My great grandparents met somewhere… he was newly arrived in London from Tasmania where he was born in 1845, she was from Northamptonshire, the daughter of a basket maker and she was born in 1853. How did they meet? He was from an extremely wealthy Jewish family who now lived on Regent’s Park in a beautiful terrace built by Nash; she was from a manufacturing family, who may have started a rather humble business but who later had factories making baskets on an industrial scale.
They must have met some time before 1879 when their first child was born, but how two people from such different worlds came together, fell in love and then had five children is a mystery which probably will never be solved. They never actually married; it is tragic to read the census returns where he is recorded as the father of the children, and their mother is the ‘housekeeper’. Sadly he died in 1995, just before his fiftieth birthday.
The house in my featured image is one where they lived together; I am sure they were happy, and I know they were very much in love.
Lois Elsden 