mary ann AND CHARLES biggins
Subject Names : Mary Ann Biggins (b 1841 – d 1910)
Charles Biggins (b 1874 – d ?)
Researcher : Carol Gomm
Single mother Mary Ann Biggins gave birth to her son Charles in the Guildford Union Workhouse where she was to spend much of her life. Charles had a chequered career, growing up in the Workhouse before becoming a fishing apprentice, a labourer, and then having 6 weeks in the Army before disappearing from records in his twenties.
Mary Ann Biggins was born on 23rd December 1841 at the City of London Lying-In Hospital, City Road, Finsbury, the eldest child 
of Charles Biggins and Mary Ann née Gibbons. This was a lying-in hospital relying on charitable donations where ‘the wives and widows of soldiers, sailors and industrious mechanics and of those who have fallen into adversity’, could go to give birth, provided they were ‘married and poor’.
Mary Ann’s mother was eligible to give birth there as her husband Charles was in the Royal Navy, serving on HMS Cyclops as a stoker and boiler maker. Mary Ann may not have seen much of her father in her early years because of his tours of duty, but Charles was clearly doing well, his service record in 1842 showing him to be ‘sober and well conducted’. He was awarded the St Jean D’Acre medal, given by the Sultan of Turkey to British, Austrian and Turkish soldiers and seamen for their participation in the liberation of the City of Acre, Syria, in 1840.
By 1843, the family were living in Millwall, Poplar, in the heart of the London Docklands, with Charles now serving on HMS Volcano. 
Probably because much of Charles’ time was spent at sea, it was not until 1846 that Mary Ann had a sibling, Charles George. A sister, Maria Caroline, followed in 1849.
The 1851 Census showed 9-year-old Mary Ann living with her family in Upper North Street, Poplar. Her 34-year-old father Charles, having served in the Merchant Navy after leaving the Royal Navy, was now an engineer.
Mary Ann’s mother was expecting her fourth child, but the family had moved to Ipswich, Suffolk by the time of the birth of Lorenzo William in November 1851. Charles, no doubt drawing on his experience of making boilers in the Navy, was working at a foundry.
Mary Ann’s parents and her siblings Maria and Lorenzo were still in Ipswich in 1861. Her brother Charles George had died two years earlier aged 12.
From Ipswich to Surrey
Mary Ann has not been traced on the 1861 Census, but by the mid-1860s she was in Surrey. The Guildford Union Poor Law Accounts show that 26-year-old Mary Biggins, of West Clandon, spent 11 days in the Workhouse sometime between September 1865 and March 1866.
No Accounts have survived for Guildford before 1864, and there are no remaining admission or discharge registers, so we cannot know exactly when Mary Ann arrived in the County, or what had brought her over 100 miles (160km) from her family home in Ipswich. However, the Biggins family were linked to West Clandon by the baptism of Mary Ann’s aunt, Sarah Biggins, in 1824, though by 1828 the family had moved to London where Mary Ann’s grandfather was a groom to HRH the Duchess of Kent (Queen Victoria’s mother) at Kensington Palace. As another aunt, Elizabeth Biggins, baptised 1830, went on to marry William French, coachman to the Duke of Argyll in 1861, it seems plausible that with these connections Mary Ann could have been working at Clandon House in West Clandon, the estate of the Onslow family. If not, perhaps she was staying with friends of her own family made during their time here in the 1820s or with her Dorking-born grandmother’s family, the Anscombs.
Nevertheless, the Poor Law Accounts further reveal that five years later, Mary Ann spent some three months in the Guildford Union Workhouse before the April 1871 Census, and at least six months afterwards. On that 1871 Census she was listed as an unmarried 29-year-old inmate, a domestic servant, born in London. There are no remaining records after September 1871 to indicate when she left, why she was there, or why she had not been returned to the workhouse of the parish where she was born.
A Workhouse Birth
Three years later, on 21st October 1874 Mary Ann gave birth to a son, Charles, in the Guildford Union Workhouse. The Workhouse record of the birth stated that Mary Ann had been admitted from the parish of West Clandon, but no admission date was given. It may be that Mary Ann had been in the workhouse since 1871 or before, but again it is impossible to know.
No father was named on Mary Ann’s son Charles’ birth certificate. Mary Ann was described a ‘single woman’ on Charles’ baptism record at St John the Evangelist Church, Stoke Next Guildford, the day after his birth. The Workhouse births register said that Charles was Mary Ann’s second child, although no record has been found of another birth.
Both Mary Ann and Charles were Workhouse inmates at the time of the 1881 Census. Whether they had remained here since the birth of Charles is again not known. Mary Ann was described as a 38-year-old domestic servant. Her place of birth was mistakenly given as Ipswich, where her parents had been living, and where her siblings still were. Charles was a scholar, most likely at the school within the Workhouse. He would have been separated from his mother at around the age of 7, to live in the boys’ ward.
