Isaac Camplin
St. Pancras Old Church in North London stands beside St Pancras Way. This was once an ancient track, known as the King's road from the north, which ran alongside the Fleet river and down into London, then some distance away. The reign of Queen Anne (1694-1714) was a watershed for St Pancras between the old world and the new. Landowning families who were to influence the development of the area in the nineteenth century, during Isaac's time, had already settled there. A Mr Rhodes and his brood for many years farmed land around the church and to the south of it. His family also owned Chalk Farm (just outside the parish) and later had a farmhouse in the Hampstead Road. (Amazingly, the last vestiges of this farm survived until 1934). During the reign of George I (1714-1727) the common lands in the whole area north of what is now the Euston Road were being appropriated and the the fields began to be divided up, each patch zealously guarded by individual copyholders. Increasingly, roaming cows, pigs, goats, donkeys, chickens, ducks, and other livestock which had previously grazed freely, began to cause disputes among neighbours. So also did the random erecting of barriers to keep them in (or out). The local courts tried to keep order: there were fruitless requests to Widow Lawrence that she should not keep her carts on the open ground - an early example of a parking offence - and Jasper Garland, a bricklayer, was asked to remove a bank he had erected in Swine's Lane. By then bricklayers and brickmakers were cropping up frequently in the parish records because of the demand for new buildings on the individual parcels of land, and the brick and tile kilns that were to pollute the air round Battle Bridge (Kings Cross) and St Pancras church for the next hundred years were already flourishing. Landowners with farming interests also had building interests and the Rhodes family eventually turned many of their 300 acres over to brickmaking, conveniently intermarrying with a family of kiln owners.
What had been green fields around the kilns beyond the edge of London, at Battle Bridge/Kings Cross, came to resemble an arid wasteland and the fumes from them created a noxious atmosphere. At the end of George II's reign (1727-1760) Oliver Goldsmith described the road north from Battle Bridge to Kentish Town village as being full of dust heaps and open drains, though away from the road there were erstill plenty of grassy areas and cultivated fields growing vegetables and other crops.
Through this landscape ran the lively River Fleet, which was notorious for flooding, damaging market gardens and kilns alike and drowning cattle.
In the Mother Redcap tavern, named after a famous local witch, the brickmakers could drink away the dust and the smoke with more dubious customers - "the poor" - who were gathering in what was to become Camden Town, while half a mile further north in Kentish Town the inhabitants still lived in rural tranquility. Gentlemen such as the antiquarian the Rev. Dr. Stukeley had houses and gardens there and much was made of the wholesomeness of the air and the purity of the water.
During the long reign of George III (1760-1820), the population of London continued to increase exponentially and ribbon development spread along the road all the way to Kentish Town. London itself was becoming more and more overcrowded. Then "a new system....began to prevail among the citizens... Notwithstanding the highly improved measures which in their day were adopted for promoting the salubrity and comfort of the city, a constant residence at their houses of business was not only insupportable but threatened the destruction of their health. In common with its neighbours, Kentish Town partook of the increase of inhabitants occasioned to the suburban villages by a passion for nightly emigration." In other words, the workers preferred to live in the cottages springing up in the suburbs rather than stay in town. The commuter was born. In addition, a day-tripper trade soon established itself. Suburban tea gardens and pleasure gardens were popular, though highway robbery was still common along the route. However, as building continued, the gardens, paddocks and bowling greens slowly disappeared under the streets which proliferated to right and left of the main road. The fields behind the new terraces of houses were still as rural as ever, sprinkled with cows and barns, but they were no longer visible to the passing traveller.
The population of the whole of St Pancras parish in 1776 had been said, rather euphemistically, to have been only 600 people, but by 1801, following the establishment of Camden Town as a destination in its own right (1790s) and the development of Somers Town (1786) to the south of it, the number of parishoners had increased to 32,000.
