CFHS code : AL117
Parish : St Andrew the Less
Inscription : IFMO BEATRICE MAY beloved child of MARGARETTA & ROBERT LEE d Aug 19 1890 aged 9 also of MARGARETTA LEE mother of the above d Sep 10 1931 aged 80 ROBERT HENRY LEE d July 3 1941 aged 92
Monument : Headstone
Above information from Cambridge Family History Society Survey
Monument
Inscription
Beatrice May Lee (1881 – 19 August 1890)
Beatrice died at 117 Newmarket Road and her funeral was held on 22 August 1890.
Margaretta Lee (née Williamson) (1 November 1851 – 10 September 1931)
Margaretta was born in Haslingfield and baptised there on 8 February 1852. She was the daughter of William and Louisa Williamson and grew up on the Barton Road, Haslingfield where her father was a blacksmith. In 1871 she was living at Bradmore Street with her sister Louisa, and both women were working as dressmakers/machinists. She married Robert Lee in 1876 and they had five children: James William (1877-1940), Harry Clement (1879-1948), Beatrice May, Robert Ernest (1883-1956) and Ada Maud (1892-). Robert was a market gardener and also ran the Gardeners Arms at 117 Newmarket Road (at least 1879-1896). By 1901 they had moved to Isinglass House,126 Stanley Road and he was noted as being a market gardener and brickmaker.
In December 1913 the family’s domestic problems were reported in the Cambridge Independent Press under the headline of ‘Parents go in daily fear of their lives’. At the Borough Police Court Robert ‘told how he and his family went in daily fear of their lives because of the conduct of his son, Richard Lees (29)’. Richard was charged with ‘threatening to brain his father’. Robert told the court that Richard had been working ‘in Bolivia near the Equator and….thought this had affected him…one Wednesday morning he tried to smash the back door in. Witness was there and his son threatened to ‘brain him’. All of them at home were afraid of him – his wife, his other son and himself’. In response Richard Lee told the court ‘I don’t understand the affair, sir. So far as I know I have been in an atmosphere of fog and paid and agony. I don’t understand anything about the affair, not so far as my common knowledge of the world goes’. Richard was later a patient at Fulbourn Asylum. Margaretta died at home aged 79 years old, it is not known why the grave monument gives her age as 80 years.
Robert Henry Lee (16 March 1849 – 3 July 1941)
Robert was the son of James and Mary Ann (née Manning) and grew up on Newmarket Road, where his father was a market gardener. Robert also worked as gardener and in 1939 was living at Isinglass House with his son Harry, who was also a market gardener. Robert died at home aged 92 years old.
Sources:
Ancestry
Newspaper archives
Parish burial records transcribed by CFHS
by Claire Martinsen
[If you have any information about this family, please contact us at Friendsofmillroadcemetery@gmail.com]