Contrasting lives: Sarah Herdsman and Henry Jollands

 Sarah Herdsman died in the Charterhouse on 14 February 1914 of "senile decay" at the age of 82 and was buried in the Western Cemetery.  There would seem to be little remarkable about her; a single lady who had lived the last 19 years of her life in room 103 of the Charterhouse.  Yet Sarah would have had some interesting stories to tell.

She was born in 1832 in Beverley, the daughter of farm workers.  By 1851 she was a housemaid in the household of Edmund Smith at 11, High St, North Ferriby.  Smith was a retired officer in the Indian civil service and a director of Payne & Smith's bank.  He, his wife, 2 daughters and 8 servants formed a prosperous household.  

High St, North Ferriby

Ten years later Sarah had become a cook in the somewhat more modest household of Thomas Firbank, a JP and retired merchant at 8 Charlotte St, Hull.

It's hugely frustrating that we have only these ten-yearly snapshots from Sarah's life, so we don't know what took her from Hull to London.  All we know is that in 1871 she was the cook in the Mayfair of the small household of the great Florence Nightingale.

Florence, aged 50, is Director Nightingale - and then a scribbled additional word which may be Nurses.  She has a personal maid, a cook (Sarah) and two housemaids.  She had set up the Nightingale Training School At St Thomas's Hospital in 1860.  It is now part of King's College, London.  

How long Sarah worked there we don't know.  She doesn't appear on the 1881 census, and has been replaced as Florence's cook.  We don't catch up with her until 1891 when she was living (or at least staying) "on own means" with her nephew in Scarborough.  When, and why, did she return to Hull, a place where she did not have deep roots?  On 10 January 1895 she was awarded a room in the Charterhouse, so she apparently did not have enough money to maintain a household of her own.  Did she regale her neighbours with tales of her famous former employer?

Henry Jollands led a very different life.  We first find him in the Spilsby workhouse in Lincolnshire, aged 11, in 1861.  (Confusingly, he shared a name and year of birth with another boy in the same county.)  Our Henry was born to a mother, Sophia, described by the workhouse authorities as an "imbecile" i.e. having severe learning difficulties and had been there all his young life.  Sophia then disappeared from the records, to turn up again in 1901 in the Lincoln Union workhouse.  

1881 census

Henry married Ellen Simpson in 1877. He next appears on 19 November 1880 in the Stamford Mercury: “I, Henry Jollands of Boston, will not be answerable for any debts collected by my wife Ellen Jollands after this date 19 November 1880. Henry Jollands.” On census day, 3 April 1881 Henry is in the lock-up on Victoria St, Grimsby, in the custody of Police Superintendent Geoge Jarvis and his wife. Oddly, he is described as “Head prisoner [illegible] one in lock-up”. What he was doing there becomes clear 5 days later in the Lincolnshire Chronicle: Henry Jollands of Clee, brought up on remand, charged with using threats to his wife, was ordered to find sureties, himself in £20, and one in £20, in default one calendar month.” 

Victoria St, Grimsby

Clearly it was not a happy marriage.  Ellen disappears from the record - fortunately for Henry, as it turns out.  By 1888 he was in Hull marrying Caroline Clark, almost 20 years his junior, and he seems to have become a family man, with 8 children eventually.  In 1891 they are living with their children in Peel St, Hull, where Henry is some sort of dealer. Ten years later they are managing a lodging house at 56 Salthouse Lane, and in 1911 he is the caretaker of a Catholic school and living at 5 Blundell St.

Peel Street

We don’t know when the couple entered the Charterhouse, but they are there on the 1926 electoral list. Caroline died in 1933, Henry in 1939.