Small facts, big stories

The place of the individual in human history, in my mind, is more important than the big events that shape the world. To understand the individual, no matter who or what or why, is to understand the time and the place and the mechanics of the larger canvas that affects us all.

Seated Man, 2011, Sean Henry (b 1965) – Woking Station

Sometimes when researching someone I come across a little bit of individual history that begs further investigation but, invariably it involves someone else. That happened today. And no matter that the individual was a needlewoman from Shalford, Surrey living with her aged aunt Caroline, her story is intriguing nonetheless.

I was working on filling in the life of a WW1 victim called William Augustus Carpenter when I discovered that his mother, Fanny Carpenter wasn’t married. A little bit of maths concluded that she’d had William when she was 40. Given William was born in 1888 and Fanny survived, I thought this was rare to start with.

Shalford is a few miles from Guildford so not what one would call a thriving metropolis. I’m thinking most people would know most other people so the fact that Fanny was pregnant then a mother would not have been much of a secret.

But more than the Victorian shocked sensibilities is the mystery of her parents. They were William and Sarah Carpenter. They were married in 1846, having Fanny two years later. Then, in 1861, when the census was taken, Fanny is living with her maternal grandparents in Shalford. They are the Prestons.

I have been unable to find out anything about what happened to William and Sarah but Fanny seems to have been shuffled around a bit. In 1871 she’s living in Lambeth with her aunt Elizabeth and her husband William Still. They were living at 95 Newington Causeway. Then, ten years later, she is living back in Shalford with Aunt Caroline who is widowed and lives at 14 Christmas Hill, Shalford.

(By the way, Caroline was living with her son, George Preston at 13 Wonersh Road, Shalford in 1871. She was already widowed but I’m wondering why her son took the Preston name. Curiouser and curiouser.)

Fanny stays with Caroline for as long as the online census appears. This is 1911 and Caroline manages to reach 84 years old. By this time, William Augustus Carpenter has left home. Mind you he was 23 by then so possibly off finding himself work or women…or both.

So what happened to Fanny? Did she live an entirely sedate life up until the age of 40 when she suddenly had a deep and passionate love affair with a travelling Italian circus performer? Or was she assaulted and left to bring up the produced child on her own with Aunt Caroline? Or was the whole thing the second coming and William was the product of another immaculate conception?

We’ll probably never know but I like to think that little Fanny the Shalford needlewoman lived a long and happy life punctuated with the sadness of her parents’ deaths and one night of great passion with Luigi Visconti, trapeze artist extraordinaire!

A very familiar sight from long ago