Thread: Anyone know of a School at 81 London Road, Reading in 1900?

Dear Surfernell

0n the 1901 census Ivor C Kitchen age 8 is listed as a border at 81 London Road Reading St Giles Berkshire ref RG13/1148/F25

The head School master was Henry T Pugh

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.


If you look at this site it will tell you more about the School - I will have alook for some more later. Did you want to know any any more about MR Kitchen

That's great banditfivealive, thanks very much for the link. (I think that this London Road School may not be in Reading unfortunately having just looked a bit more carefully)

Ivor C Kinchin we are 99% sure is Ivor Sydney Cuthbert Brooker who I mentioned in another thread. My cousin has spent years trying to work out what happened to Ivor. He is the one who was born to my great gran, but then was hidden away. Brought up by Richard Brooker and Ellen Burton and then shipped to Canada when he was only about 13.
He does not appear in the 1901 census but there is this Ivor C Kinchin who pops up just for this census who is probably him. Here is my cousin's thinking if you are interested: (We now think that the father is more likely to be Richard Brooker who ended up looking after him for a few years - Ivor also lists him as his father on his Canadian marriage certificate. The problem is that if Richard is the father then person he had the child with(my great gran) would be his Aunt (oops!)



The Tale of Thomas Kinchin (re Ivor Brooker)
Having often pondered the paternity of Ivor Sydney Cuthbert Brooker, and being led along the path of thinking that the clue lay in his middle names, Sydney Cuthbert, I have quite overlooked, possibly for 40 years, that since Ivor appears listed in the 1901 census as Ivor C Kinchin, his father quite probably was a Kinchin.
I had not entirely disregarded the fact that there may be a link between the Kinchin name and the child, but was carried away on the idea that the Brooker and Kinchin families may have been related, thinking that the mother-in-law of Thomas Kinchin, Dinah Lavell, may have been Dinah Brooker before her marriage. With this notion well and truly scuppered by finding Dinah Brooker's marriage to one William Smith and a marriage for a Dinah Simmonds to a James Lavell that looked a likely match, I must have freed my mind up to see what may have been staring me in the face over the decades.
[Further to the above re Dinah Brooker, my latest research on the Brooker family has determined that Dinah and family are not known to be connected to 'my' Brookers in any event ...]
I have confined my research to Kinchin families resident in Reading in 1891, the year before Ivor was born (see lots of other notes about Ivor), and only one family came to light: Thomas Kinchin born about 1842, with three sons and a daughter. It would appear that Thomas was reasonably well-to-do, living with his family in Tilehurst Road, Reading.
The first record I have found of Thomas is as a 9 year old in 1851 living in Reading with his widowed father, Charles John Kinshin (sic) aged 34, who is a cooper by trade, and his aunt, his father's sister-in-law Caroline Shakleford, 27, unmarried, laundress.
(I found a Charles Kinchin in 1841, in Ilmington, Gloucestershire, farm labouring; he was not born in the county. There are Kinchin families in Long Marston as well as Ilmington at this time.)
In 1861 Thomas 19 and his father Charles are boarders in the home of the widowed Dinah Lavell, who is a Grocer in Oxford Street, Reading. Assisting her in the business is her unmarried daughter Elizabeth aged 27, some eight years older than Thomas. It seems that Thomas, who at the time was a seed merchant's clerk, saw an opportunity not to be missed. One wonders whether he and his father went off down the pub of an evening and ruminated over the prospect of young Thomas getting his hands on the grocery business, for in 1871 fortunes had changed somewhat.
The census of 1871 finds Thomas head of the Oxford Street establishment, married to the aforementioned Elizabeth and they have produced Arthur 6, Frank 4 and Jessie 2. Thomas was still a Seedman's Clerk, and Dinah still a Grocer, though she is now relegated to bottom of the list and mother-in-law of head.
By the time census day rolled round again in 1881 the family have moved, stilt with mother-in-law in tow, to 1 Brunswick Hill. Thomas is now a Warehouseman Seedsman and his eldest son Arthur 16, is a Corn Dealer Apprentice. Another child has joined the family, Charles, aged 6.
Another move finds the family in Tilehurst Road in 1891, a crucial year for the Ivor Brooker connection as he would have been conceived that September. It is by no means obvious, though, where one might point a finger of paternity. The eldest Kinchin son Arthur is married, and may be a chip off the old block with an eye to the main chance as his father-in-law, with whom he is living, is a Tea Merchant Superintendent and appears to have just the one child, Annie, who by the next census looks to be ailing as the Arthur Kinchin household at 25 Bridge Street, Abingdon includes a sick nurse as well as a general servant, but no children.
Charles Kinchin, the youngest member of the family was only 16 in 1891 and one could hardly imagine that he would pose an attraction or indeed a threat to 22 year old Alice, who from her adult photographs looks to be a force to be reckoned with.
That leaves Frank, who was 24, a good age for a beau, but he is married. Frank is doing very well for himself, an employer dealing in corn; in 1888 he had married Julia Brunsden, the daughter of the Chemist and Druggist at 4-6 London Street, Reading.
Just supposing there had been some Franky-panky there would have been no question of marriage, and there would have been plenty of money in the Kinchin family to take care of the boarding school expenses. There could even have been a pay-off of some sort, perhaps with insider trade knowledge of the shop at 131 Vicarage Road, Watford becoming available.
Is it beyond the realms of possibility that *Sydney Cuthbert's cousin, Richard, who was a traveller in the grocery trade, might have been the one in the know about the Watford shop, and might even have mischievously suggested using his sailor cousin's name for the child as a smoke screen?
There is a Sydney Cuthbert listed in the 1881 census, then 27 and a mariner. Other members of the family are grocery trade travellers, so although they are living in Islington at the time it is possible that their travels took them to Reading and indeed to Watford.