Published in Windlesora 12 (1993)
© WLHG
When we were packing up to leave England, some twenty years ago, we collected together all the memorabilia which had accumulated in drawers over the years and made a large scrapbook. It was mostly photographs, but there were also birth, wedding and death announcements, house purchase contracts, identity cards, an army paybook, childrens’ school reports and so on. At the front of the book my husband drew up a rough family tree, and it was then that we realised how little we really knew about our past relatives. Now that we have retired and have eight Australian grandchildren who have very little concept of the lives their forefathers led, we are attempting to build up a picture of our family history for them. Some of the family lines are quite easy to follow, but some are more elusive. Such is my great-great-grandfather Thomas Cocking and his family.
A distant cousin first made me aware of the existence of Thomas. He found his will and told me that Thomas was buried at Brompton Cemetery, Fulham Road, London with several other members of the family. There was a wealth of other information from which I gleaned that Thomas was born in 1806, had been lamplighter at Windsor Castle, and died in 1900 at Love Lane. His wife was Sarah (nee) Johnson and they had seven children including my great-grandmother Alice who was born in Windsor in 1844. Thomas’s brother John was also a lamplighter at the Castle. The will, which was written in 1894, named the seven children as Thomas John, Henry, Mary Ann Richards (deceased), Harriet Williams (deceased), Sarah Padbury, Alice Lewis and George.
From a genealogical journal I read that one can obtain information from the archives at Windsor Castle, so I sent my fee and a request for information on the name Cocking. The reply said that Thomas Cocking entered Royal service in 1829 and was promoted to Second Lamplighter, with a salary of £80 in 1845. In 1864 he rose to First Lamplighter at Windsor Castle, with a salary of £150 p.a. plus board wages. In 1872 he received the Victoria Faithful Service Medal from the Queen for forty-three years service and retired on 31st December 1879.
John Cocking entered Royal service in 1838 and by 1845 was First Assistant Lamplighter with a salary of £70 p.a. He received the Victoria Faithful Service Medal on 22nd June 1875.
Apparently there was also a Joseph Cocking who was an Assistant Table Decker for 6 years from 1845, when he was dismissed, reason not known, but he certainly did not get a medal!
Enclosed with the letter was a description of the duties of some of the Royal Household in 1848. This told us that only the First Lamplighter was allowed to live out, the others had to live in the house and dine in the Servants’ Hall. Lamplighters had to attend exclusively to the lamps in the Royal residences but since the introduction of gas in most of the passages and entrances their work had been reduced as the number of oil lamps had been cut by nearly a half.
My husband and I were now accumulating quite a lot of facts and figures on Thomas but nothing so far on the family’s life which would give our grandchildren a real ‘feel’ for them. This is the area where we have so many questions but have found few answers.
First we consulted the International Genealogical Index. We are lucky enough to have a Mormon family history centre at Hambour, about 12 kilometres from our home, and searched there hoping to find out where Thomas and Sarah were married and where they and their children were christened, but without success. Family lore tells us that this side of our family were very ‘God-fearing’ and we feel they must have belonged to a church of some denomination, maybe The Plymouth Brethren. Our first thought was that Queen Victoria would be unlikely to employ staff who worshipped at other than the established church, however, having recently read that her father, the Duke of Kent, was a member of the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion, perhaps she was not so rigid on this as one might imagine.
Having drawn a blank with the IGI we turned our attention to the census returns. Through the Hambour Centre we are able to hire films of the various census returns and church registers, which we can view at the centre. We first plumped for the 1861 census returns of Windsor, but there was no trace of Thomas and Sarah or their children, but at home in Love Lane was John Cocking’s wife Lucy, aged 50. She had been born in Burton, Lincolnshire, and was living with her 22-year-old daughter Hannah who was born in Windsor. Against this entry is written “Husband on duty with her Majesty”. We later found out that the Queen was at Osborne at the time this census was taken and John was listed there as being 57 years old and born in Middlesex, London. Disappointed at not having found Thomas’s family, but encouraged at having found some connection, we decided to look at the 1851 returns. Hiring films can be a very long winded business from here. If they are available in Sydney they usually arrive in about six weeks, but one can wait several months if they have to be sent from England or Salt Lake City. However when they finally arrived, the 1851 census returns proved to be a bit more meaty.
There was still no trace of Thomas or Sarah, but this time there were five children. They were pretty certainly members of John and Lucy Cocking’s family, scattered in various households all over Windsor. We did not know quite what to make of this. The parents seem to have acted like cuckoos dropping their offspring into the nests of others. We can only suppose it was to have the children near schooling. Lucy, age 40 was living at 2 Clarence Place, but there was no mention of John. Lydia Cocking, aged 15 was a house servant to William Liverd, Surveyor to the Windsor Board of Health, Susan aged 14 and Hannah aged 12 were living in the Windsor Great Park home of John Cotterell and were described as “visitors”, Louisa Cocking was nine years old and living at 71 Peascod Street with Mary A Beenham, a schoolmistress, and her four children. The youngest Cocking in the 1851 census was Harry aged eight who was one of three schoolboy ‘visitors’ at the home of Mary Blythe, 22 Oxford Road.
There was, however, one further Cocking entry which could be the most interesting
yet: Susan Cocking, widow, aged 81 was living at Grove Place. Perhaps we had found the mother of Thomas and John and could now find out a little more of their background. But luck was not with us, as the birthplace of Susan looked like SPUIR, which we felt could not be correct. We are able to see the St. Catherine’s House index in Brisbane for about six weeks each year and we found Susan’s death and wrote to St Catherine’s House for a certificate. Once again fate has been cruel to us because the information on the certificate was provided by another widow, living in the same house who apparently never met Susan’s husband and was not able to supply his name. Susan died at 13 Grove Place, New Windsor on 18th January 1854. Weight was given to the idea that she might be the mother of Thomas and John by the fact that she was described as widow of — Cocking, lamplighter. We have made further attempts to read her birthplace, but everyone agrees that the word written in the census return is Spuir and no such place is known to exist.
We did finally find Thomas and Sarah at 28 Love Lane on the Windsor census returns for 1881. By then they were both over 70 and we found that he had been born in Westminster and she in Brighton. Living with them was a 21-year-old granddaughter Elizabeth Richards who was also born in Westminster.
In 1992 we decided that a trip to England was needed to try to tie up some loose ends and take some photographs to illustrate our story. On arriving in Windsor we asked a policeman the way to Love Lane. He scratched his head and sent us to the tourist bureau. The helpful people there suspected that this was a street which was pulled down in about 1900 to make way for an extension to the Victoria Street Barracks. They also said what a pity it was we had chosen a day when the library was closed. They produced a few copies of Windlesora and directed us to a bookshop where we bought Angus Macnaghton’s Windsor in Victorian Times in which our streets got a mention, but as places of the past. We had to be content with some photographs of the Castle and the Changing of the Guard. We really did not allow ourselves enough time as we had so may other places to visit including Brompton Cemetery where we were able to photograph the grave of Thomas and Sarah, but Susan was not buried there.
Back in Australia we looked at our spoils, and considered just how far we had come in the last few years. We now know from information at St. Catherine’s House that the children of Thomas and Sarah were all born in Windsor between 1832 and 1846. Goodness knows why they do not appear in the census returns. Our present thinking is still that the family did not belong to the Church of England, not only because they do not feature in the IGI but also because of the choice of a non-denominational burial ground rather than a churchyard.
If anyone can throw a glimmer of light on any aspects of the lamplighter and his family we will be delighted. Please contact the Editor (or use the contact form on the website) if you can help.
Joyce Wall
Windsor Local History Group 