The second daughter of James Mackenzie and Phoebe Roberts was baptised on 15 October 1852 as Mary Mason Roberts, at the parish church of St Jude, St George’s Road, Southwark. Her parents are given as Phoebe Simson Maria and James Mackenzie Roberts, surveyor.

She may have been known as Polly, but I will call her Mary here.

Although no date of birth is given in the baptism record, she seems to have been two years old at this point, as the birth of a Mary Mason Roberts (mother’s maiden name Mason) was registered in Southwark in the fourth quarter of 1850. 

Throughout her life though Mary seemed to be uncertain of her exact age. 

Governess

Mary grew up at the family home, Heath Cottage, in Dedham, Essex, and then worked as a governess, as did her sister Maria. This was a commonplace job for a young woman in Victorian Britain. A governess was always middle-class and always unmarried. 

A nursery governess (which is what Mary almost certainly was throughout her working life) cared for children up to the age of about twelve. Foremost amongst her duties would have been the teaching of reading and writing. Life could be very hard for the Victorian governess:

Many had to take jobs in less-than-desirable homes, were treated as outsiders by the family, suffered from loneliness and homesickness, and were often the subject of sexual harassment by male members of the household and the servants. To keep their jobs, they were often reduced to enduring torment at the hands of their charges, who knew they could behave pretty badly, because to truly discipline a pupil meant that a governess may lose her position. There were good positions to be had, but because there was such a huge supply of governesses, and there was so little job security, many chose to endure tough assignments rather than risk being homeless and penniless.

Mary was not at the family home when the 1871 census was taken and so was presumably engaged as a servant or governess elsewhere. If so she is well hidden in the records. 

When the 1881 census was taken, Mary was a twenty-nine-year-old governess and visitor at the home of Robert R. Wimperis, plumber, and his large family, at 8 Albert Street, Newington, south London. 

If Mary was actually working at this address it was very possibly an appointment secured with the help of her father, who was lodging a few doors round the corner in 1881, in Penton Place. 

Interestingly, ten years later the father of Charles Chaplin, a music-hall artist, was boarding a dozen doors down the street, at number 38. His son, the two-year-old Charles, was across Walworth Road on Barlow Street.