Charlotte Boddy (nee Pearse)
George Boddy
Alfred Boddy
Alfred Charles Boddy
Geoffrey Alfred Boddy
Charlotte Pearse (1793-1873)
Birth:
1793, Sidbury, Devon
Marriage:
to John Boddy, 16 March, 1821 St Leonard's Shoreditch, London
Death:
4 October, 1873, 4 Victoria Park Rd, Sth Hackney (London)
Father:
?? Samuel Pierce
Mother:
Children:
George Boddy (1824-1901)
Joses Boddy (1829-1879)
Sidbury
in Devon, where Charlotte Pearse was born in the last decade of
the 18th century, is one of the oldest settlements in Devon, with
an Iron Age fort at Castle Hill. At the time of Charlotte's birth
in 1793, Sidbury was a small village on the banks of the River
Sid, about 10km from the coast.
Our knowledge of Charlotte's family background is non-existent, and how and why she went to London isn't known. But once there, in 1821 in Shoreditch, she married a manservant, John Boddy, originally also from Devon.
above: the entry in the Marriage Register of St Leonard's Shoreditch, of Charlotte and John Boddy.
The entry is a little hard to decipher, but it says the marriage was solemnised in the Parish of St Leonard's Shoredtich in the County of Middlesex [i.e.London] in the year 1821and gives the details as :
John Boddy of this Parish, Bachelor, and Charlotte Pearse of this Parish, Spinster, were married in this Church by Banns (with Consent of...) this Sixteenth Day of March in the Year One thousand eight hundred and Twenty One, by me Robert Latimer (?) officiating minister.
The Marriage was solemnised between us, John Boddy, Charlotte Pearse (signatures) in the Presence of John ??? and Elisabeth Pearse.
******
Hard on the heels of the wedding, Charlotte and John made their way back to Charlotte's home town where their first son, Henry, was baptised less than a month after the ceremony.
That may have been an abrupt start to the marriage, but the couple settled down in the village, increasing their family to three sons, with the arrival three years later of George, and then the youngest, Joses in 1829.
right: Houses in the main street through Sidbury (in 2019)
However, the appeal of London resurfaced, and the family returned to the capital in the 1830s.
By 1841, Charlotte's two older boys were apparently not living at home - their names don't appear alongside their parents in the first UK Census held in 1841 - but young Joses was there, then only 12 years old.
After John's working life in the parliamentary precincts finished, the couple moved at least three times, to addresses in Pimlico and Hackney. When John died, of diabetes in 1866, he directed that Charlotte receive any dividends or income from his property, but realistically, it appears unlikely that there would have been much in the way of property or shares.
left: Bloomfield terrace, Pimlico near Sloan Square (as it was in 2015), where John and Charlotte Boddy were living in 1857.