Being lucky enough to have a couple of inventories from my mother’s family, I made sure to listen to a topic on today’s Woman’s Hour, on Radio 4 by Sheilagh Ogilvie, Professor of Economic History at Cambridge University. Between 1600 and 1900 in the German province of Württemberg, personal inventories were drawn up for most newly-married brides and bridegrooms as well as bereaved widows and widowers. Thousands of these documents survive and list household goods, tools, clothing, even the entire contents of homes.  Professor Ogilvie explained how the documents give insight into the lives of people, particularly women and how poor economies improved living standards, and, practically, what lessons the inventories can hold for developing economies today.

Apart from being of general  interest to me as a family historian, one of Professor Ogilvie’s remarks resonated personally. The thrill of opening a rolled up document and knowing that you are the first person to see the contents since the inventory was made maybe hundreds of years ago. From the inventory of my ancestor Gabriel Honour’s goods in 1661,  (which I excitedly unfolded in the Bodleian Library several decades ago), I was able to piece together his household layout and yard, feather beds, flock beds, tubs and barrels, as well as his animals, including “one hogge” and equipment, two old dung carts and a dock iron. The inventory was made by his sons in law and I felt sure his daughters were there as well, having a good old poke around.

In Bristol, whilst we have no bridal lists, we are fortunate in having the work of E & S George, who I often saw in Bristol Archives Office going about their painstaking task. Their book is invaluable, listing name, date, rank or profession, parish and value of goods. There is a fair smattering of spinsters and widows: married women at that time had no property of their own. It is called “Guide to the Probate Inventories of the Bristol Deanery of the Diocese of Bristol (1542-1804). If you are lucky enough to have an ancestor listed you will be able to indent for the document and experience the thrill of walking inside his or her house.

see Post 12.2.2009

It was perhaps not surprising that further information on the above was proving difficult to find. The marriage in 1867 was between Edward John George and Charlotte Drusilla Willmott and not vice versa as I had believed.

The couple appear in the 1871 census in Brighton, described “comedian” and “comedienne” respectively with their two young children.

Immediately afterwards Charlotte, stage name “Lottie Moreton” embarked upon a gruelling theatrical tour, for most of the time as a soubrette in “Mademoiselle Beatrice’s Frou Frou Troupe” which played in weekly engagements throughout the country for the next two years. It made me feel sick with exhaustion even to research. The details may be found in “The Era” now on line through the library link. There was absolutely nothing glamourous about being on The Stage. Aside from the sheer grind of travelling about by train laden with props and boxes, a different place every week, appearing sometimes “twice nightly” in draughty halls, there was the legendary horror of theatrical “digs”. Then there was the problem of keeping yourself and the costumes clean without modern washing and drying facilities. Dancers sweat and those costumes that did not rot, could probably stand up by themselves.  (This fact was graphically brought home to me in a recent Radio 4 programme on Diaghilev’s ballet. )

At last, Lottie parted from Mlle Beatrice’s troupe and jobless and ill, probably consumptive, she began advertising for work in the theatrical papers. She died on June 23rd, 1873. Her obituary reads: “George, Mrs Edward (Lottie Moreton, actress) aged 28 years, wife of Mr George, comedian, Theatre Royal, Hull.”

Her death was registered as Charlotte Drusilla George at St Saviour, Southwark, London in the June Quarter of 1873, but I would still like to know if she was buried there. (The on-line index only goes up to 1856.)

Edward John George married his second wife Emily Margaret Dinsdill at Hull in December 1874. Both “Comedians”, they were living in lodgings at Blackburn in 1881.