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b.1848-d.1923
Introduction
Back in 2008 I was shown the photograph above of some of the remaining headstones in the Horton Estate Cemetery that had been photographed on 28 February 1971 by L. R. James. After zooming in as near as possible, I was able to make out some of the engraved words on the stones. This led me to researching the names, one of which was Fanny Hodgson. At the time there was little online to go on but now, seventeen years later, I have discovered more about Fanny’s life.
Fanny’s family
Fanny’s father, Jesse Kemp, had married Sarah Osborne on 25th August 1838 in her hometown of Goudhurst in Kent. The couple had nine known children.
Their first son William was born in 1840, and the following year when the 1841 census was taken, the family appear as living in Ticehurst village in Sussex where Jesse was working as a painter.
Quite how or why Jesse changed his career is unknown, but soon afterwards he was working as a schoolmaster in the Ticehurst Union Workhouse. Basic reading, writing and an understanding of Christian religion was taught to the children in the workhouse.
Their daughter Agnes was born there in 1843, and a second son George Henry in 1845. Fanny herself was also born there and baptised in St. Augustine’s Church, Flimwell, Sussex, on 27th August 1848.
Both of Fanny’s parents were recorded as teaching in the workhouse school when the 1851 census was taken. Also recorded was the latest new member of the family, Fanny’s 9-month-old brother Alfred; sadly, he died the following month and was buried in St Augustine’s Church graveyard.
Fanny’s mother gave birth to another daughter Caroline in 1852, and a son Walter in 1854 who died when he was only 17 months old. Around the same time Fanny’s family left the workhouse, and her father returned to his former occupation as a painter.
On 5th July 1857 the family celebrated the christening of twins, Ellen and Albert. Seven months later, Ellen died and was buried on 27th January 1858.
The 1861 census recorded the family as living in Flimwell Sunny Bank, and Fanny’s father’s occupation had expanded to being a painter, glazier, and plumber.
Fanny’s marriage to Frederick Hodgson
Fanny was not recorded as living at home with her family ten years later when the 1871 census was taken but had, at some point, moved to Quailstone Street in St. Marylebone, London. It was from here, on 28th August 1876, she married Frederick James Hodgson in Christ Church, Cosway Street, Marylebone. Frederick was a decorator and was living at the time in Sherborne Street.
Fanny and James went on to have eleven known children.
| Name | Born | Died |
| Edith May | 1877 St Johns Wood, Hampstead | After 1939 |
| Kate Amy | 1878 Flimwell, Sussex | 1950 |
| Percy | 1880 St Johns Wood, Hampstead | 1941 |
| Jessie | 1881 St Johns Wood, Hampstead | 1883 Hampstead |
| Frederick | 1882 St Johns Wood, Hampstead | Before 1937 |
| Edgar | 1884 St Johns Wood, Hampstead | 1886 |
| Ernest | 1885 St Johns Wood, Hampstead | 1940 |
| Grace Clemency | 1886 St Johns Wood, Hampstead | 1958 |
| Sydney | 1888 St Johns Wood, Hampstead | Possibly 1946 |
| David Ronald | 1891 St Johns Wood, Hampstead | 1996 |
| Florence | 1892 Paddington | 1955 |
When their daughter Edith May was 1 year 2 months old, Fanny and Frederick returned to Flimwell and on 28th July 1878, had their daughter baptised in St Augustine’s Church. Two months later their daughter Kate Amy was born and on 22nd September, she was also baptised in the same church. The baptismal entries record that they were living in Bolton Road, St. Johns Wood, London, and that Frederick was a builder. No baptism has been found for their son Percy who was born in 1880.
The following year, the 1881 census recorded the family as living back at 26 Bolton Road, where Frederick was noted as being a painter. Also living there was his widowed mother Harriet Hodgson, who was living from the “income of house properties”.
Over the next twelve years Fanny and Frederick’s family expanded with the births of eight more children but unfortunately during this time, two of them died: Jessie in 1883, and Edgar in 1886.
The 1891 census described Frederick as a house decorator and records that he and Fanny, along with their children Edith, Kate, Percy, Frederick, Ernest, Grace, and David, were now living in 4 Edbrooke Road in Paddington. Ten years later they had moved to 120 Clarendon Street, a crowded curved terrace of three-storey houses in Paddington.
By 1911 they had moved to 22 Victoria Place, Paddington. Frederick and Fanny recorded that they had been married for 30 years, and out of their 11 children, 9 were still alive, and 2 had died. There is no mention on this census that Fanny was suffering from any mental illness.
Admission to Horton and death
There are no online records to tell us when she was admitted but by 1921, she was an inmate in Horton Mental Hospital, Epsom. Fanny’s death in Horton Hospital on 20th October 1923 was registered by her husband and following a postmortem, the certificate gave her cause of death as ‘cerebral haemorrhage 6 days’.
Fanny was buried in grave 244a in the Horton Estate Cemetery on 26th October 1923. Her final resting place was one of very few to have a headstone, which read as follows: –
IN LOVING MEMORY
OF
FANNY HODGSON
DIED OCT 20TH 1923
AGED 71 YEARS
R.I.P
Her husband Frederick continued living at 22 Victoria Place until his death on 28th January 1932.
Horton Cemetery
In early 1983, acting on behalf of the freeholder, local Epsom solicitors Kirkwoods issued a formal notice in a local newspaper of “the intention to remove the remaining tombstones, monuments and other memorials” from Horton Cemetery “for the purpose of reducing the maintenance costs”. The removal of the headstones was carried out on 26th May 1983.
On 6th July 1983, Kirkwoods sent a list of the tombstones and memorials that had been removed from the cemetery to the Registrar General of Miscellaneous Records in St Catherine House. Fanny Hodgson’s headstone was not included in this list and so must have been destroyed or removed between 1971 and 1983.
