Amelia Bennett (1836-1851) Housekeeper and Carer: The First Person to be Buried in Wembdon Road Cemetery
The Anglican side of the Wembdon Road Cemetery was consecrated by the Bishop of Jamaica on 10 September 1851. The very next day the first burial took place: a teenager called Amelia Bennett, aged 15 years.
The Bennett Family of Mount Street
Amelia’s grandfather William Bennett (1776-1851) was a tallow chandler with a shop in High Street, Bridgwater. William made and sold wax candles and soap. He purchased beef fat from the local butchers and rendered it down to make beef tallow. This was unpleasant but essential work. William then melted the tallow and poured it into moulds to make candles. He could always sell candles because they were the main source of lighting in homes. He also used tallow to make soap.
William and his wife Maria had at least six children: William (1802), Elizabeth (1812), Thomas (1814), Ann (1817), James (1822) and Robert (1823). Elizabeth, Ann and James were baptised together on the same day in 1822 at St Mary’s Parish Church, which suggests that William wasn’t a regular churchgoer. The family traditionally lived above the shop and the children attended school locally to at least learn to read and write. As adults, William junior was a butcher and Thomas and Robert were tailors. James either died young or moved away. Elizabeth married Thomas Bowering, a baker, and raised a family in Bridgwater. Ann was expected to marry too, but instead she became pregnant. The circumstances are unknown, but as soon as her pregnancy was visible she would have been unable to work outside the home or in her father’s shop.
Amelia
Ann’s daughter Amelia was baptised in St Mary’s Parish Church on 4 May 1836. Ann had the freedom to choose a relatively modern name for the times. Amelia for girls was very popular in Bridgwater in the 1830s, possibly due to Princess Amelia or just as a more fashionable form of Emily.
In 1841, William and Maria Bennett were living in Honeysuckle Alley with William, 39, a butcher, Thomas, 27, a tailor, and Ann, 23. Amelia was not listed. William appears to have retired from the business in High Street. There were no servants and as her parents were in their sixties, Ann was probably doing most of the cooking and household chores. 1841 was the first time a census enumerator had knocked on the door and asked for the names and ages of everyone there. Although Amelia may have been elsewhere, it is also possible that she was just forgotten.
Ann Bennett, a spinster of Pig Market, married Thomas Stoneman on 19 June 1845 at the registry office in Bridgwater. This avoided an awkward conversation with the vicar and the reading of banns in church. In the eyes of many parishioners, Ann was still a fallen woman. Thomas was a coachsmith who moved to Bridgwater from Barnstaple, Devon. A coachsmith made and repaired the metal components of horse-drawn coaches, wagons and railway carriages. Broken axles were common on the roads of the time and with the arrival of the railway and a growing population, coachsmiths were in demand. Thomas and Ann set up home in Mount Street.
Amelia wasn’t part of her mother’s new family and instead remained with her grandparents to do the cooking and cleaning in place of Ann. It must have been hard for Amelia to have a carer role at such a young age. Mrs Maria Bennett died of cancer in December 1850 and William Bennett, tallow chandler, died in February 1851 of apoplexy. They were buried in St Mary’s churchyard.
The 1851 census shows Amelia living with her uncles William and Thomas in Back Lane (later Clare Street). What the census could not reveal is that by then, very likely all three of them had contracted tuberculosis. No-one knows who was coughing first, but it is commonly spread to others in the same family and kills over months or years. The first to die was Amelia on 6 September 1851 at her mother’s home in Mount Street. Rev. James, the vicar, recorded in St Mary’s burial register that Amelia died of consumption and that her mother was Ann Bennett. Had the minister forgotten Ann’s married name, or did he need to make it clear that Thomas was not Amelia’s father?
Amelia was buried in the new Wembdon Road Cemetery. Perhaps William and Thomas already knew they were ill and were reserving the family plot in the churchyard for their own burials. If Amelia was buried as a pauper, then it would not be the churchyard and the family had no choice. The cemetery burial register simply says 'Border' with no further indication of where this was. In the end, perhaps Ann and her family preferred a discreet burial in the new cemetery a little way out of town. Unwittingly they gave Amelia the distinction of being remembered as the first.
William and Thomas Bennett
Thomas Bennett, a tailor, died of phthisis, which was an old name for tuberculosis, on 9 March 1852 at Mount Street. He probably spent his final days with Ann and her husband. Thomas was buried with his parents in the churchyard, which was still possible until 1854. His brother William, butcher, was living in Friarn Street when he died of ‘disease of lungs’ on May Day 1852. The burial register is more specific: consumption. William was buried in the Anglican section of the Wembdon Road Cemetery, in what appears to be a Pauper's plot.
Mrs Ann Stoneman
Amelia’s mother Ann had four more children in Bridgwater. After the deaths of her parents, her elder brothers, Amelia and two of her Stoneman children, Ann only had her married sister Elizabeth and younger brother Robert still living in Bridgwater. Gold had been discovered at Bendigo and in 1853 Ann and Thomas and their surviving son and daughter joined hundreds of others rushing to Victoria and dreaming of making their fortunes. They settled in Geelong, where Thomas quickly found work. He didn’t ever go to the diggings, preferring to work in his own trade. Ann was so quickly pregnant again that tramping with young children to a remote goldfield and living in a tent would have been very difficult. Later Thomas and his three brothers had a successful business as coachbuilders. Ann and Thomas had a further five children, but only two survived to adulthood. Including Amelia, eight of Ann’s ten children died in infancy and childhood and it is hard to imagine how she coped with that grief and loss. Thomas Stoneman J.P. served on the council and as mayor of Geelong West. They retired to the seaside town of Queenscliff where Thomas again served on the local council. In 1885 he visited England for a few months but Ann remained in Queenscliff. Thomas died in 1887. Ann lived to eighty-nine and died in 1907.