18.6 4xgreat grand aunt Anne Sporne: Tailor’s wife

My 5xgreat grandparents Thomas Sporne and his wife Mary Beck had eight children, including my 4xgreat grandmother Margaret Sporne (b1799). 

After Margaret came John (b1802) and then William, who was born in November 1804 and died eight months later, in the following August. Just over a year after his death, their second daughter, Anne Sporne, was baptised at Burnham Westgate on 12 October 1806.

On 13 September 1826, aged 19, she married William Groome, a Tailor, at Burnham Sutton. Their first child was Anne Elizabeth Groome, born in 1827 in North Creake, a few miles south of the Burnhams. They appear only to have had three children, all baptised in Norfolk: after Anne came William (b1832) and Harriet (b1834). In the 1841 census, the family is living at St Giles, Cripplegate, London. They may have moved to London earlier, as son William, aged 8, is shown as ‘born in county’ like his father. His mother and older sister were both ‘born out of county’. Ten years later they are at 2 Popes Cottages. Son William has joined his father in the tailoring business. I have not found them in the 1861 census. However, TNA has a record of a suit in Chancery brought by William Groom and his wife Ann against defendants Thomas Sporne, John Sporne and (later) Aaron Wales and his wife Margaret, née Sporne. Without access to the record, we do not know if they won the suit and, if so, what it achieved. However, by the 1871 census, it seems that William Groome has died, as Anne is shown as a widow in Mile End Old Town, working as a Needlewoman.

By then her son William Groome has married and started a large family of his own, marrying Emma, the daughter of Cornelius Jaquin, a Button Manufacturer, in 1852. He continued in the button manufacturing business, having worked as a tailor for several years. TNA has a catalogue record for business and family papers of the Jaquin family held at Hackney Archives. It is not clear whether William Groome set up a separate business, or worked with his wife’s Jaquin family.

Ann Sporne’s daughter Anne Elizabeth Groome married Thomas Horley, a Master Baker, and set up home with him initially in Brick Lane in Spitalfields, and subsequently in other parts of East London. By 1881, she has been widowed and is working as a Baker herself (her husband died in 1878); two of her sons are also bakers, and a younger son is ‘shop boy’ – presumably helping to serve in the bakery. Ten years later she is living alone in Walthamstow, now described as ‘living on own means’, so has presumably retired. She died on 25 December 1899 and is buried in Walthamstow Cemetery.

Anne Sporne’s daughter Harriet, born in 1834, was buried in Burnham in 1835.

Anne Sporne died in 1873, aged 66, and was buried in Tower Hamlets cemetery.

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