A baby to watch over

The re-imagined story

Mam would take flowers up to the cemetery every week. People did in those days, but what I thought was odd was that Mrs Adlam always went with her.

Mam would knock on her door at number 18 and they would walk together up Cambria Bridge Road to the cemetery in Radnor Street.

Mam looked after a few graves in the cemetery, alternating the flowers each week. She’d tidy up Pop and Nanny Williams grave, then she would move on to Gramps and Grandma Griffiths and then Auntie Hilda and Uncle Len. Dad grew the flowers in his greenhouse otherwise it would have cost her a small fortune, he used to say.

But quite why Mrs Adlam joined her, I could never understand. Well, not then I couldn’t.

Mrs Adlam was from Somerset originally and had spent the first years of her married life living in Frome. The Adlam’s were a big family, more than ten children she had. Two of the sons went to America but most of the others lived around and about in Swindon.

She lost two babies when they lived away, Mam told me, and another child buried in the churchyard at Rodbourne Cheney. One little boy was only 12 days old. That wasn’t unusual either in those days. All those dreadful diseases that swept through families. Our mam was one of the fortunate ones. Tidy little family we were, just the four of us, all grown up with families of our own.

Two babies left behind, buried in Frome. I wonder if anyone looked after their little graves. Now I understood why Mrs Adlam visited the cemetery in Radnor Street with our mam. It was her way of being close to her babies.

Of course she is long dead herself now and buried with her husband. But recently another burial was made in the family plot. A little baby just three weeks old, Mrs Adlam’s great-grandson. At last she has a baby she can watch over.

The facts …

Sarah Elizabeth Smith was baptised on May 4, 1856 at the parish church in Marston Bigott, Somerset, the illegitimate daughter of Mercy Smith.

She married Thomas Adlam at the same church on April 19, 1877. Thomas states his occupation as a Rivetter and that he was the son of Thomas Adlam, a gardener. Sarah Elizabeth was of full age and written across the space where father’s name and occupation is required is written ‘illegitimate.’

At the time of the 1881 census Thomas and Elizabeth were living at 2 Cottages, Nunnery Lane, Frome. They already had three children, William Henry aged 3, Eleanor Sarah 2 and Ernest Thomas five months old. Eleanor died later that year and was buried at Holy Trinity church, Frome on July 6. Oswell Joseph Adlam was buried in the same churchyard on October 16, 1888. He was just 12 days old.

By the 1890s the family had moved to Swindon where Thomas had a job in the Works. On February 2, 1893 Mercy Alice was baptised at St Augustine’s and on July 29 1896 their youngest daughter and last child, Dora May was baptised at St Barnabas Church when they lived at 51 Ferndale Road.

By 1911 Thomas and Sarah had moved to 18 Cambria Place where they lived with their three youngest children. Alice Mercy 20 who worked as a shop assistant in a drapers, Reginald Frank 18, an apprentice brass finisher in the works (and part time student) and fourteen year old Dora. Sarah declares that she and Thomas have been married 34 years and that they had 11 children, seven of whom are living and four who have died by 1911. The fourth child could be son Gilbert who left for the USA and about whose date of death there seems to be some confusion.

Sarah died on March 7, 1920 and was buried in plot E8190. Her son Ernest Thomas died in Southmead Hospital Bristol and was buried with her on May 29, 1936. Husband Thomas spent his last years living with his married daughter Dora M. Baker at 38 Osborne Street. He died in May 1946 aged 93 years old and was buried in the same plot on May 20. The last burial in the grave was that of Peter William Graville the three week old son of Marie Helena, Thomas and Sarah’s granddaughter.

Percy Adlam was born in Frome in 1883 and died in 1890 aged 6 and a half years old. He was buried on January 7, 1890 at Rodbourne Cheney.  

Adlam, Sarah Elizabeth of 18 Cambria Place Swindon Wiltshire died 7 March 1920 Administration Salisbury 26 April to Thomas Adlam boilersmith Effects £382 0s 10d.