The frivolity of the Regency years was past and gone. That had been a time of dandies and beaux; of elegant mansions, and town squares with views of fields and hills; of the excitement of newly gaslit streets and shopping arcades, and the heroics of the Napoleonic War; but it was also a time of political oppression and economic collapse; of sclerotic institutions unable to adapt to the new, industrial era. There were high levels of petty crime, though the remnants of the vicious Bloody Code sought to control them; and the governing elite still shrank from the horrors of the overthrow of the French monarchy in 1789. They were increasingly afraid of the supposed power of "the mob". Liberty, Equality and Brotherhood were not what the Ruling Classes had in mind. Meanwhile, for the working classes, London was a mecca of possibilities and opportunities. The new houses of Somers Town had become home to immigrants from Republican France and the building boom continued - brickmakers were busy indeed - luckily for Isaac's father, James, who worked at this trade for at least part of his life. By the time Isaac was born on 9th June 1822, in the second year of the reign of George IV (1820-1830), his mother Mary had alread given birth to eight children: James (1812), William (1814), Charles (1815), James again (1817), Ebenezer (1819) and Dinah (1819).
Isaac arrived to the sound of insistent and articulate calls from Reformers for change in every aspect of British life: parliament, the judiciary, the church, medicine, gaols, schooling, public and private manners and customs, architecture and street planning - all were loudly condemned for being outmoded, inefficient and unworkable. The old Britain, as exemplified by London, was felt to be creaking at the seams and tottering on the point of collapse. By the time Isaac was 9, the population of the town had increased to over one and a half million inhabitants (from less than a million at the start of the century) to become the largest and most diverse group of people to be found anywhere on earth. Isaac's parents, James and Mary are themselves likely to have been part of this great influx of humanity - though we do not yet know where they came from. About half of poor Londoners were then literate but little of their personal history survives. Most that was significant in their lives has crumbled away: the coarse paper of the broadsheets they read, the houses and hovels they lived in; and the majority of their songs, stories and sayings have passed unrecorded. If they do appear in Georgian times it is usually because of some misfortune or crime - (see William, Diversion III). James and Mary must have arrived in London by 1812, the year of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, since their first child, James, was christened in St Pancras during that year. However, this infant must have died by 1817, when James 2 was born. (It was customary to name the first child after the father, but replacements often appeared later, due to the relatively high infant mortality rate). James Snr seems to have been living in amongst the noxious brick kilns of Battle Brige in 1820 - given Ebenezer's place of birth, Kings Cross (1861 Census).
London bricks are made of clay - a type of soil for which the town is famous - and are characteristically yellow in colour. In April the clay was tempered with water and kneaded with bare feet, or in pugmills driven by horses, to soften it. Children were often employed to barrow the clay to the moulding benches where wooden frames or moulds were set up. Each mould was damped with water and a lump of rolled clay was thrown in hard to fill it. Excess clay was then trimmed off the edges of the mould with a wire bow and smoothed with a "strike", a stick moistened with water. The bricks were turned out and then left for a day to dry a little, before the moulder's boy could stack them ready for hardening off. They had to be thoroughly dried out, for a period of three to six weeks according to the weather, before they could be fired. A "bearer-off" was employed to lift the bricks from the stack, between pallet boards, and set them to dry in rows on timber platforms in open-sided sheds. The bricks were moved and turned as they dried, so the process was a labour-intensive one. To harden the bricks sufficiently for building purposes they had to be fired at a temperature of 1742-2102 degrees Fahrenheit - depending on the final colour required. Skill was needed in stacking the bricks correctly in the kiln (wood or coal fired) for the heat and gases to circulate. The firing processs itself could take a further two to six weeks. Brickmaking appears to have been a seasonal job with most work stopping in the Autumn until the spring, because of the risk of frost damaging the bricks as they dried. We can imagine James's children helping at the brickworks......
While the area immediately around the brick and tile kilns may have been something of a wasteland, it was not all doom and gloom. When Isaac was a little boy there were still plenty of green fields round about and in the 1820s it must have been a pleasantly rural scene through which the river Fleet ran on its way into London. Farmers farmed, anglers fished, children swam. Cottages clustered around the brick kilns and gravel pits which were a traditional feature of the area providing a local industry to supply materials for gentlemen's country retreats just up the road to the north and for the metropolis brooding to the south. Pigs and cows, horses and chickens, ducks and donkeys were kept to supply the needs of burgeoning families. And to house these families more and more cottages sprang up, while the landowners' more general development of North London continued. The 1820s were the heyday of the Regent's canal, which ran around the top of Regent's Park, and then, skirting to the north of Camden Town, came down past what would become Agar Town and continued eastward towards Islington. With its locks and towpaths, horse-drawn barges and steamboats it perfectly represented the mix of industrial and country which typified this part of town.
