Elizabeth Leake, my Paternal great-grandmother
Elizabeth Emma Leake was born in April 1857 in Southampton, Hampshire. Her father, Joseph, was 41, and her mother, also named Elizabeth, was 37 at the time. In 1880, she married William James Boulter in Hampshire. Together, they had nine children over 18 years. Elizabeth passed away in January 1926 in Hartley Wintney, Hampshire, at the age of 68.
There is no record of Elizabeth’s birth, but the 1861 Census shows her living on Castle Lane with her parents and siblings: Mary Ann (15), Charles (10), James (7), and Emma (1). Her father, Joseph, was a dock labourer.
Southampton Castle was built by the Normans, but most of it has disappeared. Castle Lane runs from the High Street to where the castle gate once stood, and the bases of the old gate towers are still visible. The area looks different today. In the 19th century, Castle Lane was a slum. The houses appeared in the Dilapidated Housing Report from the 1890s and were supposed to be demolished immediately, but they remained until the slum clearances in the 1930s.
Elizabeth Emma Leake married William James Boulter in Hampshire in 1880 at age 23. In 1901, she and her husband William lived at 1 Wickham Court with their eight children. Wickham Court was also listed in the Dilapidated Housing Report and marked for demolition. It must have been a grim place to live.
William Boulter died in September 1908. Three years later, the family had moved to 20 Empress Road. At the start of the 20th century, Empress Road was a new development of terraced housing near the River Itchen. By then, the family was more comfortably off, with eight of the nine in the household working. Many residents on Empress Road were dock workers due to their proximity to the docks, including fourteen who worked for White Star Lines and were part of the crew of the Titanic. George Nettleton lived at number 23 and died in the Titanic disaster.
Elizabeth spent her last years living on Clifton Terrace with her children Fred, Henry, James, her daughter Nellie, and her granddaughter Nellie. Southampton was once celebrated not as a port town, but as a fashionable spa resort. Clifton Terrace, a row of Victorian houses, was on the Western Esplanade. The esplanade was often damaged by flooding, and over the years, the area was reclaimed, becoming a large industrial site.
After a tough life in some of the most deprived areas of Southampton, it is comforting to know she enjoyed a few years of comfort by the sea before she died in January 1926 in the village of Hartley Wintney.
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