Clifford Horton GRAY
Clifford Horton Gray 1900-1900
On 12th April 1900 Emily Gray gave birth in the Manor Asylum to an illegitimate son who was named Clifford Horton Gray. His birth certificate states that his mother had no occupation and that she was of The Manor Asylum in Horton, Epsom.
At first, I thought that Emily was probably a very young single girl who had been admitted to the Manor Asylum as a ‘fallen woman’ but that was far from the truth.
On 18th January 1900, Emily had been transferred from the Havill Street Infirmary into the Constance Road Workhouse in Camberwell as a 41-year-old single woman, of Church of England faith, who was suffering from epilepsy. There was no mention that Emily was also pregnant.
From there, on 25th January 1900, Emily was sent to the Manor Asylum in Epsom where she gave birth on 12th April to her son. We will probably never know if he was a welcomed child or not, or if he was named after his father.
Clifford was only 34-days-old when he died and was buried in an unmarked grave in the Horton Estate Cemetery on 21st May 1900.
Emily was still in the asylum when the 1901 census was taken. With the enumerator only recording the patients with just their initials, Emily was noted as being E G, a female pauper patient aged 40 of no occupation, place of birth unknown – Lunatic.
The UK Lunacy Patient Admission Registers record that Emily was discharged as ‘Not improved’ on 8th September 1908.
There does not seem to be any other online asylum admission records for her, but it could be that she was still in the Manor when the 1911 census was taken.
Recorded there was a 50-year-old female patient named just as EG with no occupation, but her place of birth was recorded as being in Essex. There was also a note that she had been a lunatic since the age of 46.
There was also an entry on the 1921 census for a 60-year-old single female recorded as E Gray who was in the Metropolitan Asylum in Caterham, Surrey.
Was this Emily Gray? If it was, then her movements between the asylums were not found, at this moment, online.