elizabeth, william, sarah frogley
Subject Names : Elizabeth Frogley née Kercher (b 1842 – d 1942)
William Frogley (b 1868 – d 1892)
Sarah Frogley (b 1871 – d 1893)
Researchers : Pauline Sieler and Mike Brock
The sudden death of Elizabeth Frogley’s husband just before the birth of their third child left the family in turmoil. Elizabeth’s youngest George was brought up by her sister in Horsham, but Elizabeth and her two eldest children William and Sarah became long-term inmates of the Guildford Union Workhouse, where Sarah was a persistent menace. Elizabeth had three more children, all illegitimate, although only one would survive birth. Elizabeth lived on in institutions into her 100th year, outliving all but one of her children.
Elizabeth’s early years
Elizabeth Kercher was born in Cut Corner, Puttenham, Surrey in about 1842, the fourth child of labourer James and Sarah née Durbridge. No official birth certificate for Elizabeth has been traced, nor for the four siblings that followed her, but Elizabeth was baptised at Puttenham’s St John the Baptist Church on 14th May 1843.
The family remained in Puttenham, and at the time of the 1851 Census, 9-year-old Elizabeth was a scholar, living with her parents 42-year-old farm labourer James and Sarah, 41, and siblings George – at age 13, a farm labourer like his father – Thomas, Anne and Harriett.
Elizabeth had been living a couple of miles south of Puttenham, in the hamlet of Gatwick, when in November 1867, age 24, she married William Frogley, a 33-year-old carter from Haslemere.
Their first child, William James, was born in Puttenham on 4th September 1868, with Sarah Jane following on 25th January 1871 by which time the family had moved to the adjacent village of Seale.
Their lives were turned upside down two years later when Elizabeth’s husband William was 
found dead beside the road in Haslemere on 16th August 1873, aged 40. An inquest held two days later heard that William had been to Haslemere’s village church to attend his father’s funeral. William had stayed overnight with his brother-in-law in the village and then left early the next morning to escape the heat of the day for the 11-mile (18km) journey back home to Seale. William was found dead around 6am just a short distance away from his brother-in-law’s home. After an autopsy, the verdict was that William had died of ‘apoplexy’ (a stroke).
With Elizabeth shortly expecting her and William’s third child, the jurors donated their fees to her, with the doctor also making a contribution.
This money would certainly have helped Elizabeth following the birth of Thomas George in the Farnham Union Workhouse on 2nd September 1873, just 17 days after his father’s death. With 5-year-old William and Sarah, 2, to look after as well, Elizabeth would soon have needed more help.
This came in part from Elizabeth’s eldest sister Mary Page, who was living in Horsham, Sussex, with her husband and daughter. Elizabeth’s youngest, known as George, was recorded on the 1881 and 1891 Censuses living with his aunt Mary and uncle in Horsham, and had most likely been there since his very early childhood.
The Workhouse Years
As for Elizabeth, William and Sarah, they were forced into the Workhouse. Although there are no admission records available, later newspaper reports indicate that, after a brief spell in the Farnham Union Workhouse in early 1876, the Frogleys became inmates of the Guildford Union Workhouse later that year.
About two years later, Elizabeth was out of the workhouse and living in Seale, where she gave birth to premature twins James Henry and Hannah Elizabeth Frogley on 22nd December 1878. No father was named. James and Hannah were given private baptisms the following day indicating all was not well with them. The babies only survived for 3 days, passing away on Christmas Day.
Whether Elizabeth’s children William and Sarah were with her at this time is unknown, but all three were in the Guildford Union Workhouse by September 1879. The 1881 Census recorded them as inmates, Elizabeth as a widowed domestic servant, with William and Sarah both scholars.
Elizabeth’s cycle of life in the Workhouse would not have been conducive to finding a new partner. Men, women and children were mostly segregated, so there was little or no chance of forming a relationship and certainly not of having a child.
