THE DIARY OF SARAH PARKER OF WARE PARK

Sarah Parker was 22 years old and had been married for four years, when she moved to Ware Park in early 1842. Her husband, William Parker, a wealthy London barrister, had bought the house – together with a mill, two farms, cottages and about 209 acres of parkland – in 1834 from the trustees of the late Thomas Hope Byde, who had died virtually bankrupt. The Byde family had been lords of the manor of Ware since the seventeenth century but that title apparently did not pass to Mr Parker. According to the Victoria County History, the trustees had already sold the lordship to a gentleman from Norwich. But as far as the people of Ware were concerned, Mr Parker was their lord and his wife was the lady of the manor who traditionally dispensed charity.

Sarah had a lot to learn about charity and to that end she kept a diary, listing everyone who came to her door seeking assistance. The diary begins on the 21 July 1842 and continues until the end of February 1843, taking 93 pages to cover those seven months. All but two pages are devoted to the people seeking assistance and what Sarah did or did not give them. The remaining two pages are intriguing for they link her and her family to one of the most scandalous cases to come before the Old Bailey during the reign of Queen Victoria – but more about that later.

Supporting local charities

The entries in the diary begin with the simple names and addresses of those who came to the door of Ware Park begging – not only for money but also flannel undergarments (particularly in winter) or for “lying-in tickets”. The latter allowed pregnant women the use of bed linen, and money towards the services of a midwife and flannel for the child, all provided by the unusually enlightened Ware Lying-in Charity, founded in 1795. Sarah Parker must have paid a large subscription to that charity for ordinary subscribers were allowed only three tickets a year. However, she remained ignorant of the geography of the town, referring to Amwell End as “Amble End Lane”.

Charlotte Hulls

Jane Wilkins

Caroline Stamp Baldock Street Adam’s yard

applied for lying in tickets

Edith Cadmore Amble End Lane

Betsy Heard                          do

applied for tickets

Soon Sarah Parker realised that, if there was to be a method to her charitable giving, she had to know more about the women’s circumstances and also whether they were receiving anything from other ladies in the parish. The greater part of the little notebook, therefore, is devoted to quite detailed descriptions of the circumstances and living conditions of the labouring classes in Ware – the wives and families of the bargemen, casual labourers and others living in the crowded yards and courts at either end of the town.

Ansler or Anslow, Amble End. A husband 4 children at home. Mr & Mrs Coddington very kind to her. Her husband is getting old, he attends the barges but he cannot work now as he used. 1 shilling.

Miss Hadsley gives her a gift at Christmas.

The Reverend Henry Coddington was the Vicar of Ware and Miss Hadsley lived in the Priory. Sometimes Sarah Parker would take advice from her own household – as when “Watson, a washerwoman” came to the door and Sarah, the kitchen maid, said that she was a hard working woman who supported her old father and mother. Watson received a shilling.

Sarah Parker was not content to receive women at the door; she also visited them in their homes, carefully observing whether the houses were tidy. She made no observations on the appalling sanitary conditions of the yards in Amwell End and Baldock Street, which were not brought to the attention of the general population until the Public Health Act of 1849. She called at the house of Mrs Rylie, who was out, but met her daughter – “a tidy girl” – and left word that the girl was to go to Mr Goodwin to be measured for shoes. She then went to the shoemaker, who was also out, and left instructions with his wife. The following day, Sarah received a visit from a young woman who was the daughter-in-law of the same Mrs Rylie.

She has a blind child, a nice little thing, 7 months old, and she begged a little money to enable her to go by the railroad to town to take her for advice. She goes every two months for some stuff to drop in the child’s eye and they tell her it will regain its sight in two or three years. The rail-road fare is 2 shillings and if she could not get the money she would be obliged to walk up. I gave her 2s. 6d.

A little later, an unmarried mother came to Ware Park and begged for money. She was unable to get help from other ladies who disapproved of unmarried women who had children – I gave her a shilling but I do not know whether it was right to give her anything.

Ware Park in 1812

The sums she gave out were generous by the standards of the time. A labourer on the barges would earn between a shilling and two shillings a day; a loaf of bread cost 3d (i.e. a quarter of a shilling). Some of the women who came to Ware Park told harrowing stories, duly recorded in Sarah’s diary. Two of the women who came on 29 November:

Mrs Skinner Star Lane, a wretched looking woman who has had 9 children, four of whom are at home: her husband has been out of employment a long time & he earned 2 shillings last week; she says he is a strong able-bodied man. – A young person in Batty’s shop told me she knew them to be in very great distress. I gave her 2 shillings –

Stamp, a young girl, by the White Hart, Baldock Street, her father broke 2 of his ribs on Saturday and is not likely to recover for a long time; he earns 12 shillings a week when he is well – a mother and 4 other children besides herself. Gave her a shilling –

Sometimes Sarah Parker made promises which she later regretted. Hence on 18 January 1843 a woman named Cockman, from Caroline Court, came for the cloak which the lady had promised her:

I told her I was very sorry I had promised it as I did not think that I could in fairness give so much to one poor person and not to others. I told her to call on Saturday or Monday, when I will give her something of less value – I have already given her a flannel petticoat.

There were about 40 other women came, but as they came in such numbers and are very rude, I sent them all away, and would not see anyone.

When Cockman called again, she received a cotton dress, a clothing ticket and a shilling – so she did not fare too badly.

