Regarding Henry

What happened to Robert Walker’s two sons, Henry (born 1843) and Robert Jr (born 1844)? Robert Sr was a solicitor in Canterbury, married since 1840 to Louisa Wrake, and father of three – the eldest, daughter Louisa, I was certain had caused the family’s biggest scandal as evidence points to her having eloped with her dancing master at the age of 18. She and her husband roamed around Cumbria and Dumfries as dance and music teachers, having six children before Louisa died of something probably typically Victorian like consumption or childbirth. Louisa and her children are pretty well documented: it’s her two brothers who seemed to drop off the face of the earth in the 1860s – and one of whom who appears to have created an even bigger scandal than Louisa’s marriage!

Robert Walker Sr had died aged 51 in the spring of 1857, and his widow lived for a further 7 years. When she made her will in February 1864, she named as her executors her two sons, Henry, solicitor of Canterbury, and Robert, merchant of Prospect Hill, Douglas, Isle of Man. Only Henry ever filed for probate, and, as he seemed to have remained in Canterbury, I thought I’d start with him.

With a name as common as Walker, I had had little success with birth, marriage and death indexes and with census returns, so the British Newspaper Archive was the obvious port of call to see if the local papers had any tales to tell. I searched through Kent papers for ‘Walker AND Canterbury’, immediately finding a few stories about Robert Sr’s career as a Town Councillor and Sheriff of Canterbury, endless legal notices for matters being handled by Robert, Robert’s death notice, a mention that Henry had been admitted as a solicitor in November 1863, Henry being called as co-respondent in a divorce case, notice of Louisa’s probate...wait, what?

Seems that Henry had a fling with a married woman and her husband sued for divorce.  This would have been the talk of the town as the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857, which redefined marriage as a contractual matter rather than a sacrament and opened up the possibility of divorce to all citizens, had only been in force for just over six years and for the son of a former Town Councillor and Sheriff to have been named as co-respondent in an adultery case would have set tongues wagging.

The wife’s name was Frances Anne Groombridge and she was the sixth daughter of George Oliver Groombridge and his wife Anne (née Curtis) of Hoath, Kent. George was a builder turned publican. Frances had been christened at the parish church in Hoath on 17 November 1839[1], and on 22 February 1856[2], aged only 16 (but claiming to be 21), she married Edwin Denne Collard at St James, Clerkenwell in London.

Edwin was from nearby Chislet, in Kent, where he had been christened on 30 August 1832[3], making him 23 to Frances’ 16 on their wedding day. His parents, Edwin Collard and Hester (née Denne), farmed 450 acres at Chislet Park, and seemed to be sufficiently well-off: there are various references to the Collard family in the local papers (the Kentish Chronicle and the Kentish Gazette) and also on Tina Machado’s extremely useful Historic Canterbury site.

Signatures of Edwin Denne Collard and Frances Anne Groombridge, 22 February 1856

According to the newspaper reports[4], Edwin and Frances had a daughter[5] the year after their marriage, and then moved to Normanton, Yorkshire where Edwin had found a job as a railway station master. The reports make the point that Edwin was from a respectable family and it was only in a “moment of weakness” that he stole a shilling, for which he was sentenced to four years’ transportation – quite a severe sentence for a measly shilling! Frances returned to Kent and lived briefly with her father-in-law. He offered to treat her as his own daughter, but she refused to remain with him. Despite his pleas for her to return and nurse her daughter, Frances abandoned the child with her father-in-law  and moved into lodgings with the Sayer family in Lamb Lane, Canterbury[6]. It was there that she began an affair with Henry Walker.

