as the wife of Thomas Stocken on the 1861 census. 

His death certificate shows that he died, aged 55, at 4 Ann’s Place, on 8^th December 1864. He is described as a Rope Mat Maker, and the cause of death is ‘Fever, 14 days certified’. Perhaps a leftover of the cholera outbreak from the previous year or, as with his wife Susan, just another infectious disease causing fever. The informant is ‘Hannah Stocking’, present at the death (although no relationship such as ‘wife’ is given).

I haven’t found a burial record for Susan Stocking, but Thomas Stocking was buried on 18^th December 1864 at the City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery. Called Bow Cemetery by locals, it opened in 1841, and is considered (by Wikipedia) as one of the seven great London cemeteries.

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