This grave was not found by CFHS during their survey
William Horscraft Waters (21 July 1855 – 21 January 1887)
William was the only son of William Edward Waters (1826-1867) and Merab (née Jones) (1832-1889). He was born in London and baptised on 22 October 1856 at St. Mary’s Church, Islington. His father worked as a draper, later a commercial traveller and the famiy lived at Albert Terrace, Islington. William attended the City of London School and in 1875 went up to Christ’s College Cambridge, with an open scholarship in Natural Science. He graduated with a 1st class in the Natural Science Tripos in 1878, with physiology being his major subject. He worked as a Demonstrator for Professor Foster, before being appointed as Demonstrator and Assistant Lecturer in Physiology under Professor Gamgee at Owen’s College, Manchester [now part of Manchester University] in 1882. William authored a book entitled a ‘Student’s Manual of Histology’.
He lived with his mother Merab in Manchester – residing at Elsinore, Manley Road, Withington. He died suddenly and unexpectedly in bed one night aged 32 years old, and was found by his mother the following morning. She told the coroner at the subsequent inquest that William had been subject to epileptic fits for the past 10 years, but these had got more intense over the past 12 months. She thought that he had suffocated whilst having an epileptic fit, and the jury returned a verdict to that effect. His death was widely reported in newspapers across the United Kingdom.
The coffin was moved from Manchester to Cambridge and was buried at Mill Road Cemetery after a service at All Saints’ Church. The Cambridge Chronicle and Journal reported ‘a great number of the deceased’s college friends followed the coffin’.
His obituary in the Manchester Courier noted that he ‘was an enthusiastic student of science, possessed of a very wide and accurate knowledge of physiology in its various branches and of very unusual manipulative skill in experimenting and the use of apparatus. He was a good speaker and an ernest and successful teacher, and thoroughness was the essential quality of all he did. He was highly esteemed by colleagues and pupils alike, and his death will be felt as a heavy blow by all who have worked either with him or under him’. Regional daily newspapers reported ‘ Dr Waters had a large circule of friends, and his career up to the time of his awfully sudden death had been an expectionally brilliant one’. Some months later at a meeting of the Owen’s College it was noted that the college ‘had lost an enthusiastic teacher who for four years had filled with conspicuous success the position of senior demonstrator of physiology’.
Merab Waters (née Jones) (1832 – 30 July 1889)
Merab was born in Stamford, Lincolnshire the daughter of engineer George Jones and his wife Margaret (née Jackson). She worked as a milliner before marrying William Waters on New Years Eve 1854 at St. Mary’s church, Newington.
Merab Waters died at 17 Clarendon Street on 30 July 1889 aged 57 years old. Her sister Margaret lived in Cambridge with her family, which is why perhaps Merab chose to settle in the town. She was buried on 3rd August 1889 in the same grave as her son.
Sources:
Ancestry
Parish burial records transcribed by CFHS
Newspaper archives
by Claire Martinsen
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