Mrs Mary Sayer helped Frances find new lodgings in Harbledown village with Esther MacFarlane[7], a laundress, who – surely by coincidence! – was employed by the Walker family. Esther testified that she assisted in Frances’ delivery of a child at the Coach and Horses Inn at Harbledown on 28 December 1861. As with her first child, Frances apparently abandoned the baby, this time in the care of Mrs MacFarlane, returning to Canterbury and living under the assumed name of Mrs Clinton. Although she promised to pay Mrs MacFarlane a weekly sum for the child’s maintenance, nine months passed without any recompense. Clever Mrs MacFarlane managed to discover Frances’ real name and confronted her, though still did not receive payment; fortunately for Esther, Louisa Walker, mother of Henry, and Mrs MacFarlane’s employer, began to pay 2s 6d a week for the baby’s maintenance. Out of the goodness of her heart, of course. Esther testified that she observed Henry Walker holding the child, that he seemed to be quite fond of it, and that he told Mrs MacFarlane never to let it be returned to its mother. Esther MacFarlane’s testimony is contradictory in places – this is remarked upon by those at the trial – and it does leave me to wonder if she were trying to cover something up, like just how closely involved she was with the different parties.

On Whit Monday 1862[8], Frances went to Westminster Police Court and swore that she had not seen her husband for four years and that Henry Walker was the father of her child. In 1863, Maurice (or Morris) Saunders, who worked for Canterbury attorneys Messrs Sankey, journeyed to the Isle of Man, where Henry was then residing, to serve him with notice that Edwin Denne Collard was divorcing his wife on the ground of her adultery with Henry, but advised him that it was not worth his while to attend the divorce trial in London.

Well, it’s quite obvious that Edwin’s suit had to discredit Frances as much as possible in order for the divorce to be granted, and Edwin was seeking £500 damages from the Walker family. I started looking some more. In the Leeds Times, Leeds Mercury, Yorkshire Herald and quite a number of other papers, details of Edwin’s criminal trial had been reported in January 1859. Far from it being 1 shilling he had stolen, it had been £15: a £10 and a £5 Bank of England note. The post train had been late arriving on the night of 14 December 1858, so the mail bags were left in his office as the station master for more than an hour longer than usual. He was observed loading the bags onto the train when it eventually arrived. In amongst the post was a registered letter containing £127 11s. 6d., made up of various denominations and including a receipt detailing the contents of the envelope. When the recipient opened the letter and found £15 missing, he was able to identify the two missing notes from the marks described by the sender – VY11832 and ZA73347 (example of a Victorian bank note). The £5 note was found very quickly, at a draper’s shop in Wakefield where the proprietor remembered Edwin Collard using it to buy a scarf and some gloves. The £10 note was never recovered. As with the divorce reports, the criminal trial reports frequently pointed to Edwin’s having come from a respectable family, and that he was a married man with a job paying £150 a year. He was sentenced to four years’ penal servitude[9], which he spent at Portland Prison in Dorset[10], being released on licence on 31 May 1862, the year before divorce proceedings began and Henry Walker was contacted in the Isle of Man - and nine days before Frances went to Westminster Police Court (now Westminster Magistrates' Court) to declare that Henry Walker was the father of her child. I can only assume that he returned to his parents in Chislet and found out what his estranged wife had been up to in his absence.

I don’t really think that Frances abandoned either of her children: she seems to have made provisions for her daughter's welfare, leaving her with her grandparents, and as explained below, appears to have raised her son herself. She didn’t attend the divorce trial, so her side of the story hasn’t been put. From the facts available, it’s clear that she married young, moved to Yorkshire away from her family, then later returned to Kent around the time her husband was imprisoned for theft. For reasons unknown she moved out of her father-in-law’s house, but as he testified against her at the trial, it could be that she was not made as welcome there as he claimed. Although Esther MacFarlane claimed that she never knew the name of the child she was raising – for more than nine months! – the birth was registered in the first quarter of 1862 as Harry Augustus Walker Collard, and the child was baptised at Harbledown on 6 April 1862, at least three months after his birth, with his mother’s name on the baptismal register. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Frances was present at the baptism, but it does mean that someone knew both his legal name and his mother’s name.

According to Esther MacFarlane’s own testimony, Frances lodged with her, so far from abandoning her child, she was living with him at Mrs MacFarlane’s house – Frances’ mother even testified to this at the trial. She also testified that she had seen ‘Mr Henry Walker’, as he is referred to throughout, at the home of Mrs MacFarlane with her daughter.