However, in October 1884, Elizabeth gave birth to daughter Hannah in the Guildford Union Workhouse. Once again, no father was named on the birth certificate. Elizabeth, aged about 42, was noted as a ‘field labourer of Puttenham’, meaning that she had been working on a day-by-day basis, probably helping to gather the harvest. Puttenham is at least 6 miles (10km) from the Workhouse, so it would seem likely that she had been living there for quite some time.
Sarah – ‘A Terror to the Workhouse’
For Elizabeth’s elder children William and Sarah, their Workhouse schooling was intended to make them ready for employment in the outside world around the age of 13. Sarah, however, would be beyond the help of the staff of the Workhouse and Board of Guardians, proving to be almost impossible to control.
In 1887, 16-year-old Sarah was given a two-week and then a further three-week prison sentence, both with hard labour, for her dreadful behaviour.
On the first occasion, she struck a matron twice after being reprimanded for making a ‘great noise in the dormitory’ and insolence. She then deliberately tore her clothes while staff tried to restrain her. She was said to have been ‘very naughty and troublesome’ ever since she had been in the Workhouse, and also described as ‘contumacious’ meaning she was stubbornly and wilfully disobedient to the Workhouse authorities.
On the second occasion a few months later, she was given oakum (used tarred rope) to unpick as a punishment after striking a fellow inmate and refusing to do her work, but Sarah threw the oakum into the yard and began smashing panes of glass, with utensils and bedding following the oakum into the yard. More violence and tearing of her clothing followed before being restrained.
The workhouse had unsuccessfully tried several times to place Sarah into service. Miss Augusta Spottiswoode, the Guildford Union Board of Guardians’ member who dedicated much of her time to the welfare of the Workhouse children, said that she had once got Sarah into a home to work but ‘they could not do with her’ while the Relieving Officer, Henry Portsmouth’s opinion of Sarah was that she was a ‘nasty, stubborn and ill-mannered girl’.
The Workhouse’s problems with Sarah appeared to have been solved when seven members of the Trowse family, inmates of the Workhouse, were able to emigrate to Canada thanks to Miss Spottiswoode’s assistance, and agreed to take Sarah with them. The Trowse family travelled with Sarah, arriving in Quebec at the end of May 1888.
For reasons unknown, this did not work out as Sarah was soon back in the Guildford Union Workhouse causing more disturbances. In 1890, she received yet another prison term for her disruptive behaviour. It was stated that Sarah, now 19, had been an inmate of the Guildford Union Workhouse since she was 4 years old.
Around September 1890, following this two-month imprisonment, Sarah moved to London but was soon in a workhouse again, being admitted to the Hackney Union Workhouse on 9th October. Noted as an unmarried servant, she spent most of the next six months in the Hackney Union Workhouse. Sarah’s next of kin was recorded as ‘mother Elizabeth in Guildford Workhouse’.
Sarah was still an inmate of the Hackney Union Workhouse at the time of the April 1891 Census, but she left on 8th April, three days after the Census. There are no records to confirm where she went initially, but Sarah soon appeared south of the River Thames, marrying labourer Thomas Tickner, 33, in Deptford in July 1892.
21-year-old Sarah was already pregnant, giving birth to a daughter also named Sarah in September in Chatham, Kent in early September. The baby only lived for 7 weeks, passing away from bronchitis, and was buried at Chatham Cemetery.
Sarah’s troubled life ended the following year, when she died in Chatham from peritonitis on 3rd December 1893. The death certificate stated that she was 36 years old when in fact she was only 22, but it does seem that this was a clerical error. The certificate named Sarah as the wife of Thomas Tickner who would have been about 36 himself. With no other Sarah/Thomas Tickner couples found, it seems most likely that the age was incorrect on the certificate. Like her daughter, Sarah was buried at Chatham Cemetery.
William dies in Singapore
Sometime after leaving the Guildford Union Workhouse, Sarah’s older brother William had enlisted in the British Army, serving with the 2nd Battalion of the Northamptonshire Regiment. The Regiment had travelled to Singapore in 1889, and it was at the Station Hospital, Tanglin Barracks, in Singapore that Lance Corporal William Frogley died on 11th February 1892 from a ‘rupture of heart’, at the young age of 23.
