CAMBERWELL BEAUTIES - ANNIE MULBERY - PART 1

My name is Annie Mulbery.  I was born on the tenth of October 1873 at 120 Southampton Street, Camberwell, just off the Old Kent Road. My parents were Louisa Comfort and Joseph Francis Wigzell.  Mum’s name was Cook before she married, but we never knew much about her life. She always said she was born at sea, and had no birth certificate but I don’t know if that was true.

Mum was very short – about 4 foot 8 inches tall - and quite chubby when she was young; I take after her in that, though I doubt she ever got as big as I am. As she got older she got thinner and looked even more skinny when she had to have all her teeth out in her later life. She was a bit rough and ready, ruled the roost, always telling everyone off and ordering us about, but she was a good woman, and very strong physically. She could pick up a full dustbin and carry it down the steps in the yard without any help! She used to wear a man’s cap when working round the house, and always had these little round spectacles. She lived well into her eighties, which is more than you can say for most of us!

My Dad was like a proper gent, he had relations who were publicans and brewers over Sevenoaks way. He went to the Greencoats School at Camberwell Green when he was a boy, which was supposed to be a very good one. Long after my time it became quite a famous boys Grammar School, Wilsons, though that’s gone elsewhere in Surrey now. He was working for the post office when I was young, as a Telegraph Clerk, and he had worked for Reuters like his father had at one time – funny to think they were using carrier pigeons then! I suppose we were better off than most people in our area, though we were not well off by the standards of some of the folks in the big houses along the way near Peckham Park.  I don’t remember much about my early childhood, but it was a happy household on the whole.

I was the eldest, and an only child for quite a while until my brother and two sisters came along. Joseph Francis was born in 1882, Mabel Eleanor in 1884 and Gertrude Louise in 1887.  I think there must have been one or two babies lost in between me and my brother, but I don’t really remember.  That sort of thing was never really spoken about in those days.

We were an honest and hard-working family; I went to the local school in Rolls Road, but wasn’t that bright really, and left at 12 to go to work in the shirt factory like a lot of girls.  I was quite good at making the collars, and I also did a bit of cleaning for the posher families in the area, who all had servants and other staff.

That was where I met Charlie.  His family actually owned the house we lived in in Williams Cottages, Leyton Square just off Peckham Park Road. His Grandparents had lived there years before, but now all the houses were rented out to working families, usually two or three families per house.   Charlie was about the same age as me, and to be honest was the first boy who had really shown much interest in me; being so fat.  I used to tease him about being posh - but he made me laugh, and we had some kisses and cuddles in his room in his Grandma’s house when I was doing for her; she was away most of the time so it was easy enough, and we had loads of fun.  It soon got serious though, I was all starry-eyed with his attentions, and after a few tumbles in the bedroom I fell pregnant. Only 17 I was. 

When I told Charlie he promised to marry me and take care of us; but his family were up in arms and point blank refused permission.  They were a very old family you see, all generals and military men and that; his Dad had been officer in charge of ordnance at Woolwich Arsenal, where Charlie was born.  It turned out later that his Mother’s family had once owned Bateman’s, the house where Rudyard Kipling lived at one time, and all the land around it. His Grandad was born there.  His Mum was a nice lady, Clara her name was, and I felt sure she would make sure Charlie did what was right; but the grandparents were having none of it.  Proper snooty old battleaxe his Grandma was. Next thing I knew Charlie was packed off to the army, and only saw him a couple of times after that as he was sent overseas to South Africa to fight in the Boer War, which must have upset Clara as she had already lost one son fighting over there.

To keep me quiet the family offered to look after the baby, even find it a good home, but my Mum and me put our foot down, so they promised to make regular payments in return for our family’s silence.  So that had to do.

My parents were very upset with me, I got a good walloping from Mum and I think that may have been the start of Dad’s drinking.  He ended up as an omnibus conductor and died long before Mum of his liver packing up.

Because of my naturally big belly, few people even knew I was carrying. When my time came I was sent off to a place nearby in the Old Kent Road; there was a woman who helped out a lot of girls like me, one way or another.  It was a difficult birth; it hurt really bad and there was a lot of blood - she said it was because I was too fat; but I had a sweet little boy on 25^th August 1892 and took him home to Mum’s a few days later.  Mum just took him off me when I got in and everyone assumed he was hers.  I wasn’t having that though and when I was well enough a few weeks later I went to the Town Hall myself to register him. Louis Francis I called him, though the registrar put him down as Lewis. Not that I noticed at the time.

I didn’t want this dear little innocent baby to be known as a bastard, so I lied and said my name was Annie Angell married to Charles Angell.  I put his job down as a Ship’s steward, which is what he had told me when we first met.

Mum was mad as a hatter when she heard about it a month later. ‘You’ll have the law down on us if you don’t sort it out!’ she said, and gave me a good smack and marched me back to the Register Office. There the man heard the truth from Mum and made a note in the margin of the certificate that my name should be put as Annie Wigzell and the father’s name and profession struck out.  ‘Very irregular’ he kept muttering, but at least, I thought, everyone in future would know who his Dad was and that his real Mum was not a whore.

And that was the start of the rest of my life.