While Isaac progressed from child to young adult, 1830-1837, William IV was on the throne. His reign was short but very turbulent. In this Era Without a Name, the Reform Act of 1832 would see the middle classes begin to wrest power from the aristocracy and the church. However, the newly enfranchised tradesmen, industrialists and administrators were keen to separate themselves off from the poorer members of society. If Isaac's father, brickmaker James, had thought any benefit might come to him from the rise of democracy, he was to be badly disappointed. The 1832 Act gave the vote to just one-seventh of the adult male population, and the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 would see all those who sought parish relief incarcerated in institutions - the Workhouses - that were prisons in all but name while the living conditions of those who managed to earn a day's wage for themselves were to remain a source of shame and disgrace to the Richest Nation on Earth for many years to come. The hopeful Londoners of the turn of the century had to work very hard to support themselves and their families - to avoid the miserable conditions of the parish Workhouse. This all but one of the North London Camplins and their extended families managed to do - though in Isaac's case extreme measures were called for, and he and his wife appear to have arrived in Australia without a penny. Poverty, then as now, was often represented as a moral failing, the result of shiftlessness and irresponsibility. This was often very far from the truth.
After hard work, light entertainment or diversion was needed. For some, this could be found in church. Sects with charismatic leaders, who promised a reward - if only in the hereafter - for the sufferings and struggles of daily life, were extremely popular (not only for their message but for the spectacle they provided).One such was the Catholic Apostolic Church, founded by Edward Irving, which encouraged its congregation to speak in tongues and to give vent to any other hysterical manifestations of divine power that happened to take their fancy. Edward Irving was a Scotsman of commanding presence whose taste for the theatrical led to his excommunication from the established church. Nothing daunted, he formed a breakaway group with a headquarters in an old artists' studio in Newman Street, a few blocks to the south of where the Camplins were living. No doubt his evangelists went out into the surrounding streets to preach and to gather converts. In 1835, when Isaac was nearly 13 and had probably already been working for several years, his brothers and sister: William, Charles, James Jnr, Ebenezer, Dinah, George, Henry and Frederick (the size of the family brings to mind another popular pastime) were all baptized into the Catholic Apostolic Church. William was already married by then and his 3-month old daughter Mary Ann was baptized with him. What became of William's wife Sarah is another story to be discovered. Possibly she died of the lung disease which was later to kill William. Perhaps it was the occasion of Mary Ann's baptism which led all the rest of the family to join in. Isaac's wherabouts at the time are so far unknown. He in turn was baptised in October 1836, the year in which the London to Birmingham railway was planned. The coming of the railway was to have a profound effect on St Pancras parish.
In 1836-1837 the railway line smashed its way between Camden Town and the verdant grasslands of Regent's Park on the way to Euston station, and a new era dawned as 17-year-old Victoria became queen. This year also saw the start of central registration for all births, marriages and deaths. Similarly, in 1841, perhaps in an attempt to gain a greater sense of control over the populace, and a wider view of the problems to which it might give rise - as it were, rolling up their sleeves - the Authorities organized the first complete and detailed Census of the British Isles. This was a massive undertaking and like Registration an absolute boon to genealogists because of the enduring British passion for filing away official documents on any and every subject. Between 1837 and 1841 we can find the Camplin family in various records, spreading out in Camden Town. Three more of Isaac's brothers, James Jnr, Charles and Ebenezer, married and began to produce offspring. In the late 1830s James and Ebenezer were butchers. Charles simply said that he and his father were "labourers" (May 1839) but his father-in-law was a bricklayer and no doubt knew James Snr through the trade. (Ebenezer, at his marriage a couple of months earlier, had described his father as a brickmaker.) At the time of the family baptisms, the Camplins were living at "The Cottage", Great Camden Street, except son William, who lived close by at 6 Archer Street with his little daughter. It seems likely that James Snr built The Cottage and subsequently others. [By 1851, two years after his death, there were several, known as Camplin Cottages, and at her death in 1854 Mary left "the Cottages in Camden Street and Little Camden Street" to her children and her granddaughter Mary Ann.]
