12 Panton Street

12 (48) Panton Street, The Light Dragoon, Cambridge

History of 12 Panton Street

1871

Francis Fisher, 75, retired civil service legal solicitor Australia Dept, b Cambridge

Hannah, 52, b Sri Lanka

Sarah Deighton, boarder, 77, b Suffolk

Alice Jarman, 16, servant, b Cambridge

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1881

Francis Fisher, 85, retired crown solicitor of Australia, b Cambridge

Anna, 62, b Sri Lanka

Ellen, 27, b Cambridge

Jane Collis, servant, 23, b Orwell

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The following account was sent by KM in 2026

Through the 1871 and 1881 censuses, the Fisher family were living at 12 Panton Street, Cambridge. [In the 1861 census the family are listed at no.13]

Francis Fisher 1795-1882 was born in Cambridge into an affluent family of bankers. His two brothers went into the family business, Francis chose the law. After practising as a solicitor for several years in Cambridge and Bedford, in his late thirties, he was appointed Crown Solicitor of the New South Wales Colony. He arrived in Sydney in 1835.

He soon found a wife in Anna Susan Rogers 1819-1896, daughter of Richard Rogers 1787-1863. Her brother Edward Rogers was Fisher’s Principal Clerk. They were married in 1837. Francis was 41, Anna 18. Anna had arrived in Sydney from England only eighteen months earlier with her father, newly appointed Ordnance Storekeeper, and stepmother, brothers Edward and Richard, and three half-siblings. Anna’s eldest brother William Thomas Rogers was a Royal Naval Surgeon who’d married into a Devon family.

From high political status Fisher’s career and personal life took a disastrous turn  through financial entanglement with the former British MP Thomas Potter Macqueen which left Fisher financially liable for the enormous sum of £23,403. He brought his family back to Cambridge in 1847 to try to recover his money and to beg for employment from Earl Grey, the Secretary of State for the Colonies. He succeeded with neither. 

The couple had six children, of whom only two lived into old age, William Rogers Fisher 1846-1910 and Louisa Ellen Fisher (Nellie) 1853-1939.

In the 1871 census the household at 12 Panton Street had acquired a boarder, 77 year old Sarah Deighton née Tillott 1794-1891, widow of former Cambridge mayor John Deighton, bookseller and publisher. The Deighton and Fisher families were already connected through Australian and New Zealand colonial networks where Sarah’s nephews were established, as well as moving in the same Cambridge social circles.     

Widowed Sarah needed somewhere to live and her options were limited;  she had outlived all of her daughters, her last surviving daughter with whom she had lived for several years in Gainsborough had died in 1863. With her surviving sons scattered or occupied with demanding careers, perhaps lodging with the Fishers was her best option. No doubt the supplementary income would have been welcome to the cash-strapped Fishers.

After Francis Fisher’s death in 1882, Anna Fisher and her daughter Nellie stayed on at Panton Street until Nellie’s marriage two years later in 1884 to Dr Frederick Deighton 1854-1924, Sarah Deighton’s grandson. Anna moved with her daughter into the Deighton family home at 47 Hills Road from where Fred took over his recently deceased father’s medical practice. Fred and Nellie had eight children, the youngest being my grandmother. Some of their stories appear under 47 Hills Road, but there’s a lot more to tell. (Kate Mears 2026)

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1901 (48)

Thomas Long, 37, musician, b Dublin

Lily, 23, b Suffolk

Florence, 10m, b Cambridge

Sarah Pettit, mother in law, 59, living on own means, b Cambridge

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1911 (48)

George Shepherd, 48, publican, b Sussex

Caroline Mary, 33, b Berks

George Osmond, 5, b Cambridge

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1913 The Light Dragoon

G Shepherd

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1931 – 1957

Julius Wehrle

Caroline

Julius died in 1940 aged 73. Caroline lived here until she died aged 85 in 1952. Caroline’s younger sister Rose Lilian Hessey continued to live at this address.

The Wehrle family were living in 1911 at 4 Lensfield Road.

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1962 –

PS sent this note in 2024: Dr Elizabeth Shoenberg, who had been living in this address from the early 60s. She died in 2005, living her house to her nephew Dr Peter Shoenberg. My aunt Dr Elizabeth Shoenberg was for many years a Consultant Psychiatrist at Claybury Hospital (in Woodford, Essex) where she pioneered a therapeutic community approach to treating mentally ill patients and she was a member of the Newnham College Roll ; in retirement she was also very active in teaching at the U3A Cambridge. She was born in Chiswick , London in 1918 and was the daughter of Sir Isaac Shoenberg , an electrical engineer ( from St Petersburg) and was the younger sister of Professor David Shoenberg, a low temperature physicist at the Cavendish laboratory.