12^th SEPTEMBER

CHARLOTTE GALE

My maternal Great-Great Aunt Charlotte was born in Bride Street Islington on this day in 1868. The eighth of 11 children of William and Sarah GALE, Charlotte lived to the great age of 83 and on the way she outlived two husbands with whom she had 10 children.

 Many thanks for the photographs and much of this information goes to a distant cousin, Mark, who is a direct descendant of Charlotte.

When Charlotte was born in the spring of 1868 her father William was working as a labourer after having been in the merchant navy for the previous two decades. While Charlotte was not born into poverty, the Gale household would have struggled to make ends meet on William’s wages and I have written in more detail on this household in an earlier post.

Charlotte’s first husband was Harry ZIEBARTH, a German born Cooper nearly 10 years her senior. How they met is something we will probably never know for sure but there may be a clue in the fact that Charlotte’s mother Sarah BALDOCK came from a family of brewers. Charlotte and Harry married on 14^th July 1889 at St John the Baptist in Hoxton; the same church where her parents wed.

Together Charlotte and Harry had two sons and two daughters; William Henry (also known as Harry) in 1890, Charles in 1892, Francis Hilda Maud in 1894 and finally May Victoria (Mavis) in 1897. Sadly Francis only survived her first year before dying in 1895. Tragically May never knew her father as she was born only four months after the death of Harry.

Charlotte was widowed for three years before she married her second husband, Edward WARNER with whom she had five more children; Edward (1901), Arthur (1903), Horace (1906), Frederick (1908) and Doris Lily (1910).

Edward, Charlotte and Doris WARNER 1914

Married in Hackney on 4^th June 1900, Charlotte and Edward had 34 years of marriage before Charlotte was again widowed.

Charlotte passed away in December 1951.