Life stories retold by Pamela Moss, family descendant
Stephen, my maternal great-grandfather, was born in 1874 in Newnham, Hampshire, the sixth child of William MANNING (1838 – 1897) and Ann LONGMAN. In the 1891 census he was working as a hay-binder’s apprentice in Burghfield, and his parents were living in Spencer’s Wood, near Reading. A report in the Reading Mercury on 17/9/1892 states that Stephen was summoned, along with a number of other young men, for playing cards for money in the Recreation Ground in Shinfield. This had apparently been going on for several Sundays. Fines were imposed and the defendants were ‘admonished as to their future conduct’.
In December 1893 he joined a local militia – the 3rd Battalion Hampshire Regiment – while working as a labourer for a Mr Lucas of Reading. Recruits to the militia were volunteers and normally served a 6-year term involving one month’s training a year. However, Stephen purchased a discharge in 1897, and in 1899 he married Jessie Rose GOODGER at Dunsden, near Henley, Oxon. Jessie was baptised Rhoda Jessie Goodger in 1877 at Hartley Wintney, Hamphire, and her father was an agricultural labourer.
By 1901 Stephen was working as a builder’s carter and living in Western Road, Reading. He worked for Mr McCarthy Fitt who helped to build Kendrick School where my mother was a pupil. In 1903 he was a witness in a case of theft after some lead piping was stolen from his cart:
John Withers, hawker…charged with stealing 12lbs of lead piping from a cart at Caversham…the property of Mr McCarthy Fitt…Stephen Manning, in the employment of the prosecutor, said he fetched a load of material from Ipsden. He went into the ‘Pack Horse’ on his way home, and saw defendant there. He gave him a lift. The next morning the constable asked him if he had missed any lead, and he replied that he did not know as he did not see all that was put into the cart. Defendant had a large fish basket with him. Under cross-examination he denied putting the lead into the defendant’s basket, and did not know it was in the cart. The defendant was convicted and sentenced to 14 days hard labour. (Reading Mercury 18/7/1903)
By 1911 Stephen was still a carter, now living at 14 Suffolk Road, Reading. In the 1921 census he was a builder’s lorry driver, still employed by Mr Fitt, a building contractor in Oxford Road. At the time of the census there were 12 people living at Suffolk Road – Stephen and Jessie, their 8 children, Stephen’s brother George, and Jessie’s twice-widowed mother Lucy Young. Apart from Stephen the only other member of the family in work at that time was daughter Annie, a tailoress.
Lucy died in 1925, aged 89, and was buried in Division 41 of the Old Cemetery. Jessie purchased a grant for the grave in 1927 and was buried with her mother when she died in 1937, aged 60. Stephen continued to live at Suffolk Road until his death in 1954, aged 79, the cause of death being degeneration of the spinal cord.
Also buried with them is grandson Maurice S.J. Fouracre who died in 1935 at the age of 2.
Divisions 41, Row P, No 9 (headstone and blank kerbs)