CFHS code : AS188
Parish : All Saints
Inscription : Jesu Mercy JOHN WALLMAN age 26 at rest Dec 3 1875 also ALICE MARY [wife of the above] d Aug 8 1920 age 74
Monument : Stone cross (broken)/Kerb stones
Above information amended from Cambridge Family History Society Survey
Monument
This monument described by CFHS as a cross appears to have been a headstone with a cross on top. It is located in the parish of All Saints roughly 5 rows west of the central path directly behind that of Alice’s parents and about 11 plots south of the north path.The low growing branches of a large fir tree tend to hide both monuments along with bramble and other vegetation.
The cross was broken over 20 years ago and the lower stone fell forward into the grave set sometime later. The carved inscription is badly eroded but still mostly legible.
Inscription
Jesu Mercy JOHN WALLMAN aged 27 at rest Dec 3 1875
Also ALICE MARY wife of the above died Aug. 8. 1920 age 74 years
John Wallman (c.1849 – 3 December 1875)
John was born in Fen Stanton, a village between Cambridge and Huntingdon and baptised there on 13 January 1849. He was the son of William and Elizabeth (née Gibson) Wallman and his father worked as a shoemaker. Age 22 he was lodging at 6 Leopold Street in Lambeth and working as a ‘national schoolmaster’. He married fellow teacher Alice Pleasance on 30 December 1871 at All Saints’ Church, Cambridge.
The couple went to live at the School House, at St. Helens Isle of Wight and had at least two sons, both of whom were born on the Island: Edmund John (1873-1939) and Charles Edward (1875-1933). John died at the school house aged 26 years old. (burial records) 27 (headstone)
Alice Mary Wallman (née Pleasance) (27 May 1846 – 8 August 1920)
Alice was the second daughter of John and Martha Pleasance and was baptised on 21 June 1846. She grew up at Park Street where her father was a tailor/waistcoat maker and her mother a college bedmaker. Alice trained as a teacher and in April 1871 was living at the School House, Cople in Bedfordshire where she was the schoolmistress, assisted by two pupil teachers. The school had been newly built in 1868 and was based on the Duke of Bedford’s estate. She was married aged 25 years old and widowed four years later.
In 1881 she was lodging in Kensington and working as a schoolmistress. This appears to have been a difficult period for Alice, as eldest son Edmund was placed in an orphanage and her other son Charles was sent to live with her mother and siblings in Cambridge. Edmund was placed in the Wanstead Infant Orphan Asylum which was said to care for ‘orphan children who are respectably descended…many are the orphans of clergymen, officers and professional men’.
In 1891 she was living at 21 Ashburton Road in Willesden, London with her son Charles and sister Jane Crabb Pleasance. Jane lived with Alice until she died in 1913 acting as her housekeeper. In 1901 /1911 the pair were living at 1 Leighton Gardens in Willesden and by 1911 Alice was a headmistress. They later moved to 2 Kempe Road in Kensal Green (1913) and then 54 Lavender Gardens, Battersea (1920). Alice died in London aged 74 years old.
Edmund John Wallman (21 November 1873 – 9 December 1939)
Edmund started working as a draper’s apprentice in Paddington (1891). He served as a Captain in the Radio Telephone Operator Corps in the 1st World War, and was appointed Company Secreatary of Thomas Cook in April 1931. In 1939 he was recorded as being married, but no record of a marriage has been found.
In April 1897 he converted to Catholicism, in Florence, Italy. In January 1933 Edmund appeared at the inquest into the death of his sister-in-law Isobel Wallman. Charles Wallman had been in a nursing home since the previous October was said to be too unwell to attend, so Edmund attended instead. The court heard that Isobel had been found dead just before Christmas with a ‘glass containing white sediment’ in the room. She had fallen forward and died as a result of ‘suffocation and heart failure’, but the daily help Mrs Emma Wallis, said that ‘Mrs Wallman was often under the influence of drink’. The coroner returned a verdict of ‘death from misadventure’ and noted that Isobel had been in bad health for some time. He did not consider the sediment to be poisionous and that ‘her heart was unable to respond to the additional calls made upon it by the obstruction of the air passages’. Isobel died in December 1938, Charles Wallman died in April 1933.
He died at 22 St Edmund’s Terrace, London aged 69 years old and records show that his body was buried in Cambridge on 14 December 1939. If this was one of the first cremations his ashes may have been buried with his parents. Otherwise it is likely that he was buried in the borough cemetery on Newmarket Road.
Sources:
Ancestry
Newspaper archives
by Claire Martinsen
[If you have any information about this family, please contact us at Friendsofmillroadcemetery@gmail.com]