Both Frances and Henry, in their written responses to the divorce petition, denied adultery on the ground that Frances had been deserted by her husband prior to her relationship with Henry Walker. According to another article (The Times, 21 March 1864), Frances also claimed that it was her estranged husband who was guilty of adultery. The newspaper reports do comment that when Frances made her bastardy order complaint about Henry Walker at Westminster Police Court in June 1862, she testified that she had not seen her husband for four years, which suggests that the marriage had ended before Edwin stole the money in December 1858.

Henry Walker wasn’t present at the trial, but there is a sign of his character mentioned in the reports. Setting aside the obvious approach from his attorney, Mr Day, that Henry was a very young man, Mr Saunders testified under cross-examination that he had suggested to Henry that he should summon Frances’ landlady to find whether any other gentleman had visited her, and to inquire whether or not Frances had been seen at the Rifle Butts in the Military Field with other gentlemen, as Mr Saunders had heard. Henry declined to follow this advice, perhaps not wanting to further damage Frances’ reputation, and although he issued a denial of adultery, he accepted paternity of the child.

The judge granted a decree nisi, but dismissed Edwin’s demand for £500 costs, reducing it to 1 shilling, but made no order against Henry Walker for costs as it could not be proven that Henry Walker knew Frances Collard to be a married woman at the time he made her acquaintance. At this point, the newspaper reports stop.

I have found only two further references to Henry Walker. One, in the Kentish Gazette of 18 October 1864, is a fairly straightforward notice of the deadline by which any claims on the estate of the late Louisa Walker, widow, must be filed, and which names Henry as being ‘of the City of Canterbury, in the County of Kent, gentleman’. The other is a file reference to documents held by the National Archives relating to chancery pleadings in the matter of the estate of Robert Walker “late of 2 Victoria Place, St Dunstan’s, Canterbury, gentleman, deceased”. The plaintiffs were Henry Walker and another, and the defendants were Stephen Cladish and Samuel Powell. I’ve ordered a copy but doubt it will give me too much further information. I am still no farther forward in my question to find anything about Robert Walker Jr.

Two Epilogues:

Why do I think it’s the same Henry Walker?

Although the name Henry Walker is a common one, there are enough clues in the newspaper reports to convince me that he is the same person as the son of Robert Walker Sr:

1. Henry Walker is described as a ‘very young man’. He was born in 1844 so would have been aged about 17 when he met Frances, who was then aged about 21.
2. Henry Walker is described as being “between 20 and 21 then – in 1863”, which fits his birth year of 1844.
3. Henry Walker is described as a solicitor by March 1864. The Kentish Gazette of 1 December 1863 carries a notice of his admission to the Law Institute as a solicitor.
4. Maurice Saunders says that he had to go to the Isle of Man in 1863 to serve Henry notice of the divorce petition. Henry’s brother Robert was described as a merchant of Prospect Hill, Douglas, Isle of Man in their mother’s will of 19 February 1864. Unless it was common for people from Canterbury, Kent to travel to and from the Isle of Man in the 1860s, I think this is a strong clue that it’s the same person, almost certainly staying with his brother until things calmed down in Canterbury. I've also found, again via the British Newspaper Archive, that Henry's wayward sister Louisa, her husband and her father-in-law opened a music and dancing school in Douglas on the Isle of Man in the 1870s - again a link between this family and the Isle of Man. (Louisa even advertised in the Carlisle Journal in 1861 that she was a teacher of piano, singing and harp, and a "Pupil of Thalberg, Marmontel, & Madame Viardot Garcia", by which I assume she meant she adopted their style rather than having been taught by them personally.)
5. Maurice Sanders, an employee of a family firm of Canterbury solicitors, says that he has known Henry Walker since he was a boy.
6. The home of ‘Mrs Walker’ is often referred to, never ‘Mr and Mrs Walker’ or ‘Mr Walker’, indicating that ‘Mrs Walker’ was the householder. Louisa Walker was widowed in 1857 and her husband’s will had left everything to her.
7. There’s certainly some indication that the Walker family (and likely the Collards as well) were of some social status in Canterbury, both by Henry Walker being referred to as “Mr Henry” throughout Esther MacFarlane’s testimony, and also the opening line which mentions, “This suit, which has been a topic of conversation in certain circles for some weeks past...”