On Census night (June 6th) 1841 Ebenezer was staying with his brother James and his wife and baby son William, in Camden Street. Though they had worked previously as butchers, which had also been brother William's trade, they both described themselves in the Census as general dealers (in other words they bought and sold anything they could get their hands on, either from a barrow or from a shop crammed to the ceiling with secondhand goods. These shops were ubiquitous in poor districts and were known (who knows why?) as "marine stores". An elder Camplin (?), yet to be identified, advertised in The Times in November 1830 "Sales by Auction: mahogany and other bedsteads, furniture, china, glass, etc. Catalogue on the premises and at Mr Camplin's, 170 Bishopsgate Street." so it seems that this trade was established in the family. (Ebenezer's son Ebenezer jnr was born in Bishopsgate Street in 1842 - 1861 Census). Also with them was Charles Druitt, another general dealer. Perhaps the three young men had been discussing a business partnership. Many working people changed jobs a number of times throughout their lives, depending on the availability of work, or their success or lack of it in any particular occupation. Age, illness, or incapacity, could also bring about changes. Sometimes they hired themselves out for work by the day, in which case they were called journeymen (from the French 'jour'). Further along the street, in The Cottage, were James Snr, then a gardener, his wife Mary, with William (27), a cabman - and Mary Ann (6) - and the rest of their brood Dinah (17) George (14) Henry (12) and Frederick (6). Isaac, now 19, was again elsewhere. Was he perhaps something of an outsider in the family? Or did he live with a relative perhaps? If he was hired as a journeyman, he may have stayed in the household where he happened to be working. He did not learn to read or write during his childhood, and as the fifth son he may not have had much of a look in. The arrival of Dinah perhaps made life easier for the younger boys. [NB Was the Mr Camplin of Bishopsgate Street perhaps old James himself, who would have needed a winter occupation, when conditions were not suitable for brickmaking?]
In 1844 Dinah married William Kilpen, a gardener, in Clerkenwell. In the outer suburbs of North London, considered more salubrious than the Great Wen itself, there were parks and public pleasure grounds to which ordinary folk (the emergent middle classes) were enticed to venture out, while the gentry lived round about in large houses with elegant lawns and flower beds. Although James and his children had only the most basic amenities, they were only a short distance from the delights of Regent's Park and its mansions. This park had been planned for the Prince Regent by the great architect John Nash to protect the area from encroachment by the little houses spreading inexorably towards it. The poorer members of society also took pride in their gardens. Perhaps it was a testament to James' (and William Kilpen's) gardening skills, that at the time of old James's death in 1849 The Cottage was one of several known as "Garden Cottages". In that same year George (17) was married. He too started off as a butcher, like his brothers. There was plenty of livestock about since there were still extensive areas of fields and common land only a short distance away. Cows and sheep being driven through the streets to market were a common sight.
The main live meat market was right in the city at Smithfield (once the Smoothe Field). In the 1820s some one and a half million sheep, 150,000 cattle and 60,000 pigs were driven to Smithfield every year to be sold and slaughtered. The animals came from all over the country with drovers walking them 15-20 miles a day. It was a skilled job to manoeurvre a herd of up to 1000 beasts across the country and many came from as far away as the Scottish Highlands. An ox could lose up to 20lbs in weight for every 100 miles it walked, and cattle driven down from the north were rested in pastures along the route to fatten up. The last stopping place was the meadows of Islington before the final drive, for which the London drovers took over, down St John Street and into market. After sale, a butcher's drover would drive a beast to its place of slaughter. On market days the noise and smell was indescribable. Thousands of cattle jammed the narrow streets, the drovers shouted and cursed, the cattle bellowed and panicked (often encouraged by pranksters who did their best to add to the chaos). Traffic accidents of one kind and another were frequent and the animals were whipped and goaded with a cruelty that would be counted as criminal today. Once they had been sold for slaughter, conditions became worse than ever, with no regard whatsoever for the welfare of the animals to be butchered for meat, and still less if they were destined for the knackers yard. The slaughter itself frequently took place in the cellars or back yards of houses with no particular adaptation for the trade. People passing the courts or alleys could easily find themselves witnessing a killing. This was one of the many areas where there were calls for change, and legislation began to modify the treatment of animals, together with a slow change in the perception of cruel behaviour - which extended to what was considered acceptable in the treatment of women and children. (In this context it is interesting to note that the last burning of a female felon took place in the 1790s; the slave trade was abolished in Britain in 1807; hanging, drawing and quartering in 1814 and beheadings in 1820 - all forms of execution having been popular public spectacles.) Let us hope that 20-30 years later a butcher would have practised his trade in less primitive conditions. A large, purpose-built cattle market was eventually constructed, on one of the still open areas near Kentish Town, but that was not until about 1860 (see map).
