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31 Ainsworth Street
Sawyer & Insurance Agent
Number 31 is one of a terrace of four houses standing on the west side of Ainsworth Street.
1881
Elias Prime, 26, Sawyer, b Thriplow
Elizabeth Prime, 27, b Ireland
Minnie (?) Prime, 3, b Cambridge
Arthur Prime, 1, b Cambridge
Caroline Prime, 1 week, b Cambridge
1891
The Head of Household is 30-year-old Sarah Ann Burbage from Girton. The Census records her as “widow.” There are four children, Henrietta (10) and Cyril James (4) are both at school. Percy is 2 and Charles is 13 days old.
However, it appears that Sarah isn’t a widow after all. In 1901 she is living at 15 Sleaford Street with her husband James Burbage (41, carpenter and joiner) and their five children.
1897 – 1954
Head of Household is George Woor, a 34-year-old Insurance Agent. He married to Louisa Elinor, now aged 26, in 1894.
There are three children at home in 1901. Sidney is 5, Leonard is 2 and baby Gladys is 6 months old. All the family were born in Cambridge.
Louisa fills in the 1911 Census, she is now 35. She doesn’t record herself as widowed or head of the household and she leaves the top line blank, presumably for George. She says that they have been married 17 years and have had six children, two of whom have died.
Sidney is now 15 and working as a porter for a draper. Leonard Walter is 12 and there are two more children, Cyril aged 8 and Ernest aged 3.
Meanwhile, George is working as a farmer in Winnipeg, Canada. In June 1916 he enlists as a Sapper with the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force, he is 43. George gives Louisa as his next of kin.
George died of bronchitis and cardiac dilation on the 11th March 1918. He was back in England at No.5 Southern General Hospital, which was mobilized in three locations across Portsmouth. [see this article in the British Journal of Nursing from 1914]
He is buried in Milton Cemetery in Portsmouth.
In May 1915 Sidney enrolls in the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Cambridgeshire Regiment.
In January 1917 Leonard, like his father before him, enlists in the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force. He is currently a farmer in Western Ontario. Leonard was invalided back to Canada in June 1919.
On the 1921 census Cyril Conrad is 18 years old and employed as a dairyman for Mr. A Parren at 8 Ainsworth Street. Ernest William is 14 and still at school.
Louisa is on the 1939 Register, living alone, working at “outdoor housework”. Louisa is now 64. She died in September 1954, still living at number 31.
Ernest married Lilian Taylor in 1936. He is working as a Clerk, Lilian is a needlewoman. They live at ‘Glenlyn’ on Green Park.
Cyril is on the 1939 register with his wife Dorothy. He works as milk roundsman and lives at 20 Milford Street.
Sources: UK census records (1881 to 1911), 1939 Register, Cambridge Independent Press 28 May 1915, Cambridgeshire, England, Electoral Registers, Burgess Rolls and Poll Books, 1722-1966, England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1916-2007, Canada, World War I CEF Personnel Files, 1914-1918, Cambridgeshire Marriages,
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