Alfred Dolamore (1835-1910) and Elizabeth Dolamore (1836-1904).
My 2nd great-grand uncle and aunt.
Alfred Dolamore was baptised on 15 February 1835 in Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire, to parents David Dolamore and Mary Ann Walker. He was brought up in and around nearby Leavesden.
He was working as an agricultural labourer at the time of the 1851 Census but he later followed his father and others in the wider family in becoming a carpenter. He married Elizabeth on 11 October 1856 at All Saints Church in Leavesden, the parish given as the location of her birth in various census returns. The marriage record listed her as Elizabeth Dollamore, so was she a first cousin? Alfred’s father David had a brother called James, and his daughter Elizabeth’s birth year matches Alfred’s wife’s age. However, on the marriage record her father’s name was not given, suggesting she may have been illegitimate. I doubt the recording of her surname was a transcription error as she signed her name as “Elizabeth Dollamore” and there was a witness “Thomas Dollamore”, potentially one of her brothers born in 1829. So they probably were first cousins, which wasn’t illegal. Interestingly, several of their children were later admitted to hospital as “imbeciles” in the terrible language of the time. Was this because they were so closely related, leading to an increased risk of birth defects?
The family lived locally for several years, with the census of 1871 recording them at Butchers Yard in Watford with their children. By the 1881 census they’d moved north to Backwalls North in Stafford, Staffordshire, where Alfred continued to work as a carpenter. By 1891 they’d moved to Eastgate Street in the city.
The Staffordshire Advertiser of 2 April 1898 reported that Alfred had been before the Stafford Police Court charged with threatening his son Henry with an axe, saying he would chop his head off. He’d been drunk at the time. The case was adjourned for a month but I’ve not found a follow up.
Elizabeth died in Stafford in 1904 and Alfred followed in 1910 in tragic circumstances. The Staffordshire Advertiser of 19 February reported, under the title ‘Sequel to a workhouse inmate’s disappearance’, that Alfred’s body had been found floating in the River Sow at St Thomas’s Mill, Stafford, on the 18th by a Thomas Parsons. An examination showed that his throat had been cut slightly and a small knife was found in one of his pockets.
It was reported that Alfred had left Stafford Workhouse on a day’s leave on 10 January to visit his daughter Amelia Cotterill in Rowley Grove, but that he had then disappeared. A stick and cap was found the following day on the river bank close to the Corporation Sanitary Depot but the police had been unable to recover any body during several days of dragging the river.
Amelia told the inquest, held at the Unicorn Inn in Stafford, that her father had been unsettled in his mind and concerned about his health during his visit. But the workhouse master, a Mr Dix, said that he had been well behaved and quiet, and had not complained of having any cause for worry. The jury returned a verdict of suicide during a period of temporary insanity.
Elizabeth and Alfred’s children were:
- Elizabeth Dolamore (1859-1934). Baptised in Leavesden on 13 February 1859, Elizabeth worked in the shoe industry for a while before marrying Matthew Goodman in Stafford on 21 April 1883. He was born in the city and worked in the boot-making industry in his younger years. The couple moved with their family to Leicester early in the 20th century, where Matthew began working with offenders and became the city’s probation officer and police court commissioner. His duties involved negotiating marriage disputes and, as the Leicester Chronicle obituary of 4 April 1942 reported, he probably did more to patch up marriages in the city than any other man. The Leicester Daily Mercury of 30 March 1942 reported that Matthew and Elizabeth both began working at a guest house designed to help the destitute and rehabilitate ex-offenders in the city before the First World War. Elizabeth died in Leicester on 17 March 1934. Matthew died there on 29 March 1942.
- Emily Dolamore (1860-1917), who was baptised on 14 July 1861 at Leavesden. Emily worked in the shoe industry in Stafford and then married Worcestershire-born Joseph Coldicott in Birmingham, Warwickshire, on 5 August 1888. They settled in the city and raised a family, while he worked as a labourer. Emily died in 1917, Joseph in 1942, both their deaths registered in Birmingham.
- Flora Dolamore (1862-1917), who was born in 1862 and baptised in Watford on 7 April 1868. Brought up in Stafford, Flora had a mental illness and was classed (horrendously) as an imbecile in various census returns – the 1881 document suggesting she had been so since birth. However, the 1891 Census showed her living at home and working as a domestic servant. By 1901, however, she was living in the Stafford Union workhouse. Perhaps her condition had worsened… Asylum admissions registers showed her being admitted to the Staffordshire Asylum on 7 February 1905 and recording her death on 12 June 1906.
- Alfred David Dolamore (1864-????), who was born in 1864 and baptised in Watford on 7 April 1868. Alfred worked in the shoe-making industry and was still living with his parents in Staffordshire in 1901 as a single man. In 1911 he was living with his sister Elizabeth and her family in Leicester but I’ve not been able to trace him subsequently.
- Ellen Dolamore (1868-1911), who was baptised in Watford on 7 April 1868. Sometimes referred to as Eleanor in the records, Ellen was working as a domestic servant at the time of the 1891 Census. But then she too was ruthlessly classified as an imbecile in the 1901 Census and, like Flora, was living in the Stafford Union workhouse. She was recorded in the Staffordshire County Asylum in the 1911 Census and died later that year.
- Amelia Dolamore (1870-1933), who was born in 1870 and baptised in Watford on 24 June 1871. She grew up in Stafford. She married city native John Cotterill there in 1906. He worked as a postman and census returns showed them living in the west of Stafford in 1911. By 1921 they had moved to Sandiacre in Derbyshire. Amelia died there in 1933, John in 1938. The Long Eaton Advertiser of 24 July 1931 reported on John receiving the Imperial Service medal for his work with the Post Office but also with the military – he’d served with the North Staffordshire Regiment during the Mahdist Wars in East Africa during the 1890s.
- William Dolamore (1872-1893), who was the first of Alfred’s children to be born in Stafford. He died young in 1893.
- Edward Dolamore (1875-1895), who was born in Stafford. Like several of his sisters, Edward had a mental illness. He was admitted to Burntwood Asylum near Lichfield in Staffordshire and died there on 12 April 1895.
- Henry Robert Dolamore (1877-1960), who was born in Stafford on 20 August 1877. He joined the Royal Navy and toiled as a stoker, the 1911 Census recording him on board the battleship HMS Albemarle moored at Weymouth Bay off the south coast of England. He served in the First World War and the 1921 Census showed him on HMS Westminster, a torpedo boat destroyer, based at Harwich in Essex. He later moved to Derbyshire, where he was shown in the 1939 Register working as a machine shop labourer. The Derby Daily Telegraph of 23 September 1952 reported that he’d been arrested on the grounds that he had tried to commit suicide at Sandiacre in Derbyshire by jumping into a canal. He died in Derbyshire eight years later. I’ve found no evidence of a marriage.
Sources: Hertfordshire County Archives.
Births, baptisms, marriages and burial records, including General Registeral Office civil registrations, census, military, asylum admissions registers (1846-1921) and other information from Ancestry.co.uk and Findmypast.co.uk.
British Newspaper Archive – titles referred to in the text.