sarah Earl
nee barrett
Subject : Sarah Earl née Barrett (b 1801 – d 1882)
Researcher : Diann Arnfield
A ‘taste’ of the good life for Godalming couple
Sarah Earl and her gardener husband John lived for a time at Godalming’s Westbrook Place, home of the Godbold family who made their fortune producing a ‘vegetable balsam’. After John’s death, Sarah suffered medical problems which together with old age eventually forced her into the Guildford Union Workhouse.
Sarah was born in 1801, the sixth of seven daughters born to William and Elizabeth Barrett. She was baptised on 14th March 1801 at the family church of St Peter and St Paul, Godalming.
Three of Sarah’s sisters died in early childhood, but she grew up to marry bachelor John Earl in Godalming on 8th March 1826. Age 25, Sarah was some 20 years younger than her husband.
Sarah and John were in Ockford Lane, Godalming when their only child, a daughter named Elizabeth Patience, was born in 1829. She was baptised at St Peter & St Paul’s on 26th August, with John’s trade recorded as ‘gardener’. Just a few weeks later, in September, Elizabeth died aged two months and was buried at the same church.
Westbrook Place, Godalming
In 1841 Sarah and John were living at Westbrook Place, a large estate on the north side of Godalming. Sarah had no employment recorded, but her husband John was gardener for the elderly widowed lady of the house, 74-year-old Sarah Godbold.
The Westbrook estate had been bought in 1790 by Sarah Godbold’s father-in-law Nathaniel Godbold. He had made his fortune from his patented ‘Godbold’s Vegetable Balsam’.
Nathaniel knew the value of product promotion in life and even in death, as seen on the most unusual 
epitaph on his tombstone in the St Peter & St Paul churchyard: ‘Sacred To the memory of Nathaniel Godbold Esq. Inventor & Proprietor of that excellent medicine The Vegetable Balsam For the Cure of Consumptions & Asthmas…’.
The Godbold and Earl family connection with Westbrook House ended when Sarah Godbold died at home in January 1843 of ‘old age’, with Sarah Earl ‘present at the death’.
By 1851, John and Sarah Earl were living in Ockford Road, with John still a gardener despite being 71. Sarah’s oldest sister Mary Smith and her husband John were next door. Sarah and Mary’s sister Elizabeth had passed away in Bridge Street, Godalming in April 1843.
Widowhood
After 27 years of marriage, Sarah’s husband John died in November 1853 at the age of 74 from asthma, and was buried at St Peter and St Paul’s Church, Godalming.
Sarah moved in with her sister Mary probably soon after and was there at the time of the 1861 Census. Mary’s husband John Smith was 78 but still working as a stonemason.
Outdoor poor relief
This situation soon changed, as Sarah’s brother-in-law John Smith died later in 1861, followed by her sister Mary in July 1862.
Sarah was now around 60 years old and was probably not in the best of health, as well as being on her own.
The Guildford Poor Law Union Accounts for 1863/4-1871, the only years for which these records are available, showed payments to Sarah of around 2 shillings and 6 pence (12 ½ p) per week, probably to cover her rent, and about sixpence per week (2 ½ p) ‘in kind’ as bread and other necessities, for the whole period from September 1863 to at least eight years later when the records end. The poor relief was given to her either for ‘infirmity’, or as she was suffering from a ‘fistula’. Sarah had probably been receiving this aid at least since her sister died in 1862, if not before.
This small amount of help enabled Sarah to stay out of the Workhouse. The 1871 Census confirmed that 70-year-old Sarah was coping on her own in Bridge Street, Godalming, where she had moved to in the mid-1860s.
Workhouse
Eventually, probably due to her age, infirmity and having no close family to support her, Sarah was forced into the Guildford Union Workhouse. There are no records available to tell us exactly when this happened, but she was there at the time of the 1881 Census. She passed away there on 13th May 1882, age 82, and was buried in Godalming’s Nightingale Cemetery.
June 2020, updated April 2025
Edited by Mike Brock
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
British History Online british-history.ac.uk/vch/surrey/vol3
British Newspaper Archive FindMyPast.co.uk
Exploring Surrey’s Past exploringsurreyspast.org.uk
General Register Office GRO.gov.uk
Nightingale Cemetery Godalming-tc.gov.uk/burial-records
Surrey History Centre, Woking Surreycc.gov.uk
Surrey Parks & Gardens Parksandgardens.org
Wikipedia.org
Wikisource.org
For a full list of references click here