Our Family History

My 2 x Great Grandmother Sarah Keen was born in the village of Buckland, Buckinghamshire in 1861 and grew up with her parents Thomas & Eliza & her younger sister Elizabeth and brother Harry. Her father was an agricultural labourer for all of his working life and her mother Eliza was employed as a straw plaiter

 

(Click the red button below Sarah's image for more details of her parents life and work).

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In July 1885 Sarah married John Thorne in Aylesbury. She was 24 years old and he was 25.

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John Thorne was born in Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire in 1860. He was the eldest son of William and Phoebe Thorne. His father worked as an Agricultural labourer and his mother was a straw plaiter.

 

(For more detailed info on the straw plaiting industry in 19th Century Buckinghamshire click on the 2nd red button on the left)

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In 1871 11 year old John was living with his parents and 4 younger sisters Mary Ann (7), Elizabeth (5) Ellen (3) and Eliza (1) in Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire.

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 John had been employed as a farm boy – possibly working for Mr Obiadiah Hall at nearby Vaches Farm. This is also where his father may have also worked as a labourer and their home could have come with the job.  Mr Hall employed 6 men and 3 boys on his land and agricultural workers often lived in properties adjacent to where they worked. The Thorne’s neighbours on one side were the Curate of Aston Clinton – Dale John Welburn from Yorkshire and his two female domestic servants. On the other side lived John’s paternal grandparents Elijah Thorne, a pauper aged 70 and his wife Fanny (67) who was a straw dealer.

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The Plait and Straw Dealer was a go-between who would make one or two trips a week to the Plait Market in the nearest town to sell the straw plaits that the plaiters in nearby villages had produced. Some of the higher quality plaits may have been made to fill specific orders she had obtained, and the lower quality plaits would just be offered for sale on her stall. At the market the dealer would also purchase various grades of straw to take back to sell to plaiters in the villages.

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In 1871 it was estimated that there were over 30,000 straw platters working in the Aylesbury area alone. As Sarah Keen’s Grandmother, Mother and Aunt were all working as plaiters around this time, it is possible that Fanny may have been the dealer that the Keen women bought their straw from and Sarah Keen and John Thorne could have met through this connection.

 

John Thorne's Grandmother, Fanny Thorne died in 1871 in the same year the Census was taken. John's mother Phoebe died in 1884 at the age of 45 and was buried in Buckinghamshire - you can see a picture of her gravestone on the left.

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A year after Sarah Keen and John Thorne were married in July 1885 their eldest son, Ernest John Thorne (my great grandfather) was born on 15th May 1886 in Chesham Bois, Buckinghamshire. In April 1888, his brother Percy George was born in Aylesbury, followed by his sister Bessie on 12th December 1889 in Buckland.

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After the industrial revolution had swept across Victorian Britain in the 1840’s and 1850’s the country saw what was called “the 2nd Industrial revolution”  in the 1870’s when steam powered machinery and manufactured farming tools became more widely used in agriculture. Larger scale manufacturing forced many former cottage industries to become all but extinct in rural areas.

 

Unskilled Agricultural abourers and farm workers like John Thorne would have been forced to work much longer hours for fat less pay – and the work may have only been seasonal - so for a man with a growing family to support; this may have proved to be a very difficult time for John financially and decisions that would affect the family for generations to come and change their direction, would have to be made .

 

With this in mind, John and Sarah Thorne may have been attracted by the new opportunities opening up elsewhere. Life in urban cities not only offered jobs with higher pay, but promised a more varied and appealing social life, which appealed particularly to younger men and women who sometimes found life in a small community both oppressive and dull.

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London had long acted as a magnet which attracted people from all over Britain - and the world -  and as hundreds of thousands of working class people made the exodus from the countryside to the towns and cities, new factories, workplaces and homes for the influx of workers were constantly being built so there would be plenty of work available for strong, fit, healthy men like John who had become used to hard physical manual work.

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In 1891 the Thorne family had made the move from country to city and were living at 74 Bruce Road, Bromley by Bow in East London. John Thorne was working as a bricklayer’s labourer and he would certainly have been better paid and had more regular work in the building trade.  How the family coped with the transition from rural life to life in a busy, smoke filled city crammed full of people we can only imagine – but we do know that Sarah Thorne did not cut off all ties with her family in Buckinghamshire.

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In 1892 Sarah Thorne gave birth to her 4th child William Thomas in Buckland Wharf. She probably returned to Buckland during the last weeks of her pregnancy – maybe with her 3 younger children – so she could give birth at her parents’ home, with her mother Eliza assisting her. For working class women like Sarah Thorne childbirth  happened at home, often without any trained medical supervision and very little pain relief. In rural parts, other female relatives, friends, neighbours or an experienced "local village midwife” may be on hand to help with the birth, but a doctor was only called out if there were serious complications – and he would, of course, require payment for his time and any treatment he gave. Perhaps Sarah felt safer giving birth in the home she grew up in, with her family around her, then in her new home in East London.

