18.8 4xgreat grandaunt Susan Sporne (1815-1889): Omnibus Conductor’s Wife

 My 5xgreat grandparents Thomas Sporne and his wife Mary Beck had eight children, including my 4xgreat grandmother Margaret Sporne (b1799). They married in January 1796 in Burnham Westgate, Norfolk. Susan Sporne was their seventh child and youngest daughter, baptised 22 January 1815 at Burnham Sutton. This is the first of her siblings baptisms to use a pre-printed form; her father’s occupation is given as Livery Servant – the first indication we have of his work.

Susan married a Thomas Gant of Little Walsingham at Burnham Westgate, by license, on 1 May 1834. Her husband was probably the brother of her sister Mary’s husband James Gant: two of the witnesses are James and Mary Gant (who had married five years earlier). By the 1841 census, the young couple are living at Market Lane, Little Walsingham with their three year old son George. Thomas is working as an Ostler – working with horses like his brother and father-in-law. By the 1851 census, they have followed others in the family to London. Thomas is working as an Omnibus conductor (which would have been pulled by horses). There is no sign of son George, but they have a two year old daughter Eliza at home. They are still in London, now in Shoreditch, ten years later, with daughter Eliza, now 12, still at school, and Thomas still working as an Omnibus Conductor. He died aged 55 in 1868. 

After her husband’s death, it seems that Susan at some point moved in with her married daughter Eliza Shaw and her husband Frederick – who was also an Omnibus Conductor - as they are living together at Mile End Old Town at the time of the 1871 census. Eliza is described on the census form as ‘formerly Milliner’. Susan continued living with her daughter and her expanding family for at least the next ten years, and died in 1889, in her 80s. She was buried at Newham Cemetery in January of that year. Her son George died aged 5, while daughter Eliza Mary lived to about 76 years old in London, and had at least eight children with her husband Frederick Shaw, Omnibus Conductor and later Carpenter.

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