This grave is located in the Holy Trinity area of Mill Road Cemetery. It has not yet been found.
Daniel Frank Tydeman (25 June 1865 – 15 October 1920)
Daniel was born in Devizes, Wiltshire, the second son of William and Sarah. He was baptised on 21 April 1867 at Christ Church, Derry Hill. William Tydeman was a police sergeant and the family lived in Donhead St. Mary, near Shaftesbury (at least 1871 onwards). Aged 15 Daniel was working as a wheelwright apprentice, before joining the Metropolitan Police on 11 May 1885. He was based at King Street station, Westminster intially, before moving to Kensington division in 1889. At Christmas 1894 he was promoted to sergeant – moving to Limehouse and then to Barking. He was promoted to Station Sergeant in 1898 and transfered to Barnes. In 1902 he moved to the Wandsworth division, where after 18 months he was promoted to Inspector. He retired from duty after 25 years on 22 May 1910 – his last major duty being the funeral of King Edward on 20 May.
He married Fanny Merrett on 26 January 1889 at St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster and they had five children: Alice Fanny (1889-1895), Reginald Frank (1893-1907), William James (1896-1963), Gwendoline Alexandra (1901-1961) and Leonard Harvey (1906-1978). They lived in Hammersmith (1891) and Barnes (1901). Reports of his retirement in 1910 noted that ‘both in official and private circles Mr Tydeman has made many very many friends, all of whom will wish, with the utmost sincerity that he may have more robust health than he has of recent times and long life in which to enjoy his well-earned pension; and this wish will be accentuated by the fact that he is only 44 years of age. During the present week he is removing to Bexley Heath to take up residence’. He retired on a pension of £126, 19s and 7d per year, but plans to move to Bexley Heath were short lived and by 1911 the family had moved to Berners Street, Ipswich where Daniel had taken up a role as an NSPCC Inspector.
By 1914 the Tydeman family had moved to 18 Guest Road, Cambridge and he was appointed Inspector of the NSPCC for the Cambridge district. In January 1916 Daniel removed two children from Minnie Prime – who was subsequently sentenced to a months hard labour for harbouring a deserter, and two months hard labour for neglecting her children. Daniel testified that her son Sidney had been found ‘filthy dirty and very inadquately clothed, his clothes consisting of an old jumper a firthy shirt and a ragged pair of trousers. He had no boots or stockings and one could have scraped the filth off his legs and feet and some parts of his face. He limped and had a bad sore on one of his little toes’ – his mother had pawned his boots.
In June 1918 he testified in the divorce case of Private John Howlett from his wife Clara. Daniel said he had visited Clara’s house many times while John was serving in France and had ‘warned her as to the moral danger to her children oweing to her entertaining soldiers frequently at the house and drinking’. John Howlett was granted a decree nisi and custody of the children. In January 1919, Daniel charged Riley and Isabel Smith of exposing their two children ‘in a manner likely to cause them unncessary suffering and injury’. The parents were gypsies of no fixed abode, and Daniel had requested them to ‘enter the workhouse’ to make sure their children were looked after, but they refused and ‘had been sleeping in a self-made tent in the Mereway, Milton’. Their two year old daughter died, and Daniel wanted them to take better care of their five year old son. The court gave them three months’ imprisonment with hard labour.
He died of TB at the Papworth Colony aged 55 years old and was buried at Mill Road Cemetery on 18 October. Mr Parr, Director of the NSPCC wrote ‘he was a splendid officer, deisplaing at all times , great love and interest in the work for the children, and his death will be a loss to the society and to them. His interest in our work almost up to the time of his passing away was characteristic of him’. The notices of his death noted ‘will the many friends whose sympathy has been so marked during the hours of sorrow through which the family has been called to pass, please accept their sincerest thanks’.
Fanny Tydeman (née Merrett) (1865 – 23 April 1919)
Fanny was the youngest daughter of John and Sophia (née Popejoy) and was born in Newbury, Berkshire. John Merrett was a harness maker and she grew up at 14 Magdala Terrace, Newbury. She died at Guest Road aged 54 years and her funeral was held on 29 April.
Daniel and Fanny’s youngest son was orphaned aged 12 years, and wen tot live with his paternal uncle Charles Tydeman and his wife Louisa in Oxfordshire (1921). Charles was also an Inspector for the NSPCC.
Sources:
Ancestry
Newspaper archives
Parish burial records
by Claire Martinsen
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