Long life in institutions for Elizabeth
How aware Elizabeth was of the fates of Sarah and William is not known, but since her daughter Hannah’s birth in 1884, she had almost certainly become a permanent inmate of the Guildford Union Workhouse. The April 1891 Census confirmed her as a ‘pauper’ and ‘laundress’, no doubt in the Workhouse laundry. Her 6-year-old daughter, now known as ‘Annie’, a scholar, was also in the Workhouse.
When the Guildford Union Workhouse was taken over as a Military War Hospital during World War I in late 1915, its inmates had to be transferred to various other Surrey Workhouses, including Farnham, Hambledon, Dorking and Epsom.
Elizabeth was one of those affected. Despite the Guildford War Hospital reverting back to its original purpose as a workhouse in 1918, Elizabeth was not there in the 1921 Census, but was an inmate at the Guardians’ Institution, at Bletchingley, Godstone, about 23 miles (37km) to the east of Guildford *.
The Guardians’ Institution was formerly known as the Godstone Union Workhouse, but changed its name when it was decided that the word ‘Workhouse’ had a ‘deterrent effect upon people’. The Chairman of Godstone’s Board of Guardians believed that the stigma attached to the word Workhouse would be ‘entirely removed’ by adopting the word ‘Institution’, but not without disadvantages. Guildford, and all other Unions had made the same change.
By 1939 Elizabeth had been moved again. Now ‘incapacitated’, she was a patient at the Hambledon Hospital, on the site of the old Hambledon Union Workhouse in Wormley Lane. This Register gave the first known record of her birthdate, 6th November 1843, although this should probably have been 1842 as she was baptised in May 1843.
Elizabeth’s condition and age saw her moved to the Farnham County Hospital in Hale Road, the site of the former Farnham Union Workhouse, where she passed away on New Year’s Day 1942 in her 100th year, having spent most of the past 70 years in institutions.
George Frogley
Elizabeth’s youngest child George, born just after his father’s death in 1873, had grown up with his aunt and uncle in Horsham, Sussex, and married Minnie Parker there in 1896. They settled in the town, raising a family of 12 children.
George spent much of his adult life as a gas worker which he was still doing well into his 70s. This featured in a front-page article of the West Sussex County Times in October 1946 on the occasion of George and Minnie’s golden wedding anniversary.
They remained married until 1955 when Minnie passed away, aged 77. George died in March 1958, aged 84.
Annie Frogley
Annie, like her half-sibling Sarah but hopefully with more success, would have received her education and training in the Guildford Union Workhouse to enable her to go into service. The 1901 Census showed that this had indeed been done, as 16-year-old Annie was living and working in Dapdune House, Stoke next Guildford as a ‘betweenmaid’, a term for a young female domestic worker in a large household.
Annie married labourer Thomas Moon in Guildford in September 1908. They settled in Milford, Witley, just outside Godalming, but Annie died aged 29 from complications following the birth of her second child in March 1912.
December 2020, updated February 2025
Editor: Mike Brock
* Sarah Swan, a fellow long-term inmate of the Guildford Union Workhouse with Elizabeth Frogley, was also transferred to Bletchingley.
Spike Lives is a Heritage project that chronicles the lives of inmates, staff and the Board of Guardians of the Guildford Union Workhouse at the time of the 1881 Census. The Spike Heritage Museum in Guildford offers guided tours which present a unique opportunity to discover what life was like in the Casual/Vagrant ward of a Workhouse. More information can be found here
Sources
Ancestry.co.uk & Ancestry.com
ExploringSurreysPast.org.uk
FindMyPast.co.uk / British Newspaper Archive
General Register Office GRO.gov.uk
Guildford Dragon Guildford-Dragon.com
Surrey History Centre Surreycc.gov.uk
Wikipedia.org
For a full list of references click here