Increasingly, through the 1840s and 50s, our family were living with the hazards of rudimentary drainage and a water supply that doesn't bear thinking about. As new streets of small houses continued to rise around them, effluent flowed freely into streams and rivers, or simply lay in pools and gutters. Any cesspits that there were, often overflowed. Any sewers built by the numerous property developers were random and uncoordinated, and all used the Thames and its tributaries, including the river Fleet, as the major disposal routes. So foul did the Thames become that by the middle of the century it was described as a "Stygian Lake". Nightsoil men, who had previously made a living collecting excrement and selling it for fertiliser, had been losing their livelihood since 1847 when guano began to be imported from South America. The result was that by 1850 much of the sewage generated by Londoners (who now numbered 2.5 million) was simply dumped in the streets. Anyone lucky enough to have a flushing lavatory (introduced in 1810) would simpy be adding to the general stink of Old Father Thames, whose water people drank. London by its sheer size and lack of organization was an extreme example of problems that were evident all over the country. In 1848-1849 there was a nationwide cholera epidemic in which 60,000 people died. Old James was one of them. After suffering from "Diarrhoea 9 days", he died of "Cholera Spasmodisa - 18 hours - Certified". A slow and miserable death for the old man. Despite growing evidence, the connection between clean drinking water and health was denied by many reformers. The theory of airborne infection still prevailed, with high-profile figures, including Florence Nightingale believing that all diseases came from the atmoshere. The great Victorian engineers and philanthropists that the situation demanded were yet to get into their strie.
James's death was registered by his daughter-in-law Elizabeth (either Elizabeth Emma nee Price, wife of Charles, or Elizabeth nee Blagdon, wife of James). Her home was just round the corner in Caroline Street. At the next Census (1851) we find widowed Mary supported by her son Henry, who is living with her and her granddaughter Mary Ann at 5 Camplin (formerly Garden) Cottages, Camden Street. Henry, who appears to have a sense of humour, describes himself in the Census as "professor of dogs' meat". (He went on to be one of the most successful of the Camplin brothers in his chosen trade). His brother William had been a seller of cats' meat in the 1830s and Henry already had two other brothers with experience as butchers. Mary Ann was by then 16 and performing "domestic duties". Mary, at 65 had not long left to live. Most of her children were now married and she had a number of grandchildren all livng not far away. But her eldest son William was dead. He, like his father, had died as a result of his living conditions. His story is a sad one.
William (born 21 January 1814) enters our story in The Times of January 1834, in a newspaper report said to have caused "an extraordinary sensation". William, a marine store dealer and cats' meat seller (combining the chosen trades of the Camplin brothers) was arrested, and charged at Kentish Town station-house with assaulting two policemen. This was remarkable to those who knew him since they considered him to be "of the most mild and inoffensive disposition". And they knew him well, since he had been selling cats' meat in Camden Town "for many years". Witnesses stated that the policemen had been completely drunk and had treated William with great brutality. This seems to have been quite true since the policemen were so inebriated that they were not in a fit state to appear at the police station on the evening when William was charged, and one of them was still too "ill" to attend court the next morning. Mysteriously, William was said to be "a complete cripple in the hands", perhaps due to some form of childhood paralysis, or (more likely) rheumatic fever. The crippling effect of this may have been somewhat exaggerated by William and his supporters, since he was able to ply his trades and look after his dog, which the policemen were said to have kicked. (We can imagine the dog trying to defend its master.) The policemen had originally objected to the dog standing beside William's barrow in the street, and one of them had knocked William's hat off. From there things went from bad to worse: one of the policemen hit William "a tremendous blow with his fist, while two other constables held him so that he had no means of defending himself". However, William "on rising, attempted to return the blow". A crowd had gathered and tried to rescue the prisoner - they "kicked the officers about in all directions". "The police, and also the prisoner, were much bruised". William was said by a witness to be sober, but "violent in his attempts to get away. He had cause to be so as the police used him so very cruelly".