Women were now coming in larger numbers and some from outside Ware. In February, Mrs Barnard from Chapel Lane, Stanstead Abbots came …

… her husband a miller: he and she and her whole family consisting of 10 children have had a dreadful fever, and have been obliged to part with their things and are in debt. She brought a subscription to which three clergymen and two or three other people had given each a few shillings. I did not give her anything: she said Mr Goss Hoddesdon the Doctor at Stanstead had been most kind to them often visiting them three times a day. Mr Thomas’s name was written down, the clergyman of Stanstead, and also that of Mr Sheppard, of St. Margaret’s which is very near to Stanstead. I do not know whether it is well to assist out of one’s own parish or not, though I am inclined to think we ought to succour the distrest [sic] according to our means whenever we meet with them.

However, when the next visitor was a young woman with a baby, about whom nothing was known, Sarah Parker gave her nothing – despite the woman begging very hard for a trifle, even if only a penny, saying that she had had nothing to eat that morning:

I kept my resolution of giving nothing without some previous enquiry or examination and did not give her anything. If I give something to everybody who comes on a Wednesday morning that I see poor people, everyone in Ware will come up. More come up now than suits me, in consequence, I believe of my giving them 6 pence or a shilling at first. There must be some method in one’s charity.

We do not know how and when Sarah Parker resolved these issues, for the diary finishes soon after that entry. That she continued dispensing charity is beyond doubt. Her name was attached to a number of good causes in the town, including the opening of the new National Schools and providing a soup kitchen in Amwell End which in one month alone dispensed 67 helpings of soup and dumplings.

The diary finishes on a Friday morning, when a girl named Simmons called at Mrs Parker’s request to take a flannel petticoat to a Mrs Pearson. Sarah Parker also gave the girl one for herself, as she had none. She obviously took a liking to the girl and took the trouble to learn her story. It appeared that Simmons earned 18 pence (one and half shillings) a week, doing housework each morning for Mrs Cobham, wife of the parish clerk, and sometimes Mrs Cobham would give her her dinner. There then follows a piece of gentle moralising which more than any other entry shows the character of Sarah Parker:

She [Simmons] is in great want of shoes and was very thinly clad. She had a bad cold. This made me reflect that we ought to take care not to neglect our own dependents if we can afford to be charitable at all: it is better to assist their need before we assist elsewhere – I do not mean to pass a reflection on Mrs Cobham who may not have the means to assist this girl.

A Scandal in Society

We now come to the two pages of the diary that are not about the poor of Ware. One page lists four dates on which Sarah “wrote to Baron de Vidil”. Below that are five dates when “Ally took a powder” and this continues over the pages with six more references to Ally and his medicine. Behind these entries is an intriguing story of family strife that touched the highest ranks of London society.

Sarah Parker was one of two daughters of a wealthy London merchant, a Mr Jackson, who had made his fortune in the commissariat in the Peninsular War – i.e. by taking a percentage of the money intended for soldiers’ rations, a common practice. The older daughter, Susannah, was in the habit of riding in Hyde Park on Sunday mornings and it was there that she met a Frenchman who styled himself “Alfred Louis Pons, Baron de Vidil” though he was, in fact, the son of a glovemaker. However, he was described as having “a dashing exterior and insinuating manners” and was known to move in the highest reaches of society, including the circle of the Duke of Orleans (the former King Louis-Philippe of France). The upshot was that Susannah Jackson eloped with the so-called Baron – much against the wishes of her father, who refused to see her again. However, he did leave her £30,000 in his will to be hers for life and then to go to her son – thus secured against her husband. He died soon afterwards and so did Susannah in about 1838. On her marriage to William Parker, Sarah adopted her nephew – Alfred John de Vidil – and brought him to Ware Park. He is the child mentioned in her diary when “Ally took a powder”. The boy later went to Trinity College, Cambridge where he obtained a first-class degree.

While the boy was under 21, the father (the self-styled Baron) was able to live off the interest of his son’s £30,000, but that stopped in 1858-59. In August 1861, Baron de Vidil was arraigned at the Old Bailey on a charge of attempting to murder his son. In the previous June, the two had gone riding in the Twickenham area when a labourer observed the father beating the son about the head with a silver-headed cane. There was a hue and cry but Baron de Vidil fled to Paris. The government of Louis Napoleon, however, agreed to his extradition to England. At the trial, the son refused to give evidence for the prosecution and was committed to prison for a month for contempt of court. There was some talk of Ally being of unsound mind and Sarah’s husband, William Parker, was called to testify to the young man’s sanity. Baron de Vidil was found guilty and sent to prison. The case caused quite a stir and was reported not only in the British press but also in newspapers in Australia, New Zealand and Argentina.

Sarah Parker’s descendants

Sarah Parker herself had four children. The oldest, William Jackson Parker, died in 1861 aged 17. Her next son, John Henry Eyres Parker, entered the Royal Navy where he rose to the rank of Commander and then retired to take over the estate from his father who died in 1879. Like his father, he was a magistrate and High Sheriff in 1887, the year before his death, when he passed on the estate to his son, William Francis Parker. Of Sarah Parker’s two remaining children – a son, Alfred Hallowell, died in childhood, and a daughter, Sarah, married a Mr. Sydney William Bell. Ware Park was gutted by fire in 1875 and 1911 and rebuilt on both occasions. In 1920 it was purchased by Hertfordshire County Council for use as a tuberculosis sanatorium; in the 1980s it was converted into luxury apartments.

Sources of Reference

The diary of Sarah Parker of Ware Park, 1842-43

NOTE: The diary was given to Ware Museum by the late Michael Jennings and then taken by a previous district curator to be deposited in Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies. Diligent searches at HALS have failed to locate the original, but a photocopy is available in the Ware pamphlet folder in the Local Studies Library.