Charles Lazell, my 3 x great-grandfather
When Charles Lazell was born on 18 February 1803 in Cranham, Essex, his father, James, was 34 and his mother, Mary, was 27. He married Harriet Louisa Kimber on 27 March 1830 in Barking, Essex. They had five children during their marriage. He died on 13 September 1878, having lived to 75 years.
In the 1800s, Cranham was a small agricultural parish. Local life centred on the church, Cranham Hall, and scattered farms. In 1811, the parish population was 248.
On 27 March 1830, he married Harriet Louisa Kimber.
In 1841, he was an agricultural labourer (1841 Census) living in Becontree, an ancient administrative hundred in Essex that included parishes such as Barking, Ilford, and Dagenham. In England, a hundred was an administrative and land-valuation unit between the parish and the county, used from the late Saxon period into the 19th century.
Most labourers lived in “tied” cottages rented from the landowner. ‘In many cottages’, a clergyman thundered, ‘human nature is degraded into something below the level of the swine’. Overcrowding, bad sanitation, dirt, disease, malnutrition, immorality, illiteracy, and drunkenness. Far from the vision of an idyllic cottage in the countryside.
The 1851 census shows Charles living in Barking’s Chadwell Ward with his wife Harriet and children Charles (14), Emma (12), Thomas (5), and Mary-Ann (2). Older children, Harriet Louisa (my GG grandmother), Maria, and Sarah, do not appear on the census. The boundaries of the Ward have changed over time, with the 19th-century boundaries described:
By 1861, the family had moved to New Street in the town of Barking: Charles (50), Harriet (49), Mary (12), and Louisa (9). Charles is still employed as an agricultural worker.
Charles died in Plaistow in 1875 at the age of 75.
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