It is clear that Marylebone magistrates' court was another source of popular entertainment. William's hearing lasted several days and the courtroom was thronged with spectators of all classes. Several gentlemen stepped forward to offer bail for William when he was released overnight. Three magistrates and a jury were involved in hearing the case, which was eventually dismissed with fines and cautions for all concerned.
Thereafter, William's story becomes increasingly tragic. Having apparently worked as a cabman for a while (1841) and then, perhaps to get a break from the increasingly smog-ridden air of Camden Town, he moved south of the river to Bermondsey where, in 1843, he is listed as the proprietor of a marine store (or junk shop) at 17 Star Court, Grange Road. By this time William's lungs must already have been seriously diseased. On 31st December 1844, he visited a brothel. He had been drinking heavily and so had the very young lady, Jane Matthews, who left the brothel with him. She was only 13 and after she had passed out dead drunk William had his way with her. He was subsequently indicted for rape, though it was not clear who brought the prosecution. He was tried by jury, convicted, and on 3 March 1845 sentenced to Transportation for Life. His barrister appealed against the sentence and the appeal was heard in the Central Criminal Court on 7 March 1845.
This became a test case and is still used as an important precedent in English Law (Regina v. Camplin, 1 Den 89 - i.e. cited as a precedent by Lord Denning in 1989). William's barrister appealed on the grounds that he could not be guilty of rape because he did not use force and Ms Matthews did not object (she was unconscious at the time). After considering their verdict until 18 June, the judges disposed of this argument with a few well chosen words and upheld the sentence.
Since the March hearing, William had been living in Newgate Gaol next door to the Central Criminal Court in an area known for two public houses where bodysnatchers or "resurrection men" congregated to drink and plan their next outing in the lucrative trade of supplying bodies to the medical schools for dissection. William's body would not have been much use to the students - they preferred a healthy corpse for study (a fact that led the resurrection men to resort to murder when the supply of freshly buried corpses was difficult to sustain). William had been admitted to the prison infirmary almost immediately because he was a very sick man. His condition was not improved by the long wait for the judges' decision. Meanwhile, his friends were campaigning on his behalf and when the verdict was upheld they mounted a petition with numerous signatures from Camden Town and from Bermondsey. The Petition explained the circumstances under which the offence was committed. William pleaded that he never meant to rape the young lady, who after all came from a brothel. The reason he did not notice that she was very young (and unconscious) was that he too was drunk at the time. He asked for his poor health to be taken into consideration and that the sentence at least be deferred until he could get together further mitigating facts. He signed the Petition with a wavering hand. [Someone must surely must have helped him with this - barrister; enlightened prison governor; doctor?]
Medical reports stated that William was suffering from advanced disease of the lungs and dropsy. He was not given any hope of recovery. On 17 July, the original judge in the case recommended reduction of the sentence to Transportation for 10 years. Everyone concerned must have known that it was extremely unlikely that this sentence would be carried out. Nevertheless, William's many friends mounted a third appeal. The Petitioners stated that William had previously been of unimpeachable character and honesty and they suggested that he had been the victim of a diabolical plot for the purposes of extorting money and for revenge in some trifling business dispute (once again, a taste for drama seems to be evident). William's physical and mental health had deteriorated under the shock of the trial and imprisonment and he was now clearly dying. Among the approximately one hundred signatures on William's last petition were those of Jane Matthews herself, her mother and her aunt..........Would this last Petition have secured a Pardon for William? He died in Newgate Infirmary on 16 September 1845, aged 33, finding a final release from his troubles.
Many of the papers in the case are held in the Public Record Office at Kew in HO18/156 - a bundle of original documents of which William's are no.19. These documents include a statement signed by his mother, no doubt demanded by the prison authorities, saying, "I have seen [my son] a great many times during his illness I was with him when he died -- He did not complain of any want of attention I am quite satisfied with his treatment". The surgeon Gillen McMurdo, and George Wright Deputy Governor of Newgate, also made brief statements. The surgeon's statement says that William complained of rheumatism, though what killed him was advanced disease of the lungs. It also includes these poignant words, "[The prisoner] had been aware of his state some time I told him he would not recover and he always thanked me for my attention." George Wright's statement is equally sad, "....I believe the Sheriffs [prison officers] have applied for a full pardon to enable him to die at home The result I don't know, but in fact he could not have been removed anywhere."
