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94 York Street

The Family of George Holmes Westwood

1881

Number 94 is not on the 1881 Census.

1890 – ~1906

George James Holmes Westwood was born in Cambridge in 1851.  Throughout his life he appears on the census either with the surname “Westwood” or the surname “Holmes”.  The 1851 (Westwood), 1861 (Westwood) and 1871 (Holmes) Census returns see him living with his grandparents on Albert Street and the “back of New Street”.

George married his first wife, Sophia Morris, in February 1877.  The couple lived on Albert Street, and had six children before Sophia died in 1889.

In 1891 George Holmes, a bricklayer, is living at 94 York Street with his new wife Mary Elizabeth (nee Fuller), who he married in 1890, and four of Sophia’s children.  Emily (or Emma) is 11, Thomas Henry (later known as Henry Thomas) is 13, Harriet May is 8 and Sophia is 5. All the children are ‘Holmes’.

Birth and death records show that George and Mary had a child called Jessie who was born, and died, in 1890.  Their next child is born towards the end of 1891, so Mary is expecting at the time of the 1891 Census.

By 1901 George is still a bricklayer and is now going by Westwood again.  Thomas is 22 and a bricklayer’s labourer.  George Frederick is 8, Sidney James is 6, Annie Doris is 2 and Arthur Henry is 1.

There are two other children.  Amelia is 19 (the child Mary was expecting in 1891) and Grace is 5.  Both these girls are patients at the Fever Hospital on Mill Road (now Brookfields), on the night of the 1901 Census.  It is likely that they had scarlet fever.

The couple had two more children, Alfred and Leslie.  Leslie died in 1910.  At some point before 1906 the family move to 34 Albert Street, back to the street where George grew up.  On the 1911 census George has double-barrelled his name, and signed himself “Holmes-Westwod”.

He died in 1912.

1906-1935

Frederick Biggs, 28, coal porter, b. Balsham, Cambridgeshire

Florence Lily Biggs (nee Parker), 33, b. Cambridge

Lilian Florence Biggs, 7, school, b. Balsham, Cambridgeshire

Alice Eliza Biggs, 6, school, b. Cambridge

Constance Laura Biggs, 4, school, b. Cambridge

Arthur Carter, 22, boarder, Cambridge Corporation Dust Man, b. Balsham, Cambridgeshire (related to the Biggs family or a friend from Balsham?)

Florence and Frederick have been married for eight years and have had three children.  The couple married on Christmas Day 1902.

Frederick served with the Suffolk Regiment in World War 1.  On the 15th October 1916, whilst serving in France, he received a gun shot wound in the thigh and returned to England.  He was discharged as no longer physically fit for war service on the 2nd October 1917

Sources: 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911 UK Census, Civil Registration Birth Index (1837-1915), Civil Registration Marriage Index (1837-1915), Civil Registration Death Index (1837-1915), Cambridgeshire Electoral Registers, Burgess Rolls and Poll Books (1722-1966), British Army World War I Service Records (1914-1920),

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