 

There was virtually no birth control available at this time for working class women ( apart from sexual abstinence or the unreliable withdrawal method) so women like Sarah Thorne, on average  had a child every 18 months to two years during the early years of marriage. Children only stopped arriving when marital relations ceased in the bedroom or a woman went through the menopause. In the days before antibiotics and the NHS, many Victorian children did not reach adulthood because of disease, infection and bad sanitation and, a large family could be suddenly depleted by the deaths of one or more of their children either at birth or in childhood - and their was always the possibly that a mother could die in childbirth too. Making the journey to Buckinghamshire to give birth in familiar surroundings, and where her parents could help out, seems like a sensible move by Sarah, considering all the odds.

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With an ever growing family Sarah Thorne had no choice but to give birth to her next two children at home in London. The Thorne family had moved to a new house in Ellison Street, West Ham where their son Harry Thorne was born in October 1893 and then James Richard Brackley Thorne, who was their last child, followed in 1895. He had been given his middle names in honour of his paternal grandmother Phoebe Thorne whose maiden name was Brackley and her father who was called Richard Brackley.

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In 1901 Sarah and John Thorne and their 6 children were still living in Ellyson Street, West Ham and John was continuing to find regular work as a bricklayer’s labourer. Their eldest son Ernest John Thorne had left school that year at 14 and was employed as a provisions warehouse boy. All the younger children would have attended a local school from the age of 5 – 14 and received a basic education in Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic.

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The Year 1908 saw many historic events happening in London – the Summer Olympic Games were held at White City, The First Ideal Home Exhibition was held, at Olympia, sponsored by the Daily Mail newspaper. Baden-Powell’s scout movement was formed that year, and the first large suffragette marches occurred in the City demanding votes for women. Shackleton was heading for Antarctica on the Nimrod Exhibition, Edward VII was now on the throne and Asquith became Prime Minister in April.

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However, all of this would pale into insignificance for the Thorne family when their second youngest son Harry suddenly died at the age of 14 in the summer of 1908. The cause of his death is currently unknown but he was buried in Newham on 11th August that year.

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From the 1911 census we can get a perfect snapshot of the Thorne family in the Edwardian period. By this time, John and Sarah Thorne were in their early 50’s and had been married for 25 years. John was working as a general labourer and scaffolder for a building company, his two eldest sons Ernest (24) and Percy (22) were also working as builder’s labourers whilst William (19) was a labourer for a cork maker, and his younger brother James (15) was an office boy for a chocolate and cocoa company.  21 year old Bessie Thorne was working as a typesetter at a foundry. 6 year old Winnifred May Williams – a niece of John and Sarah Thorne – was also living with the family at this time.They all resided at 20 Morely Road, West Ham – and the house is still there today (see Image).

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With 7 adults and a small child all in living in a house with only 2 /3 bedrooms, and no indoor bathroom, it must have been quite difficult at times to get any privacy or a quiet moment to oneself. Sarah may have stayed at home whist her husband and children were out at work but she would be kept busy from dawn to dusk on a daily basis by a number of domestic tasks such as shopping for groceries, preparing and cooking meals, doing laundry, mending and altering clothes, and cleaning the home – all without many of the time and labour saving devices we take for granted today.

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From her photograph, Sarah appears to be a well-kept, upstanding, respectable woman who no doubt took great pride in her home and tried to make life run as smoothly as possible for her hard-working husband and 5 children.

 

With 6 regular wages coming in each week, the family would have been financially better off and more well-fed than many of their neighbours – perhaps this was one of the reasons why they were able to take in their niece Winifred.

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In spring 1913 tragedy struck at the heart of John and Sarah Thorne’s life once again, when their youngest son James died aged 17. He was buried in Newham on 20th March.

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With the 1st World War looming on the horizon, perhaps James Richard Brackley Thorne and Harry Thorne may have been fated to have died young anyway – just in different circumstances.

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For details of what happened to  all the surviving children of John and Sarah Thorne, please click on their red buttons on the left.

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To continue John and Sarah Thorne’s story after World War 1 – in 1918 John’s father William Thorne died in Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire at the age of 85.

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In 1930 Sarah Thorne died aged 69 and was buried on 5th May in Newham.

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At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, 79 year old widower John Thorne was receiving his pension and living with his daughter and her husband in West Ham.

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John died, aged 83, just after Christmas in December 1943 and was buried in Newham on 3rd January.

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