Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

94 Tragedy Boys was buried at Charlton Cemetery on 4 August, where the Royal Artillery’s Mounted Band played funeral dirges, and were followed in procession by the whole of the Royal Artillery band in full dress. He had been just two weeks short of his 27th birthday, and a year short of the end of his 12-year period of military service. John Boys died in August 1883, but it was not until October 1897 that probate was finally resolved on his humble estate of just under £213. Probate was granted to his stepmother, another Susan (nee Knight), whom his father had married in 1882, two years after the death of John’s mother. John’s father died in 1896; was the delay in resolving probate a sign that perhaps father and son were not on good terms, such that the resolution of his estate had to wait until his father’s death? Even after a tragedy like the death of John Boys, life must go on, and for Miss McKay it moved surprisingly quickly. Before the year was out - in fact, on 19 December, a week before her 19th birthday - she did indeed get married, though in the Woolwich Register Office rather than at St Margaret’s Church. I raised with today’s parish clerk in Plumstead the question of the seemingly rather hasty marriage of a bereaved bride-to-be so soon after the loss of her fiancé. His reply seemed to solve the issue, for he said this: ‘Was John James Boys in the military [I hadn’t mentioned this in my original email]? It was not uncommon for someone else (by lottery) from the same unit to marry their dead fellow-soldiers’ wives-dependents. Very little social welfare back then for a single woman, and being so close to her wedding would have burnt her bridges!’ That seemed a perfect, if unromantic, explanation; until I found that Susan’s bridegroom was not a military man at all, but a book-keeper from Orchard Road in Plumstead, by name of Henry Thomas Southin. And in case you were wondering about a different possibility, the answer is no: her first child was not born until late in 1884, and was named after its father, her husband. They went on to have another five children by 1899; none of her four boys bore the christian names John or James. Around that time Henry died, and in the 1901 census we discover that Annie Southin was living at The Gardeners Arms public house in Bridge Street, Maidenhead 67 with five of her children and the licensee, one John W.Horne. She was shown as the pub’s proprietor (and head of the household) while John was the manager, though it would seem that their relationship may have been a little closer than that might suggest, since a girl, Winifred Norah Southin, was born in Maidenhead in 1901. Ten years later, she was recorded as Winifred Horne, though Annie’s other two children still living with her continued to bear the surname Southin. It seems that Annie’s stay in Maidenhead was only a short one. In Kelly’s Directory for 1903 the proprietor of the Gardeners Arms is named as Valentine Bramble, with no Hornes or Southins anywhere to be seen. By 67 By a remarkable coincidence, the Gardeners Arms was only a few doors away from the home at the same time of Edward Baker, as detailed in chapter two above. Or perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence - after all, there was a Kent cricket connection …