Edward Charles Stolliday (1873-1966) and Margaret Elizabeth Bowles (1876-1939).
My great grand-uncle and aunt.
Born on 2 March 1873 to parents Edward Stoliday and Harriet Goulty, young Edward Charles Stolliday was baptised at St Nicholas’s Church in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, on 28 February 1875. Bearing in mind that his parents were married on Christmas Day 1872, he was obviously conceived many months before the ceremony.
He grew up in the town’s crowded row houses, although his fisherman father would’ve been away at sea regularly. By the time of the 1891 census he was working as a baker and then married Margaret Elizabeth Bowles on 10 February 1896 at Great Yarmouth parish church. She was the daughter of labourer Charles Bowles and was born in the town on 3 January 1876.
By the 1901 census the couple were living at 26 Boreham Road, Great Yarmouth, an address they would keep for many years but at this time Edward was working as a ballast labourer. The Yarmouth Independent of 12 October 1901 also reported that he was one of several men who’d been appointed a Town Hall porter, perhaps a means of making additional money.
I’ve only found two children born to the couple and both died young. Margaret Lilian Stolliday was born in 1905 but died five years later and Edward Charles Stolliday Jnr was born and died in 1907.
Margaret turned up as a witness in an inquest reported in the Yarmouth Independent of 13 October 1906. A Scot, George Cardno, had been lodging with the Stollidays and went out on the evening of 29 September, never to return. It transpired that he drowned in the harbour after spending the evening with fellow fishermen, although witnesses said that he wasn’t drunk. The fact that the street lights had been turned off may have contributed to the accident.
Margaret was in the papers again four years later. The Yarmouth Independent of 24 September 1910 reported a curious case before the magistrates in which Margaret was summonsed for using abusive language to neighbour Elizabeth Chapman. The complainant’s lawyer claimed Stolliday had caused her annoyance for some time. The report added: “On Saturday afternoon she shook a mat in the passage and smothered the complainant with dust. When she (Chapman) remonstrated, the defendant used vile language to her and threatened to knock her head off with a broom. She would not leave off until the witness said she would throw a pail of water over her.” Margaret said the neighbour had insulted her first and the magistrates dismissed the case.
The 1921 census listed Edward as a chef at the Royal Naval Hospital in Great Yarmouth but the 1939 Register, which showed the couple still living at Boreham Road, noted that Edward was then an unemployed chef. There are no other records or reports to indicate how they lived their lives until their deaths. Margaret died in October 1939 and was buried on 12 October. Edward lived on until 1966 and died at the town’s Northgate Hospital in 1966. He was buried in Great Yarmouth on 4 February that year.
Sources: BMDs, census, criminal records, and more at Ancestry.co.uk and Findmypast.co.uk, where I also accessed the British Newspaper Archive. Records confirmed at Norfolk Family History Society.