What did the rest of the family think of all this? Most of all William's little daughter, Mary Ann, who would have been 10 years old when her father died.
The 1840s and 50s saw the rise and rise of the railways, and along with this came further rapid expansion of suburbia and the commuter class. A great spate of building and development ate away at the remaining fields and market gardens. Parts of the Regent's canal were filled in and built over, either with houses or railway yards and depots. Coal was used in vast quantities and London became enveloped in clouds of sooty smog. One of the new suburbs of the 1840s was Agar Town, built cheaply to make money for Councillor Agar who owned the land. Agar Town, and the substantial houses set among lawns and trees up the road to the north beyond Kentish Town, represented two extremes. Camden Town lay between them, both geographically and socially. Here, and to a lesser extent in Kentish Town a little further up the road, skilled trades predominated. During the 1850s Isaac's brothers and sisters generally remained in Camden Town with their families. Isaac's third brother, James, was a horsedealer in Grove Street in 1851 (with his wife and his son William). Henry was living with and supporting his widowed mother in one of the Camden Street cottages. He described himself as a 'professor of dogs' meat''. In 1852, Henry (31), was still living in Camden Street, presumably with his mother. He was then working as a labourer (probably the building trade was more profitable at that time than the sale of dog meat). In that year he married Elizabeth Paine of Little Camden Street, the daughter of a shoemaker. Ebenezer and his wife Louisa were their witnesses. Ebenezer and Louisa, after a brief time in Agar Town, were back in Little Camden Street by 1861. Frederick and his wife Jane had a daughter at 5 Garden Cottages (mother Mary's house) in 1859. George seems to have moved west into Marylebone (St John's Wood) just north of Regent's Park. Charles in 1851 was in Agar Town working as a general labourer (see below). It would be nice to know what Isaac was doing in 1851, but I have not been able to find him in the Census. Probably he was finding work wherever he could, moving from job to job. It is tempting to think that he was a thoughtful character, who wanted a more independent life. When he saw or heard about the advertisements suggesting a fresh start in Australia, the idea must have seemed very attractive. Since Henry established himself in Somers Town as a butcher, with his wife and family, perhaps that is where Isaac met his wife Eliza Ash. She lived in Somers Town as a little girl and in 1851, although she was in domestic service in Tottenham Court Road, her family were still living in Somers Town in the next street to Henry and remained there for the next 10 years. We can imagine Eliza coming into the butcher's shop, perhaps, where Isaac is working with his brother. What is more, Eliza's father and Henry's father-in-law were both shoemakers. Eliza and Isaac were married in October 1854 and arrived in Adelaide on 24 May 1855 aboard the Punjab, after a voyage of 84 days. Only one person died on the voyage - a male child - though conditions were incredibly crowded (see picture at http://www.theshipslist.com/pictures/thedeparture.htm).
Charles was born on 17 November 1815. The third child of James and Mary. At 23 (26 May 1839) he married Elizabeth Emma Price, a bricklayer's daughter. Marriages usually took place in the bride's parish and since Elizabeth Emma lived in Bayswater, they were married in the parish of Paddington. Charles's father-in-law William was a witness with Ebenezer's wife Louisa for the Camplins. Charles made his mark but Elizabeth Emma was able to sign her name. Charles gave his address as Chapel Side which is perhaps Chapel Street, leading into Brill Row in Somers Town. By 1842 the couple were living in Grove Street, Camden Town, near Regents Park, where their son Charles James was born on the first of March, at no. 61. Cecelia followed on 2nd February 1843. By 1851 Charles had moved to Salisbury Place, in the new but mean streets of Agar Town, close to his brother Ebenezer who was in Cambridge Street. They lived right beside the Great Northern Railway terminus at King Cross, near the lower reaches of the Regent's Canal (which was probably becoming full of nineteenth-century rubbish of one kind and another). An exciting playground for their children perhaps, in spite of the dangers. Charles was still a general labourer (with plenty of building work to hand) and Ebenezer was a butcher once more. Councillor Agar, the ground landlord of Agar Town, made no attempt to apply middle-class standards in the new housing he provided. There was no drainage, paving or lighting and this development sealed the fate of the southern part of St Pancras, which was already blighted by the brick