John White Moss and Lydia, who was apparently his second wife, were resident in Marlow by the late 1820s, if not before.
Like so many men of the 1800s John pursued more than one trade. A cloth dealer who sold it seems predominantly at auction (often from a pub in Duke Street Reading), he was also an inventor and maker of agricultural implements and a millwright at Marlow.
Lydia herself is in a trade directory of 1839 as a clothier. It looks like she took over that side of John's enterprise as his machinery and millwright's business became bigger as he was not much mentioned as a cloth dealer after 1840. As well as broad cloth they sold more luxurious materials like silk.
I don't know what Lydia felt about it but John doesn't seem to have been too keen on paying his taxes as he twice was fined for assaulting tax gatherers who came to his Marlow premises.
Perhaps we'll put that down to a creative temperament- John was the inventor of a vegetable cutting machine which cut up vegetables for livestock to eat (guaranteed light enough for a child worker to use!) and instigator of improvements in cider presses amongst other implements.
In 1840 the use of child and teen climbing boys to clean chimneys was outlawed. John was quick to promote a chimney cleaning machine which meant chimneys could be cleaned without anyone shimmying up the flue. Given his designing of the cutting machine described previously so that it could be used by a child I don't think we can interpret this machine as a sign John was against child labour per se! But clearly he recognised that a child did have a child's limitations on what they could safely manage which was more than many people of the day would accept.
Organising employment for poor children would have been part of his role as one of the Marlow Poor Law Guardians, a role he took on in 1835 and held for some years. He was renowned for never missing a meeting and never being a minute late.
The poverty the guardians dealt with, or tried to, was deep in the 1800s and led to high levels of thieving by those struggling to survive. Lydia and John had linen stolen from their wash house in 1841 and John at other times lost a horse whip to thieves as well as a saw from his business premises.
John died in 1848. Lydia as his executor and sole legatee organised the sale of his agricultural implement stock- threshing machines, turnip drills, horse hoes, wheelbarrows, a Suffolk drill, bean mill, turnip drill and all kinds of other items from our vanished agricultural past. John had made most of them himself, and many had been hired out to local farms rather than offered directly for sale.
Lydia was giving up the family home in High Street so some of their household effects were also for sale. These items show that Lydia and John had a comfortable home life enjoying four poster beds with feather mattresses, fancy japanned furniture and the use of a chaise carriage. Also up for sale in 1850 was Lydia's stock in trade of ready made clothes. This included 9 great clothes, 48 men and boys jackets, 43 fancy waistcoats, 20 pairs of "small clothes" , 20 pairs of "trowsers" , 34 pairs of shoes and gaiters, and 164 town made hats.
She also went to court to pursue those who owed her husband's estate money. Don't mess with Lydia!
She went to live with her son William White Moss, a carpenter, and his wife Eliza (née Sparks) in West Street Marlow. Lydia worked as a dressmaker initially but by the 1861 census she had retired to Wraysbury near Eton in Bucks and was living on an annuity.
She remained there until her death at home in Albert Place, Wraysbury in 1883.
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Research sources included:
My transcription of John's will, copy obtained from the National Archives Kew.
Census transcriptions of mine from microfilm except Wraysbury census which is courtesy of Jane Pullinger.
Newspapers from the British Library via the BNA accessed September 2020: Reading Mercury 1st June (auction) and Bucks Gazette 23rd January 1841 (wash house robbery).
Marriage and death registrations from the GRO online search tool. Death certificate copy from GRO.
Great Marlow Parish Registers, my transcription.
1833 parochial assessment book, my transcription of the original book which is held by my family.
©Marlow Ancestors. You are welcome to use this research but please link here if you do so that the research sources I used remain properly credited.
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