LiveTheirStory

Clara was born in Chatteris in 1863, the same year her brother George died. When Clara was 3, her elder sister Sarah Ann also passed away, leaving her as the eldest daughter. We do not know when she left her crowded family home, but aged 18 she was working, a long way from Chatteris in Christchurch Dorset, as a draper’s assistant to a Welshman 15 years her senior, William Whitney. They were living together but he is described as married in the 1881 census record.

Ten years later, William’s wife reappears in the census record, and Clara had moved on in her career. She was now one of a full staff of assistants at the drapery and outfitters of Thomas Chesterfield in Alton, Hampshire. (The shop was established in 1880 and features still in a 1935 Guide to Alton.) Their stories started in all parts of England: 8 young men and women, all single, lived with Chesterfield, his wife, their ten children and four domestic staff.

Clara seems never to have married, and ill-health may have forced her to return to Chatteris, since it is here that her death at the age of 36 is registered in 1899. Of all Reuben and Ann’s children, she is the only one to be recorded on the memorial stone.