Lizzie’s Story: Update

19 Priory Lane, Kings Lynn, Norfolk, England

Last week our cousin Lin went to Kings Lynn and took some wonderful photos of the house where Lizzie and her family lived in 1901.

Lin is Lizzie’s sister Maggie’s granddaughter and we’re now friends. She remembers visiting us in Corby when we were children and we recently reconnected through Ancestry.com. We both love researching our grandmothers.

Priory Lane is just below the letter D

Andrew Millar 1855 was a drapers assistant in Kings Lynn. He moved from Dundee to England with his family, first to Shropshire then to Kings Lynn by 1895. In 1901 he and his wife Elizabeth Clark 1863 lived in a sweet row home looking over a wall onto the graveyard of the cathedral of St Margarets. 19 Priory Lane was a far cry from the crowded tenements of Dundee where families lived in one room.

St Margarets Cathedral, Kings Lynn, Norfolk

Lin found recent interior photographs of the home on RightMove.com:

Kitchen

First floor

Second Floor living area

Loft

The three children Maggie, Lizzie, and William attended the church school at All Saints Episcopal Church, South Lynn. At this time children left school at age 13.

In the early spring of 1901 Maggie was 18 and working as a baker. Lizzie was 15 and a corset maker. William was 13 and still in school, about to graduate, when tragedy struck the family.

On April 7 Andrew (47) died of complications from diabetes. His death certificate says he had “generalized gangrene”.

A year later Elizabeth died of tuberculosis. The children were 19, 16, and 14. William had become a draper’s apprentice, following in the path of his father and grandfather.

We don’t know how long the children remained at 19 Priory Lane.

Lin didn’t find gravestones. There likely wasn’t enough money to purchase them so they may have been buried in a paupers grave. Cremation wasn’t an option in England until the passing of an Act of Parliament in 1902, but it was years before this was an option across England.