Charles leaves the Workhouse to become a ‘fishing apprentice’ in Grimsby
Charles probably completed his schooling in the Workhouse where he would have learnt some basic skills to help him find employment. Normally, an inmate would have been given a work placement before they turned 13, but for Charles, things appeared to have turned out differently.
It was two days before his 15th birthday that a meeting of the Board of Guardians on the 19th 
October 1889 decided that Charles should be apprenticed to the Great Grimsby Ice Company along with two other boys, Frederick Tubbs and William Tappin. Seven days later, all three were indentured at Grimsby, Lincolnshire as fishing apprentices – Charles and Frederick for six years, and William, who was younger, for seven.
Though one function of the Grimsby Ice Company was the provision of ice for use in the preservation of fish, they also had their own fishing fleet and the port of Grimsby was one of the biggest employers of apprentices in the country.
Workhouse boys had long been recruited into the fishing trade. However, an in-depth article of 1894 spelt out in no uncertain terms just how badly treated they were and how awful their life could be: ‘The plain fact is – and it may well be stated first as last – this apprenticeship business is a diabolical one, and the guardians and reformatory managers who hand their charges over to the fishing interest will have a heavy reckoning to pay’.
Things did not go well for Charles as on the 23rd April 1890, just six months after he was apprenticed, his indenture was cancelled. Whether this was through his own choice 
or whether he was just unsuitable was not recorded, but life for these lads was extremely tough and dangerous, especially for someone like Charles who had probably never even seen the sea.
Many of the boys were said to prefer prison to being on board a fishing smack and some went as far as sabotage to avoid going to sea or to ensure the vessel had to return to port. Perhaps this goes some way to explaining why by 1891 Charles was once more in the Guildford Union Workhouse. He was now 16, and unemployed. His mother Mary Ann was also there – recorded as a 49-year-old laundress.
While Mary Ann may well have become a long-term resident, the Board of Guardians would have wanted to get Charles out of the Workhouse and back into the workplace as soon as possible.
Charles joins the Army, and then?
Where Charles did go was revealed on his probable enlistment as a Private in the Royal West Surrey Regiment at Guildford in March 1895. The record shows that Charles claimed to have been born in Guildford, but gave his age as 17 years 9 months, giving a birth date of June 1877. However, no birth can be found to correspond with this anywhere in England, with the only Biggins’ birth registered in Guildford in the 1870s and 80s to be Charles in 1874, so it does seem that he lied about his age, and that this was indeed Mary Ann’s son.
Described on enlisting as 5 feet 6 inches (1.68m) tall with brown hair and eyes, and a dark complexion, Charles had been living in Swan Lane, Guildford, working as a labourer for Mr. Gates. This was most likely Charles Arthur Gates who, with his brother Leonard, were grocers and dairymen in the adjoining High Street.
Charles Biggins was there at a formative time, as the Gates brothers’ business progressed into dairy products, forming the West Surrey Central Dairy Company Limited. This rapidly expanded across the country, and in 1904, they were asked to produce powdered milk to help feed the children of poor families. This product was known as ‘Cow & Gate Pure English Dried Milk’ and following the global success of this, the company was renamed ‘Cow & Gate’ in 1929.
Charles’ military career was far less successful, as he was invalided out after just over six weeks in May 1895, an even shorter period of time than that as a fisherman.
Unfortunately, this is the last confirmed record traced for Charles.
Mary Ann’s final years
Mary Ann Biggins was an inmate of the Workhouse in the 1901 Census, and appeared to have remained there for the rest of her life. She passed away in the Infirmary on the 13th January 1910, three days after suffering a cerebral haemorrhage, aged 68.
Mary’s death certificate stated she was a domestic servant and spinster from East Clandon. Had she perhaps been living there prior to her death, or was it was a slight error (West Clandon, not East) from when she had been admitted to the Workhouse before giving birth to Charles in 1874? Like her son’s fate, it seems likely that these questions will remain unanswered.
November 2022, updated November 2024
Sources
Ancestry.co.uk
Australian War Memorial AWM.gov.au
FindMyPast.co.uk / British Newspaper Archive
Cow & Gate CGbabyclub.co.uk
General Register Office GRO.gov.uk
Hansard.Parliament.co.uk
PilgrimofBrixham.co.uk
Surrey History Centre, Woking SurreyCC.gov.uk
The Charlotte Jubilee Trust Ltd. Charlotteville.co.uk
The Grimsby Fishing Lads: Story of the Humber fishing apprentices
Wikipedia.org
For a full list of references click here.