Isabella Finch (1848-1934).
My 3rd great aunt.
Born in 1848, Isabella Finch was christened on 27 August at St Mary Magdalene in Reigate, Surrey, the daughter of Henry Finch and Jane Bashford.
She grew up in the town while her father worked as an agricultural labourer. On 4 September 1870 she married Jesse Freeman, a gardener and domestic servant who was born in 1846 in Draughton, Northamptonshire. How they met is unclear but the marriage took place at St Mary’s in Reigate.
The couple had 10 children (two didn’t survive) and brought up their family in Reigate, living in Priory Road, London Road and in one of a group of cottages south of town that became known as The Roundabout. In later decades they lived in Cromwell Road, Redhill. Several of their offspring had a number of health issues and were still living with their parents at the time of the 1911 census.
Jesse died in Reigate in 1923. Isabella died aged 86 on 7 December 1934 at Reigate Institution Hospital after an accident, with the inquest into her death reported in the Surrey Mirror of 14 December.
She’d been taken to East Surrey Hospital on 9 November with a fractured thigh. Already suffering from senile dementia, she’d been crossing Cromwell Road when she collided with a bike ridden by a 16-year-old tradesman’s boy. Dr CS Crichton told the court that the fracture of her right femur had accelerated Isabella’s death. Her son Frederick, a cycle engineer, said his mother had good hearing and sight, and was active for her age. However, she had become increasingly frail during her last six months.
In a statement, the cyclist said: “I was not looking up the road. It was raining hard. I began to ride away and then, looking up, I saw the old lady right in front of my front wheel, which struck her and she fell. I only just touched her and six eggs in my bicycle carrier were not broken.”
The jury returned a verdict of accidental death, although they also suggested the cyclist had been careless. The Surrey Mirror of 21 December 1934 reported that her funeral took place on the 12th and that she’d been buried in the family plot at Reigate Cemetery.
Jesse and Isabella’s children were:
- Albert Jesse Freeman (1871-1941). Albert was described in the un-PC way of the 19th century as an ‘idiot since birth’, ‘feeble minded’ or a ‘lunatic’ in the census returns. However, by 1911 he was working as a labourer. He was still living at home with his parents at that time but later went to live in Gloucester Road, Reigate, with a number of his siblings, many of whom like Albert never married. The Surrey Mirror of 30 May 1941 reported on his death on 23 May and the funeral and internment at Redstone Cemetery, Redhill.
- Florence Isabella Freeman (1873-1961). She married carter Ernest Rose in 1894 and raised a family in Surrey.
- William Henry Freeman (1875-1934). William married Florence Eliza Woolgar in 1899 and had several children in Reigate, Surrey, before emigrating to Canada in 1911. Census records showed the family living in Kootenay and Crawford Bay, British Columbia, where William earned a living as a fruit farmer. He died there in 1934.
- Lewis John Freeman (1877-1941). Lewis worked for many years as a cycle maker and a motor dealer. He married Ada Bartholomew in 1900 and lived in Reigate. Later the family moved to Devon, where Lewis died in 1941.
- Edith Annie Freeman (1879-1966). Edith never married and suffered health issues as a young woman, the 1901 census referring to it as ‘nervousness’. This was probably a reference to a mental illness of some kind. Edith lived with her parents for many years but then went to live with her brother Walter, his family and several other of her siblings in Gloucester Road, Reigate. She died in 1966.
- Ada Jane Freeman (1882-1948). The 1891 census noted that Ada was deaf and dumb and, like several of her siblings, lived with her parents and then with her brother Walter in Gloucester Road, Reigate. She died in 1948. She never married but there is a possibility that she had a child in 1915.
- Walter Ernest Freeman (1884-1954). Walter was described as feeble-minded as a boy but he went on to work as a gardener and platelayer, to marry twice and raise a family. He married Lydia Bascombe in Redhill, Surrey, in 1915, although she died in 1926. The following year he married Minnie Louisa Letty Coleman in Redhill, but she too died young in 1938. Walter’s family home at 2 Gloucester Road, Reigate, was filled instead with several of his siblings and his children. He died in 1954.
- Frederick Godfrey Freeman (1887-1944). Fred married Annie Roberts in 1910 and worked as a grocer’s assistant and cycle engineer. He served with the Royal Garrison Artillery during the First World War, achieving the rank of corporal and was awarded the Military Medal for his actions on in France on the night of 8 and 9 October 1918. In later years he lived in Brighton Road, Redhill, but he died in East Surrey Hospital in 1944.
Sources: Ancestry.co.uk and Findmypast.co.uk for BMDs and census info. National Archives for military records. The British Newspaper Archive, Surrey Family History Centre (Woking).