Catherine Sarah (Kate) Simson
(1840-1907)
Kate (Catherine Sarah) was Edward and Sarah Simson’s eldest daughter, born at Ardleigh in 1840 and baptised at Ardleigh on the first day of 1841.
Perhaps she had already left home before her father died in 1869, as in 1871 Catherine S. Simpson (spelled with a ‘p’ in the census) was living at 47 Queen’s Row, Walworth, south London (Surrey, in those days). She was sharing the address with a draper’s carman and earning her living as a costume maker.
With her is twenty-five-year-old Mary Ann Simpson, of the same occupation. Both are born at Ardleigh. This must be Kate and her sister Polly, as neither women can be found elsewhere on the 1871 census, although for some reason Kate’s age is given as fifty (she was actually around thirty) and Mary Ann is listed as her daughter. This may just be an error on the part of the enumerator; or it may be deliberate for some reason.
Ten years on, Kate had moved from Queen’s Row but is hard to find in the 1881 census. A ‘Kate Tinson’ (possibly?), born at Ardleigh, was living at Chislehurst, Kent, one of a dozen servants in the household of American stockbroker Patteson Nickalls. Her age is given as thirty-nine (so born 1842) and she is listed as a nursery governess: a typical occupation for an unmarried woman of Kate’s background. So this could be her, especially as there are no references in earlier censuses to a Catherine or Kate Tinson born in Essex. Perhaps her recent arrival may account for the wrong name given to the enumerator?
By 1891 she was back in Essex. The Simsons had given up the family home at Whaley Farm and Kitty (now aged fifty, no occupation) was at 20 Portland Road, Colchester with her mother Sarah (aged seventy-three) and her sister Maggie (thirty-six), together with Emma’s son Tom Scammell (nineteen).
Maggie and Kate moved to Felixstowe to run a guest house in the mid 1890s. The ‘Misses Simson’ lived first at Park Villa, 72 Constable Road and by 1896 they were at 3 Princes Terrace, Cavendish Road. Kate died here on 13 August 1907: messages of sympathy appear in the visitors’ book for that August. After her death, Maggie continued to run the guest house with the help of my grandmother, Alice.