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occupation is listed for Lilian, and no address, only - 'Of no fixed abode'.
For most of this period, from at least 1897 to 1909, George and Charlotte were resident in
Southwark. All their children were bom there and were probably christened, if they lived long
enough, in a Methodist church, not in the massive parish church of St Saviour by London
Bridge, which became a cathedral, Southwark Cathedral, in 1906.
Southwark, which was once a Roman suburb, and later fortified to protect the river crossing,
had become as overcrowded and diseased as Bermondsey, if not more so. The Medical Officer
of Health wrote in 1858: 'Overcrowding is the normal state of our poorer districts. Small houses
of four rooms are usually inhabited by three or four families and by eight, 16 or 24 persons'.
Maypole Alley, in particular, was 'a nest of infectious diseases'. In one small parish, that of St
George the Martyr, more than 51,000 people dwelt.
Southwark, or 'The Borough' as it was called, was famous for its prisons, hospitals and inns. In
the Borough High Street, leading from London Bridge, inns abounded. Here were the Tabard,
from where Chaucer's pilgrims journeyed to Canterbury; the George; and the White Hart,
where Mr Pickwick met Sam Weller. Most had been destroyed by the Great Fire of
Southwark in 1656 and rebuilt. The coming of trains gradually put all of them, as well as the
horse-drawn coaches, out of business.
Then there were the prisons: the Marshalsea Prison, where Charles Dickens' father was briefly
lodged for debt; the King's Bench; the White Lyon; the Counter; and the Clink. The latter took
its name from Clink St, a verminous alley beside the river and near the great west door of St
Saviour's. It gave its name, the Clink, to the English language as a pseudonym for a prison.
Yet another jail was situated in Horsemonger Lane, not far from where Mary Ann Henderson
and her family, and possibly Jane's bastard son, lived in 1849. On the roof of the jail was a
gallows, whereon people were hanged in full view of the crowds in the street. One such public
execution in 1849 was witnessed by Charles Dickens, who wrote about what he saw and felt in
a letter to The Times, published on 14 November.
The execution was that of a married couple, George and Maria Manning, who had robbed and
murdered a lodger, Patrick O'Connor. Dickens wrote of 'the wickedness and levity of the
immense crowd' and of 'a scene of horror and demoralisation', attended that Tuesday morning
by 'a concourse of boys and girls'.
He continued: When the day dawned, thieves, low prostitutes, ruffians and vagabonds of every
kind, flocked on to the ground, with every variety of offensive and foul behaviour. Fightings,
faintings, whistlings, imitations of Punch, brutal jokes, tumultuous demonstrations of indecent
delight when swooning women were dragged out of the crowd by the police with their dresses
disordered, gave a new zest to the general entertainment. When the sun rose brightly - as it did -
it gilded thousands upon thousands of upturned faces, so inexpressibly odious in their brutal
mirth or callousness, that a man had cause to feel ashamed of the shape he wore... There was
no more emotion, no more pity, no more thought that two immortal souls had gone to
judgement... than if the name of Christ had never been heard in the world... I stand astounded
and appalled.'
It was not until 1868 that the last public hanging took place. But it was not until 1964 that the
hanging of people sentenced to death for murder in England came to an end.
The sole survivor of George's eight children was the eldest, Charlotte Elizabeth Ann
Honeycombe. She was 28, and living at 3 East Place, Chapel Street, Clerkenwell, when she
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