This grave holds two parents, Charles and Sarah, and six of their eight children – Emily, William Campbell, Mary Jane, John Walter, Mabel, and Amy Elizabeth. Christopher Hiley’s excellent family history blog has already told Charles and Sarah’s stories so we’ll let you go there and read all about them. But what about the two daughters named here to lived to adulthood – Mabel and Amy?
Mabel seems at first to have simply stayed at home after she finished school, but she soon took on work alongside her father as a music teacher. Charles must have been in high demand and needed help, and who better (and probably cheaper) than a daughter? Mabel was the eldest daughter and second eldest child so it makes sense; most eldest daughters ended up staying at home anyway to help with the other children, an informal but highly common Victorian custom. Mabel was at least, interestingly, advertising separately from Charles, which might indicate that her income was considered hers at least.
Sarah’s death in 1909 sealed the deal. Mabel, along with her other unmarried sister Edith (who had become headmistress at Roomfield School) and a servant named Bessie Whitham were at home with Charles on the 1911 Census and there they stayed. Mabel stayed busy by accompanying Edith when she played the violin at various functions, and during WW1 she got her qualifications with the St. John Ambulance Association. After Charles’s death in 1922 Mabel and Edith continued to live together, moving to Beech Avenue by the time of the 1939 Census. Edith continued to teach while Mabel stayed at home. After Mabel died in 1945 she was remembered in two ways: first, money donated to the War Fund in her memory by Horace and Nellie Hartley (of Hartley’s Opticians fame), and second, a purple burse (box for carrying altar cloths and vestments), veil, and four stoles donated to Christ Church by one of her sisters.
Amy became a dressmaker, and in the early 1900s caught the eye of Sam Baldwin, one of the sons of mineral water manufacturer Greenwood Baldwin. Sam wanted to take the carbonated water experience a few steps further and instead of focusing on fizzy drinks went into the explosives business. That’s right – explosives! He was extremely intelligent and won scholarships to grammar schools and colleges, specialising in inorganic chemistry. He moved to Essex in 1905 to manage an explosives manufacturing business and in 1906 he and Amy married, and she joined him down south. The pair had two sons, George and Wilson, and Sam’s income increased to £500 a year from 1912 – very respectable at that time. His work meant he was spared heading to the front during WW1, no doubt a relief for Amy…but he did something for the war effort as he was given an MBE afterwards for his efforts. He went on to help run a gelignite factory, as would son Wilson. This is more about them than Amy, isn’t it? Amy was a quiet soul, maybe a homebody, and there are few mentions of any Mrs. A. or Mrs. S. Baldwins in Essex in the right time period, and none can be clearly identified as her. She got a small death notice in the papers here, at least, when she died in 1952. Sam followed her in 1957 and is buried elsewhere.
