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b.c1853–d.1902
Background
With another Smith story to research, the starting point for this had to be the death certificate. It stated that William Smith was aged 49 when he died on 13th December 1902 in the Horton Asylum in Epsom, Surrey. Following a postmortem, his cause of death was described as heart disease aortic atheroma. The only other useful information recorded was that William had been a labourer from the Lambeth Infirmary. With this scant information, researching began.
William’s early life
William’s recorded age at his death gave him a year of birth of around 1853, and the infirmary mentioned gave Lambeth as a possible place of residence. Also, one of the workhouse entries stated that he was a widower. The 1901 Census showed that, with these details, there were 32 different William Smiths to choose from. Eliminating the married ones gave me the choice of about five, and out of those only one seemed possible for him – William Smith, a single labourer aged 48 living in a lodging house at 93 Westminster Bridge Road, Lambeth. His place of birth was transcribed as ‘Bainton, Herts’, but looking closely at the original it looks like Basilton, Herts – could this have been misheard due to William’s accent, and should have been Basildon, Berks? Based on this, a search was made and there was a William Smith born in 1851 to Thomas and Rachel Smith (née Briant), who lived in Basildon. The only stumbling block with this is that they only had one daughter and she did not marry a Mr Turner, so without more information, ‘our’ William’s life before entering the workhouse system is uncertain.
Admission to the workhouse
Looking through the Lambeth Princes Road Workhouse Register showed that William Smith was first admitted there on 20th January 1902, and that his previous address had been Star Chambers, a lodging house in Wandsworth Road. On 23rd January William was moved to the infirmary where their records stated that his previous address had been 65 Stamford Street. His sister Mrs Turner of Houndslow (sic) was recorded as a contact.
William must have recovered sufficiently enough to have been discharged but was readmitted to the workhouse on 5th March 1902. The Admission Book recorded that he was a widowed labourer, and that his religion was Church of England.
Admission to Horton Asylum and death
On 18th April 1902 he was back again, and once again admitted to the infirmary. This time his previous address was recorded as being 70 Stamford Street. William stayed in the infirmary until he was transferred to the Horton Asylum on 9th May 1902 where he died on 13th December 1902.
William’s body was buried in grave 89 in the Horton Estate Cemetery on 19th December 1902.
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