LiveTheirStory

The North Witchford Board of Guardians Collector’s Ledger (held at Cambridgeshire Record Office, Ely) records payments in and out to support the poor of Chatteris and its area, including the inmates at Doddington Poor Law Institution and hospital. This page from 1911 details how Henry Skeels was invoiced in 1911 after the death and burial of his brother John, a labourer, aged 72.

Henry, described as a ‘pedlar’ in the ledger, lived in Edward’s Lane (now King Edward Road) with his wife Eliza. Census records describe him as a ‘licensed hawker’ in 1901, and she worked as a dressmaker and ‘lady wardrobe dealer’, that is, a seller of old clothes. That ‘licensed’ is significant – most hawkers, including members of the Gypsy Traveller community, operated informally and without government regulation, buying and selling. (Eliza’s clothes dealing was a case in point.) Henry may well have travelled in his work, but was settled in Chatteris for most of his life, first living in Back Lane (now Railway Lane) and then King Edward’s Road.

The ledger entry, dated just two days after John’s death, details that John had been taken to Doddington (cost 5 shillings), spent 8 days there (cost 6 shillings, and recorded by chance on the 1911 census), and then provided with a funeral (total cost £2 5s and 6d, helpfully itemised into coffin, grave and headstone on the attached receipt).

Even assuming Henry could have found this much money to repay the Guardians for his brother’s care, the twist is that he died in the same year. The bill was settled, it seems, with a life assurance policy from 1909 paying out far more than the original bill. Frustratingly, the ledger doesn’t tell us whether this was a result of John’s or Henry’s prudence, but their story is another of just getting by, and ensuring that John had a decent funeral.