Edward junior (E.J.), the eldest son of Edward and Sarah Simson, was the perfect Victorian. He was born at Ardleigh in November 1838, the year of the Queen’s coronation, and died six weeks after her, in the spring of 1901.
At the age of twenty-five E.J. was the only child to leave home before his father died in 1869. He married a Suffolk girl, Emily M. Balls, in the first quarter of 1863. In 1861 Emily, born at Ipswich in about 1836, was boarding and working as a dressmaker at the small village of Holbrook, south of Ipswich, just over the Stour from Ardleigh.
E.J. worked under his father as a veterinary surgeon at the family home (the Railway Tavern, Ardleigh) in 1861, but once he and Emily married (did they meet in the Railway Tavern?) they settled at Holbrook, where E.J. set himself up as a vet in his own name, like his brothers, George at Ardleigh and William at Langham.
Holbrook
In 1871 E.J. and Emily were living in School Lane, Holbrook, with three young children and a servant, Ellen Leeks. Now aged thirty-three, E.J. was established as the village vet.
When the 1881 Veterinary Surgeons Act was passed, the Simson vets of the mid nineteenth century were declared ‘existing practitioners’.
This means all were practicing veterinary medicine before the Act, which sought for the first time to distinguish between qualified and unqualified practitioners.
Around 1881 the RCVS encouraged unqualified existing practitioners to complete a registration form plus a Certificate of Character, which worked rather like a modern-day reference.
That year, the family was at Yew Tree Villa, Ipswich Road, Holbrook, with another servant, Ellen Rands.
A sepia photograph of them was taken, probably professionally, around this time, lined up at the front of Yew Tree Villa.
The photo shows E.J. (forty-two in 1881), his wife Emily and their sons Edward Wilson Simson (sixteen in 1881); Harry Simson (thirteen); and John (Jack) William Simson (six).
The photo was analysed by Who Do You Think You Are? magazine in August 2024. My great grandparents must have acquired a copy of this photograph, which was placed in an album that was then passed down through the family. E.J. was my great grandmother’s eldest brother and perhaps one she was especially close to?
A detail from the photo and the 1881 census, taken around the same time.
In 1891 E.J. and family and servant were a little further along the same road, at another house, The Laurels, so called as it was screened from the road by a row of French laurels. Emily died in 1892 and the following year the house was put up for sale and E.J. moved next door, to Rose Cottage, probably to live with his son Edward Wilson Simson. He died here on 28 March 1901, aged sixty-three.
E.J. and Emily are buried in Holbrook churchyard. Their children remained at the Holbrook addresses, although Yew Tree Cottage seems to have lost its name after the 1880s until the 1920s, when it was renamed Otter House.
Yew Tree Villa, now called Otter House (The Move Market, 2016), its appearance unchanged in 150 years.
E.J.’s children were my grandmother’s cousins. They were all born at Holbrook, where I imagine my great grandparents and grandmother Alice would ride over from Lawford to visit them on Sunday afternoons at the turn of the century. Although several years older than her, I think my grandmother remained close to them, into the twentieth century.
Edward Wilson Simson
Edward Wilson Simson (1865–1929) was born at Holbrook and was also a veterinary surgeon. He married another cousin, Eliza (Lizzie) Mason Cater, in Kensington in 1891. This Lizzie was the daughter of Eliza and William Cater (Eliza Cater [née Tayler] was the sister of E.J.’s mother, Sarah Simson). William (‘Uncle Cater’) is mentioned by Emma Isabella Simson in her letters home.
By the turn of the century, Edward Wilson Simson was working as a veterinary assistant, at 3 Wheat Street, Nuneaton, Warwickshire, but returned to Holbrook to carry on a practice on his own account. His son was Edward William N. Simson, born at Holbrook in 1893 and in 1911 was a sapper in the army at Aldershot.
Harry E[dward]. Simson
Harry Simson (1867–1939) was also born at Holbrook. In 1897 he married an Emily Gertrude Simpson (not Simson), at Colchester. In 1901 Harry was a butcher, living over the butchers shop in the village of Stutton, Suffolk. He lived at Ogilvie Hall House, Lawford and is buried at Lawford.
John (Jack) William Simson
Jack Simson (1875–1943) started out as a Post Office clerk, but by 1901, on the death of his father, he too became a veterinary surgeon, carrying on the family business at Ipswich Road. His housekeeper when the 1901 census was taken was Ellen Sim[p]son. The couple married at the end of that year.
Jack was at Ogilvie Hall House, Lawford in 1939, with Ellen and his recently widowed sister-in-law Emily. He died here four years later.