George Witheat Mason
(1822-84)
George Witheat Mason, was born at Dedham in 1822, the son of James and Phoebe Mason. In 1854 he married a Susannah (or Susan) Pettit, in Essex. They lived at West Mersea Hall, where George farmed 407 acres, employing eleven men and three boys.
By 1871 however they had given up the rural life and were living in (relatively) urban Clapham, where George Witheat Mason was manager of a ‘smithy’. Their address was 11 The Rookery, on the edge of Clapham Common. This was the site of stables and timber-clad cottages which, until their demolition in 1904, housed a veterinary practice, farrier’s business and forge, which George must have managed. In the 1870s, James Mackenzie Roberts (who was George’s brother-in-law) lodged a healthy stroll away at Walworth – did the pair know each other?
Ten years on George and family had moved to Mayfair and a smarter address at 6 Park Lane. George was a ‘manager’ here: of what is not clear, although in the 1870s and 80s Mercer’s Horse Mart was at this address, so he may well have managed a forge which provided shoeing for the horses. This was at the Piccadilly end of Park Lane which, according to a correspondent for the New York Times in 1885, ‘does not look as though it contained a considerable portion of the wealth and aristocracy of the English metropolis. There is an extremely plebeian saddler’s shop to begin with; then a horse mart; following which are some dingy-looking houses suggestive of the pinch of poverty.’
George died shortly afterwards, in 1884, aged just sixty-two.
George and Susan’s children were James [Travis?] (1857–69?), Mary Grace (1860, baptised at St Mary the Virgin at the Walls, Colchester), George Edward (1865), Robert P[hilip?] (1866–1949?) and Witheat Augustus Mason (1872–1926). They were my great grandfather’s cousins.
George Edward Mason
The second son was born at Great Fen, Essex (according to the 1881 census), in 1865. In 1891 he was married to the Pimlico-born Eliza and living at 18 Alderney Street, Pimlico. His occupation was that of salesman.
Robert P. Mason
The third son was born at West Mersea, Essex (according to the 1881 census) in 1866. In 1891 he was twenty-four and living with his widowed mother and brother Witheat Augustus, at 5 Warwick Place, St George Hanover Square. His occupation was the foreman of a blacking (ink) factory.
Witheat Augustus Mason
The fourth son was born in 1872 at either West Mersea (according to the 1881 census) or, more likely, Clapham (according to the 1891 census and civil records) and given the splendid family name of Witheat Augustus Mason.
In 1891 he was nineteen and living with his widowed mother and brother Robert at Warwick Place, St George Hanover Square. His occupation was a clerk in an advertising office. In 1901 he worked as an inspector for the Gas Light & Coke Company.
Witheat Augustus was the only individual in the faimly to have Witheat as a forename. He married Emily Ayres, the daughter of a Fulham whitesmith, in 1897. They lived at Munster Road, Fulham, until Witheat Augustus’s death in 1926, so it is very unlikely that Frank, my great grandfather, had any communication with them. Their son was Cecil Charles Witheat, born in Fulham in 1899, died Japan in 1923.