What happened to everyone?

Esther MacFarlane died aged 87 in 1882. I can’t find Mary Sayer after 1861. Nor can I find any record of Edwin Denne Collard after the divorce was granted: his family had some money and perhaps they helped him relocate.

Frances, as Frances Groombridge, was lodging at 2 Holland Cottages, Lambeth at the time of the 1871 census. She described herself as a widow and her occupation as “annuitant”. If that’s true, who was paying her an annuity? Surely not her ex-husband or his family. Could it have been Henry Walker or possibly even her own family? In 1875 she remarried. Her new husband was Chapman Barber Elliot of Moulton, Northamptonshire. There were no children of her second marriage. In 1891 and 1901 the Elliots were living with Frances’ unmarried sister Georgiana and in 1902, Frances died, aged 62, at 7 Montpelier Road, East Twickenham, the home of John Edward and Fanny Annette Llywarch. She was buried at St Stephen, Twickenham.

John Edward Llywarch was a grocer, wine and spirit merchant in Fulham and Twickenham. On 28 January 1882 he married Fanny Annette Collard, Frances and Edwin’s daughter – the one ostensibly abandoned with Edwin’s father. Fanny’s marriage record said that her father’s had been an architect and was by then deceased. Is this true? I highly doubt that Edwin had become an architect after leaving Portland Prison, but he might well have been deceased. He might also have left the country and was presumed deceased.

Signatures of Fanny Annette Collard and John Edward Llywarch (Llowarch), 28 January 1882

Harry Augustus Walker Collard, son of Frances Groombridge and Henry Walker, never married. He attended a private school in Isleworth, Middlesex, in the 1870s, and was possibly the Henry Collard living in Lewisham in 1881. I have been unable to find him on the 1891 census. He was a commercial traveller and he lived in Fulham and Twickenham near his half-sister Fanny, lodging for years with his aunt Georgiana Groombridge[11]. When he died in 1931, he named as his executors Fanny’s two surviving sons, John Shirley and Leonard Arthur Llywarch. They would also be executors for Georgiana Groombridge’s will in 1938 when she died aged 90. Fanny lived until she was 93. I wonder how many family secrets died with her.

It's possible that any living family of John Edward Llywarch and Fanny Annette Collard could have a photograph of Harry Augustus Walker Collard, or perhaps something else showing whether or not Henry Walker kept in touch with his son or assisted him financially – and I really hope that somewhere there is a clue as to Henry Walker’s whereabouts after 1866! I’m now waiting on the documents from the National Archives, and approval of my application for membership of the Society of Genealogists, after having heard their genealogist Else Churchill last winter talk about some of their records collections – including an index to solicitors. I hope to find details of Henry, Robert Sr – plus my many other solicitor relatives – in there.

I hope to have an update to this story. In the meantime: back to the newspapers. I have to say, I wouldn't have been able to find out any of this detail without the British Newspaper Archive: in addition to any number of family notices I've located, stories like this bring the past to life. In Henry Walker's case, far more vividly than I'm sure his family hoped would ever be discovered!

Update 5 May 2012
Update 27 January 2013

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[1] FamilySearch.org, England Births and Christenings Index

[2] Ancestry.co.uk, London Marriages and Banns 1754-1921.

[3] FamilySearch.org, England Births and Christenings Index

[4] Kentish Gazette 22 March 1864 and Kentish Chronicle 26 March 1864

[5] Fanny Annette Collard, christened 27 September 1857 at Hoath Kent, FamilySearch.org, England Births and Christenings Index

[6] She can be found living there with James and Mary Ann Sayer on the 1861 census, taken the night of 7-8 April 1861.

[7] ‘Hester Macfarlane’, living at Church Hill, Harbledown, aged 66, on the 1861 census.

[8] 9 June 1862

[9] Ancestry.co.uk, England and Wales Criminal Registers

[10] National Archives, Home Office and Prison Commission: Male Licences, Licence 11202: Edwin Denne Collard

[11] Ancestry.co.uk, London Electoral Registers