Eliza Brighton / Westbrook

 

Eliza Brighton ran a bakery shop in the above premises High Street, Great Marlow from (at least) 1841 to 1848.

She was baptised Eliza Westbrook at Cookham, Berkshire in 1794 to parents Mary and Richard Westbrook.

By 1824 she was living in Marlow when she married Stoney Stratford woollen draper, hatter and hosier Benjamin Brighton. His premises were in the High Street of Stoney Stratford and were extended that year so Eliza had married a man with a business on the up.

The couple had several children before Benjamin died prematurely not long after the couple opened the Marlow bakery. Eliza may well have had bread baking experience but for Benjamin such a switch in trades must have been a leap into the unknown. Eliza was doing well enough at the time of the 1841 census to employ a live-in servant- Emma Perry aged 14.

Four years later Charles Harding, John Smith and William Green were sentenced to a week's hard labour each for stealing bread from Eliza.

In 1847 sentences of four years hard labour were handed down to three more men - George Davis, George Chandler and George Mitchel - for stealing a loaf and 4 cakes from her shop the previous November.

1847 was a dramatic year for Eliza overall. Marlovians were always fond of a riot* and had one in response to an election result in 1847. Eliza took the frightened Misses Cocks from Thames Bank into her premises when they found themselves caught up in the violence. She shut them in with her until the hubbub had passed. To read a biography of one of those Misses Cocks, Charlotte see here.

In around 1848  Eliza gave up the bakery which was taken over by William Hobbs . Eliza by 1851 had gone to work as the housekeeper at the Crown Hotel in Marlow. There was a cook, chambermaid and house maid to help her as well as the hotel proprietor Thomas Furnell. Eliza's brother William was a butcher with premises near the Crown. Her son John would later work for William's widow Elizabeth. A further brother of Eliza was Richard Westbrook another some time proprietor of the Crown Marlow and later of the large Red Lion Hotel in High Wycombe High Street. More on him here.

Ten years later Eliza had switched to be the housekeeper of that Wycombe hotel for Richard.

Finally she appeared on the 1871 census back in Marlow as an annuitant lodging with Catherine and Steadman Camden in the High Street. A post on Steadman, who was a shoemaker, is available here.

Eliza died in 1880.

Written and researched by Charlotte Day

*See previous post of mine on the Women's Riots of 1800 here.  The Swing riots feature here and the 1880 election troubles here. 

©Marlow Ancestors. You are welcome to use my research for family or local history purposes with credit to this blog.

Sources:

Kelly's Post Office Directory of Buckinghamshire, etc 1847, Pigots Directory 1842.

GRO Death Registration Index.

Great Marlow Parish Registers, my transcription.

Cookham Parish Registers, my transcription.

Census Great Marlow 1841-71 my transcription, National Archives, Kew. High Wycombe census 1861 by Jane Pullinger, National Archives, Kew.

Windsor and Eton Express 11th Jan 1845. Northampton Mercury 2nd October 1824. Papers in the British Library Archive and accessed via their partnership with the BNA.