Life story retold by Pamela Moss, family descendant
William Manning
My 2x great-grandfather William was born in 1838 in Rougham, Norfolk. Both his father and grandfather were shepherds, and at the age of 13 William was working with his father as a shepherd’s page. The coming of the railway created links between the farming communities of Norfolk and Hampshire and sometime in the 1850s a farmer’s son from Rougham moved to a farm at Abbotts Ann, near Andover in Hampshire. A number of workers went with him, including William.
In 1861 William married a local girl, Ann LONGMAN, at nearby Goodworth Clatford, and remained in Hampshire working as an agricultural engine driver. Steam engines were then replacing horses for tasks like ploughing and threshing, and the work took him across Hampshire to Basingstoke and Odiham, and by 1891 to Spencer’s Wood, near Reading.
William died in 1897, aged 58, at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, due to a heart condition. His death certificate described him as a ‘general labourer of Whitley’. He was buried in Division 24 of Reading Old Cemetery (unconsecrated). In 1901 William’s widow Ann was living in Blenheim Gardens, Reading, and working as a charwoman. She died in 1908, aged 66, and was buried in Division 54 (consecrated) and not with William.
George Manning
William and Ann had 9 children, George was the fourth and was baptised in Basingstoke in 1869. By the age of eleven he was working as a carter boy on a farm in Basing, Hampshire. There is no trace of him in the 1891 or 1901 censuses although later evidence suggests he may have spent some time in the military. However, a possible marriage took place in 1893 in Preston, Lancashire, between George MANNING, 26, a groom (father William – engine driver) and Rose STONER, 28, a soldier’s widow. The marriage was short-lived according to a report in the Lancashire Evening Post on 17/10/1902 in which Rose summoned her husband for desertion, having tracked him down to West Croydon where he was working as a labourer.
…. Defendant wrote explaining his position, adding that his wife told him to go, and that he left her under great provocation. The story told to the Court by the complainant was that she was married in 1893, her husband being a Reservist. On July 1st 1896 he left the house on the pretence that he was going for his pension, and she had not seen him since. He afterwards sent her 2s 6d a week for ten months, and then his payments ceased, and she was unable to trace his whereabouts until seven weeks ago. Complainant, who was awarded 7s a week, denied that she told her husband to leave the house.
By 1911 George was living as a single man in lodgings in Spencer’s Wood, working as a farm labourer.. He enlisted at the start of WW1 and served with the Royal Berkshire Regiment, and later the Labour Corps, until he was discharged in 1919 at the age of nearly 50. No service records are available but his Pension Ledger Card shows he had also served in the Rifle Brigade. This may explain his absence from the 1891 census.
In 1921 George was living with his brother Stephen and family at Suffolk Road, Reading, He was out of work, his last employer being Reading Corporation Waterworks. His marital status had now changed to widowed, although Rose was still alive and didn’t die until 1924. Perhaps this was the story he told his family!
George died in 1934, aged 65, from pneumonia, and his death certificate gives his occupation as a ‘watchman at a building contractors’. He was buried with his mother Ann in Division 54 of the cemetery.
Divisions 24 and 54, unmarked graves