Alice ROUGH
Early days
We believe that Alice was born in Shoreditch on 15 January 1860, the illegitimate daughter of Helen Young. The birth was not registered.
In the 1861 census, young Alice and her mother were sharing rooms at Mansfield Street in Shoreditch with Helen’s sister Agnes Burrett and her baby son John. Both Helen and Agnes were working as shoe binders.
Alice was baptised at St Leonard’s Church in Shoreditch in September 1862.
By the time of the 1871 census, still in Mansfield Street, Alice was living with her uncle and aunt Benjamin and Mary Tipton. Aunt Mary was Helen’s sister. Also present on census night were aunts Eliza Young and Fanny Martin, and cousins William Young and Kate Burrett.
In the 1881 census, Alice was still with her aunt Mary (by now a widow) in Shoreditch but there had been a change of name – she was now Alice Tipton. Aunt Fanny Martin was still with them, as were cousins Harry Martin and William Christopher.
Marriage
On 28 August 1886, Alice married mail driver Alfred John Rough at St Mark’s Church in Old Street. The register records that she was Alice Louisa Tipton, aged 26. No father’s details were recorded. Alice’s signature is very neat:
Alfred and Alice went on to have four daughters: Grace Lydia (1887), Lydia Beryl (1889), Elizabeth May (1891), and Hannah Beulah (1893).
In the 1891 census, Alfred and Alice were recorded at 57 Wilton Road in Hackney with daughters Grace and Lydia. Alfred was now a bus driver, and Alice was working as a boot machinist.
In early December 1894, Alice suddenly succumbed to mental illness. The medical officer at Hackney workhouse deemed her to be of unsound mind:
She is suicidal. Says she is tired of her life & would like to die. She hears strange voices & can see the Devil on the walls. She says she is afraid to go to sleep as strange men would come in & cut her children in pieces & then boil them.
According to Alfred, this attack had begun just one week previously. Alice was immediately admitted to Fisherton asylum in Wiltshire, where she spent the next four and a half years before being transferred to Manor in Epsom in June 1899.
Is incoherent and talks a lot of nonsense about a Spanish priest, says that her mother used to take her over to Spain every might and that the priest can’t say that he doesn’t know that he owes her 5/- for faithful services. Talks very incoherently about orange selling in London. Says that I am a medium and therefore know everything; says that her husband was her brother. Is garrulous. .
From the Manor address book we can see that she was visited there by her husband, and by a Mr Martin, a cousin.
Alice Rough died at Manor on Christmas Day 1899, from a cerebral haemorrhage. She was the fifth person to be buried at Horton cemetery, on 29 December 1899.