william, Harriet, Catherine Cates

Subject Names :    William Cates      (b 1844 – d 1890)
                                Harriet Cates       (b 1874 – 1968)
                                Catherine Cates  (b 1876 – 1953)                  

Researcher :        Deborah Mandelli

Royal Marine William Cates was twice imprisoned during his time in service.  He was then widowed with 2 young daughters, forcing them all into the Guildford Union Workhouse. William passed away there, but daughters Harriet and Catherine both progressed to raise their own families, one in Kent and the other in Canada.

William was born on 2nd March 1844, the sixth of ten children for agricultural labourer Charles and Sarah Cates née Stedman.  He was baptised in Merrow on 31st March.

William grew up with his family in Merrow, and at the time of the 1851 Census, the family was living in Merrow Street.

Ten years later, 17-year-old William had followed in his father’s footsteps, working as a farm labourer.  He was still living with his parents, along with three of his siblings, in Merrow Street.  

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back for William

In about June 1864, William decided to break away from the life of a labourer to forge a new path by enlisting in the Royal Marines.  Although part of the Admiralty, the Marines had a different role to that of the Royal Navy. They were not trained in seafaring, being basically soldiers at sea. Their main roles were to guard the ships and to enforce and maintain discipline onboard.

This would appear to have been a step forward for William, but he soon ran into trouble when he was charged with being ‘drunk and absent from patrol duty at or about 10pm’ on 29th April 1865 at the Royal Marines Barracks in Forton, Hampshire.  He was found guilty and sentenced to 35 days imprisonment with hard labour.  This record noted that he had served 322 days in the Royal Marines and had no former convictions. His general character was described as indifferent’ but his conduct in prison was good’.

William remained in the Royal Marines, but over five years later, he faced a second court-martial, on 3rd January 1871, ‘for attempting to stab a Superior officer’.  At that time, William was onboard HMS Danae which was operating in the West Indies.  He was found guilty and imprisoned for 2 years with hard labour.  

The April 1871 Census showed that 27-year-old William, a ‘soldier Royal Marines’, had been brought back to England to serve his sentence in Winchester’s County Prison.

Marriage and a family

Following his release from prison, William was soon back in Surrey, as on 1st June 1873, he married spinster Harriet Steer at St Nicholas Parish Church, Guildford.  He was noted as a labourer of St Nicholas, so his days as a Royal Marine were clearly behind him. 

Harriet was already a mother as she had given birth to an illegitimate daughter, Eliza, in 1870.  After the 1871 Census, Eliza disappeared from the records until July 1882, when she was sent by the Annie MacPherson children’s home to Galt, Ontario, Canada under the homes for children emigration scheme 12, 13

William and Harriet settled in Smallpeices Gate in the centre of Guildford, a lane which ran parallel to Tunsgate.  Their first child Harriet Sarah was born there on 16th May 1874 and baptised at Guildford’s Holy Trinity Church.  

A second daughter Catherine Mabel followed on 19th March 1876, with the family now living in Cline Road, just to the east of Guildford town centre. She too was baptised at Holy Trinity Church.

A son, William Charles, was born in 1878, but just 9 months later in February 1879, he died from measles and pneumonia in Swan Lane, central Guildford. 

If that wasn’t bad enough, William’s wife Harriet died aged 29 from tubercular consumption on 15th October 1879.  She was buried at St Mary’s Church, where her son had been buried 9 months before.

William was left to look after his daughters, 5-year-old Harriet and Catherine aged 3, while trying to earn a meagre wage as a labourer.

This would almost certainly have forced them into the Guildford Union Workhouse and although there are no records to show when this happened, they were inmates at the time of the 1881 Census.  The girls were now of school age and would have received an education in the Workhouse if they had remained there, which seems probable.  Whether William ever left the Workhouse is likely to remain unknown, but he passed away there on 11th November 1890 from heart disease and phthisis (tuberculosis) aged 46.  He was buried in St Mary’s Church, Guildford, 2 days later.

Harriet Sarah Cates – A respectable life

Harriet was 16 when her father died in 1890.  The 1891 Census five months later showed her working as a ‘nursemaid domestic servant’ in Bromley, Kent, for a wine merchant and his family.  This could indicate that Harriet, like many Guildford Union Workhouse girl inmates, had received training there to enable her to go into service around her 13th birthday.