kilns and the railways. Fortunately, the slums of Agar Town only existed for about twenty years until they were swept away in the 1860s by the construction of St Pancras station and its goods yards. This does not mean that the people of Agar Town were unhappy there or were glad to see it go. Hollinshead, the author of Ragged London, wrote in 1861, "some of the builders still live in [these streets], happy and contented...always ready to rally round the place, and to call it "a pretty little town". It was a rural kind of squalor, with chickens and donkeys a common sight. The inhabitants lived and worked in the same small area next to the smell and noise of the industrial enterprises in which they earned their living. This set themapart from the burgeoning middle-class, who thought it demeaning to live "above the shop" and did not want to contaminate their vision by seeing the industry which contributed to their own comfortable position in life. In their new suburbs, now with paving, lighting and improved mains drainage they felt - and wanted to feel - world's apart from the working classes, although only a few streets away. In 1851 Charles had four children living with him, Emma (11), Mary (6), Louisa (3) and Charles (10m.). Little Charles James and Cecelia, who should be there between Emma and Mary, both died - Charles James soon after birth and Cecelia in the winter of 1843. New baby Charles is followed by William, who also died in September 1855, aged only 7 weeks. It is remarkable, in fact, how many of the children survived - a tribute to the efforts of their families. At the time of little William's death, Charles was working as a journeyman butcher, with the encouragement of his brothers perhaps, at 22 North Street Clerkenwell. He died in 1862 and seems to have been one of the poorer members of the family.
James was born on 12th October 1817, following the remarkably consistent pattern among working class families of a birth roughly every two years until a wife was no longer of childbearing age. On 12 August 1838, aged 20, he married Elizabeth Blagden/Blagdon/Blaxden. He was the first of the brothers to marry and gave his address as Brick Lane, Finsbury (near the Gasworks). He was able to sign his name in the register, while Elizabeth made her mark. Her illiteracy no doubt accounts for the varied spelling of her name over the years. Elizabeth's father was a carpenter. James was in the meat trade, saying that he was a butcher - perhaps in Brick Lane, but more likely in Camden Town (?) with one or more of his brothers. He was probably living with Elizabeth in Brick Lane for a few weeks while banns were called in the nearby parish church of St Luke. When their son William James was born the couple were living at 1 Lower Bayham Street, Camden Town, close to the grandparents, James and Mary.Young James's marriage witnesses are interesting: their names were William Smith and William Storey. Were either of them relatives? And might they give a clue to Mary's maiden name? Her will was witnessed by a George Storey, and when her son Frederick was in the workhouse his daughter Minnie Jane was living with a William Smith and listed as his niece. Similarly, in the 1861 Census very close to Brick Lane, 99 Goswell Road was the home of Joseph Porter, a fruiterer, and his family. In this household as a general servant was Robert Blagden, and a visitor, Louisa "Caplin", both 30 years old. You would think that these too were relatives - they would have been about 9 at the time of young James's marriage. Since writing this, I have discovered that William Smith was probably married to one of the Paine sisters(?), Jane and Elizabeth - wives of Frederick and Charles. He would therefore have been Minnie jane's uncle. [William Smith=Sarah Paine] Interestingly, a George Storey married Sarah Gale (sister of Ebenezer's wife Louisa?). George and Sarah had a son Ebenezer George Storey. Did Mary (Storey) bring the name Ebenezer into the Camplin family?
On 25 September 1862, William James would himself be married in St Pancras at the age of 23 to Harriet Bernard of College Street West. William J. was living in Priory Street and working as a French polisher, perhaps putting the finish on the many pianos made in the piano factories for which Camden Town became well-known. Every family with a pretension to gentility would have an upright piano in the front parlour - and impoverished genteel ladies could make a living as piano teachers. [Might there be some tenuous link here back to the "music teacher" legend attached to Isaac?]
George's career reflects the Camplin brothers' milieu. He was a horse dealer in 1854, a Tripe dresser in 1856, a Butcher in 1858, a Marine store dealer in 1859 and in 1861-1865 a General Dealer.......more to follow at a later date!
| James I | William | Charles | James II | Ebenezer |
| Isaac | Dinah | George | Henry | Frederick |