George AND arthur woodger
Subject Names : George Woodger (b 1820 – d 1894)
Arthur Woodger (b 1876 – d 1934)
Researcher : Pauline Sieler
George Woodger and his young son Arthur were forced to spend many years in the Guildford Union Workhouse due to George’s blindness and then his wife’s early death.
George Woodger was born on 11th April 1820 in Wisley, Surrey, the fifth child of labourer James Woodger and Jane née Sawyers. He was baptised at Wisley’s Parish Church on 7th May.
By 1841, George was living at Hyde Farm, Wisley, with his next elder brother James, both noted as agricultural labourers. 
Their parents, James and Jane, were also living separately at Hyde Farm, with four of the younger siblings.
The Woodger family name can be traced back to at least the 1780s in Wisley, and even further back to 1669 in the nearby village of Effingham. In 1841 there were three Woodger households recorded at Hyde Farm, plus two at the next door Wisley Pond Farm, and one more at Wisley Farm, all no doubt related to each other, and all farm labourers.
George married 30-year-old Woking-born spinster Harriet Norman on 24th June 1857 at Ripley Church. He was recorded as aged 33 on the certificate although he would have been 37, perhaps disguising the age difference with his new wife. He maintained a similar age discrepancy for the rest of his life.
Harriet was already the mother of twins. Clara and Harriett Norman had been born in April 1856 at her home in Ripley Lane. No father was named on the birth certificate, nor at their baptism at Ripley’s St Mary’s Church. Clara Norman passed away in February 1857, and was buried at St Mary’s.
George and Harriet’s first son William arrived in 1860. At the time of the 1861 Census the family were still living in Ripley Lane. George was 38 (actually almost 41) and an agricultural labourer, wife Harriet was 33, with children 5-year-old Harriett – with the Woodger surname – plus William, 1. Daughter Esther was born the following year at Ripley Lane.
In August 1865 all three children were baptised together at Wisley Church, with the family’s address given as Pyrford. This was the second baptism for 9-year-old Harriett, but now as a Woodger.
Sometime before these baptisms, however, George had lost his sight. It is not known exactly when this had happened, but the Guildford Union Poor Law Accounts showed that between September 1863 and March 1864, George of “Wisley, Pyrford” was suffering from ‘blindness’, had received more than £10 from the Union in money and ‘in kind’ (provisions) enabling him and his family to remain at home and out of the Workhouse.
George received a similar amount over the following six months but somewhat less in the next half-year, with no record of him or the family receiving anything from the Guildford Union over the two years between September 1865 and September 1867.
This might possibly be explained by where they were living. Although the local ecclesiastical parish was Wisley with Pyrford, the village of Pyrford came under the Chertsey Poor Law Union. Wisley was the other side of the River Wey, which marked the border with the Guildford Union. So if George was receiving poor relief while living in Pyrford, it could have come from the Chertsey Union. It is also of course possible that the family was surviving by their own means despite George’s blindness.
The family were certainly living in Pyrford when George and Harriet’s second son Arthur was born on 6th August 1867.
Not long after Arthur’s birth, around New Year 1868, George and the four children became inmates of the Guildford Union Workhouse. As George had been born in Wisley, Guildford Union would have been responsible for him and his family. However, George’s wife Harriet was not with them.
Why this apparent split in the family had happened is not known. Harriet had fallen pregnant again and was suffering from anaemia. This combination was to have fatal consequences for her as on 30th April 1868, she passed away during childbirth aged 40 at the Chertsey Union Workhouse some 10 miles (16km) north of Guildford. She was buried at St Peter’s Church, Chertsey. There is no record of the child, who would have been premature, surviving the birth.
Things became even worse for George when less than six months later in December 1868, his son William died aged 7 from typhoid fever in the Guildford Union Workhouse. William was buried in Wisley.
The Poor Law Accounts showed George and his children were now permanent inmates of the Guildford Union Workhouse. Daughter Harriet left the Workhouse aged 13 around the end of 1868 to go into service. The 1871 Census listed the remaining children as Esther, age 11 (actually only 9), and William, 4, although this of course was Arthur, William having passed away in 1868. On this census, George was noted as blind ‘from since stroke’.
George’s blindness would have almost certainly meant that he remained in the Guildford Union Workhouse for the rest of his life. The 1881 Census showed him there with his son Arthur, 13. Daughter Esther, like her sister Harriet, would have gone into service upon reaching 13 around 1875.
By the time of the 1891 Census, George was alone in the Guildford Union Workhouse, passing away there on 3rd November 1894 from ‘General decay Exhaustion’. He was 74, although his death certificate put him as six years younger. George was buried at Wisley’s Parish Church four days later, having been a workhouse inmate for some 26 years.
Arthur Woodger – a bachelor life
George’s son Arthur entered the Guildford Union Workhouse as a baby, grew up there including going to the Workhouse school. He would have left soon after the 1881 Census around 13, probably being found a work placement nearby.
By 1891, he had become a ‘carman’, a driver of a horse-drawn vehicle for transporting goods. The Census for that year showed unmarried 24-year-old Arthur was boarding in Lewisham, Kent with his sister Harriett and her family.
Ten years on, Arthur was still working with horses but now as a ploughman on a farm, lodging just outside Lewisham in the village of Southend. Arthur had remained single and adopted a middle initial of ‘T’.
Arthur did not stay in Kent, but returned to Surrey to live and work in West Clandon.
In June 1934 the Surrey Advertiser reported on the sudden death of ‘Arthur Thomas Woodger’ on the 
Clandon Estate. The inquest heard that Arthur, aged 66, had been cutting grass alone on the estate when he was found dead. A local policeman said that Arthur had been well known in the village (West Clandon) for 56 years having come from the Warren Road Institute – previously known as the Guildford Union Workhouse – as a child before working on farms. The policeman added that Arthur had left the area before returning to the district.
The inquest concluded that Arthur’s death was by natural causes, adding that they had been unable to trace any of his relatives.
Information found since that time shows that Arthur’s sister Harriett, with whom he had lodged in Lewisham, had been an inmate of the Lewisham Workhouse and then the Ladywell Institution accommodating the elderly poor and infirm, from at least 1911 until her death in 1940.
George’s other sister Esther, after a brief spell in Canada, had lived in Kent with her family from the mid-1890s until her death in 1943.
December 2019, updated November 2024
Sources
Ancestry.co.uk / Ancestry.com
British History Online British-History.ac.uk
FindMyPast.co.uk / British Newspaper Archive
General Register Office GRO.gov.uk
Lost Hospitals of London ezitis.myzen.co.uk
Surrey History Centre, Woking SurreyCC.gov.uk
WisleywithPyrford.org
Workhouses.org.uk
For a full list of references click here.