Harriet Symonds (1841-1899).
My 3rd great grand aunt.
Harriet was born on 29 August 1841 to parents Charles Robinson Witchingham Symonds and Susannah Waters. She was baptised on 8 September at St Nicholas’s Church in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk.
She married young in 1858, her husband being Henry Swan Chapman who was born in Yarmouth in 1838. The 1861 and 1871 censuses show them living in Napoleon Place, Henry listed as a beachman and with a growing family in tow. By 1881 they were in Lancaster Road but trouble was afoot for the Yarmouth Mercury of 5 July 1884 featured a public notice taken out by Henry, said to be a beachman of 1 Portland Place, in which he said he would no longer be liable for his wife’s debts. This clearly marked a breakdown in his relationship with Harriet and later reports after her death paint a picture of her as having been a troubled alcoholic for many years.
The 1891 census showed them back together and living with one of their sons in Napoleon Place but it’s unclear whether this was a temporary or permanent arrangement.
Harriet died after falling downstairs at home, as the Eastern Evening News of 31 August 1899 reported under the heading ‘Domestic drama at Yarmouth: Strange sample of seaside lodging’. Widow Henry told an inquest at the St John’s Head that he had gone out to work as normal, returning home at 5.30pm. He found his wife asleep in her room so made his own tea and stayed in all evening, to stop her in case she woke and wanted to go out to buy drink. He’d also undertaken various household duties during the evening, especially in relation to the lodgers. When his son went to bed at 10.15pm he found Harriet lying dead at the foot of the stairs.
Henry told the court he had had an unhappy home for a great many years owing to his wife’s drinking, and she’d been drinking constantly for a fortnight before her death. She drank stout and spirits, hid more alcohol in soda bottles and he’d confiscated other drinks from her bedroom. Henry told the hearing that he was not addicted to drink. His son Henry Jnr said that his mother was drunk by lunchtime that day and had to crawl upstairs to her room to rest. He then went to work. When he came home that night and opened the door to go upstairs to bed, he found his mother lying behind it dead with her head in her lap. He said that his mother was a good woman when sober but when drunk she would row frequently with her husband.
Henry Snr said he’d not heard his wife fall downstairs but said that he’d spent some of the evening sat outside in his front garden. Dr Vickers, who was called to the scene, said that Harriet, who he described as a stout woman of very great weight, had died instantaneously from a broken neck. PC West reported that none of the neighbours had heard any sounds of a row from the property. The jury returned a verdict of accidental death.
Henry died five years after his wife on 30 January 1904. The Norfolk News of 6 February reported it as a sudden death and an inquest was held at the Crown Tavern. His daughter Elizabeth told the hearing that she had last seen her father, who’d previously suffered from heart trouble, when he was in bed on the evening of Friday 29 January. The next morning she sent some egg beaten up in tea (!) for his breakfast with one of her daughters, but she had found him silent. When Elizabeth arrived, he was dead. His doctor said that he’d treated Henry for pains in his chest and head the previous summer and concluded that he’d died of heart failure. A verdict of death by natural causes was returned. In his will he left effects valued at around £267.
Harriet and Henry Snr had a number of children:
- Harriet Maria Chapman (1859-1926). Born in Great Yarmouth in 1859, Harriet married bricklayer Walter Carter and raised a family in the town. She died in 1926 while Walter lived until 1931.
- Henry Chapman (1860-????). Born in Great Yarmouth in 1859, he crops up at home in the 1861 and 1871 censuses but died at some point in the next few years bearing in mind the birth of another Henry in 1876.
- William Charles Swan Chapman (1862-1928). William was born in 1862 and married Hannah Elen Watson in St Nicholas’s Church, Great Yarmouth, in 1884. He died in June 1928 having worked for many years as a fish merchant in town. Hannah died in 1932.
- Edwin / Edward Samuel Chapman (1863-1940). Edwin was born in 1863 and married Augusta Sarah Howard in St Nicholas’s Church, Great Yarmouth, in 1889. By this point he appears to have dropped the name Edwin in favour of Edward. He worked as a self-employed fishmonger and merchant, earning enough to afford a general servant. He died in February 1940, followed a few weeks later by his wife.
- Elizabeth Swan Chapman (1865-1916). Elizabeth was born in 1865 in Great Yarmouth and married Richard Furness in St Nicholas’s Church, Great Yarmouth, in 1886. However, he came from Mile End in the east end of London and they lived in that area for a number of years. They raised a family and one of their daughters, Hilda, was baptised in Poole, Dorset. Perhaps they had moved to the coast for work? The 1911 census noted that Elizabeth had become deaf 12 years earlier and she died young in 1916. Richard lived until 1940.
- Florence Sarah Ann Chapman (1870-1875). Florence was baptised at St Nicholas’s Church, Great Yarmouth, in 1870 and died in 1875.
- Alice Rosanna Chapman (1875-1955). Alice was born in 1875 in Great Yarmouth and married Essex-born carpenter Ezra Payne in St Nicholas’s Church, Great Yarmouth, in 1897. The couple emigrated to Ontario in Canada in 1906 and raised their family there. He died in 1944 and Alice followed in 1955.
- Henry Swan Chapman (1876-1952). Born in Great Yarmouth in 1876, Henry married Charlotte Eliza Cook in 1903. He worked as a labourer and a clerk at a local gas works for much of his life. Charlotte, who in the 1939 Register was noted as incapacitated by illness, died in Northgate Hospital in 1949. Henry died there in 1952.
Sources: BMDs, census records and other data from Ancestry.co.uk, Findmypast.co.uk and Norfolk Family History Society. British Newspaper Archive (dates and titles in text).