The Census of 1901 saw Harriet, 26, in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, recorded as a visitor to the Van de Pol family.   Who or why she was visiting was not stated. Three years later Harriet was back in Bromley, where she married Charles Hubbard.

They settled at 37 Cowper Road, Bromley, with Charles working as a gardener.  Their first child, Charles Joseph, was born in 1905, but he died at just 10 months from dentition and diarrhoea in July 1906.  A second son, William Robert, was born in 1908, and at the time of the 1911 Census, the three of them were living at Cowper Road along with Charles’ widowed father, a retired police-inspector.

Ten years later, the four of them had moved just 200 metres from Cowper Road to 64 Pope Road.  Now 47, Harriet was responsible for ‘home duties’, while 45-year-old husband Charles was a gardener for a local insurance manager.  Their son William was 14 and still at school, while Charles’ father now had his elder widowed sister Emma Laycock for company as she was living there too.

Moving forward 18 years to 1939, Harriet and Charles were still at 64 Pope Road, caring for Harriet’s widowed uncle, 87-year-old Alfred Cates, so Harriet had clearly kept in touch with her Guildford family.  In 1932, Harriet’s son William had married Margery Rapley in Guildford, choosing to settle in Carisbrooke Road, Bromley, a short walk from his parents’ home.

Harriet’s husband Charles was still working as a gardener at this time, but just over a year later, he died aged 64 in November 1940.  Harriet lived for almost another 28 years before she passed away on 23rd October 1968 in the Isard Care Home in Hayes, Kent, aged 94.

Catherine Mabel Cates – A new life in Canada

William Cates’ youngest daughter Catherine was 14 when her father passed away but, unlike her sister Harriet, she has not been traced in the 1891 Census.  Instead, the next record found for her showed that on 14th September 1893, 17-year-old Catherine, along with 57 other girls aged between 6 and 18, boarded SS Circassian at Liverpool bound for Quebec, Canada.

This had come about because Catherine had been an inmate of the Maria Rye Home in Peckham, Surrey.  Maria Rye was a social reformer who wanted to improve the lives of ‘gutter children’, as she called them, bringing young disadvantaged girls from the streets and workhouses into her Avenue House home in Peckham.  Here, up to 80 girls could be accommodated where they learnt the necessary skills to become a domestic servant before being sent to Canada.  Maria was responsible for the migration of around 10,000 children from the early 1870s and was paid £10 by the local authorities for each child she took out of the workhouse and sent to Canada. The 1891 Census for Avenue House only showed Maria Rye’s sister Elizabeth plus three staff members there but none of the girls, so Catherine may well have been an inmate at that time.

Catherine’s voyage to Quebec lasted 11 days, but her journey was not over as she and the other girls then boarded a train to take them about 580 miles (930km) to Niagara where Maria Rye had a reception home called ‘Our Western Home’, where the girls would stay until they were placed with a family to live and work.

There are no records to show where Catherine was placed in Canada, but 2 years after arriving in the country, she married Englishman James Shoebridge in Toronto on 26th September 1895.  21-year-old James was a blacksmith from Tunbridge Wells, Kent, and had emigrated to Canada with his parents and two siblings in about 1887.

Catherine was heavily pregnant at the time of the wedding, with their first child Daisy Augusta born in November.  The 1901 Census showed Catherine and blacksmith James, both 25, living in Toronto, now with their four children – 5-year-old Daisy, Ada (4), William (2) and Bertha, just 2 months old.  Also boarding with them was James’ 19-year-old brother George.

James had become a chauffeur by the time their fifth and final child Charles Sidney was born in 1907.  The family were now living at 14 Ivy Avenue, Toronto, but were at number 22 by the time of the 1911 Census.  This showed Catherine, James and their five children, with four nephews and nieces aged from 7 down to 2 months.  The nephews and nieces were recorded with the Shoebridge surname but who they actually were is not clear.

Ten years later, Catherine and James only had their two sons for company in Ivy Avenue.  Catherine was 45 with no occupation while 46-year-old James was now an auto mechanic, as was his eldest son James, 22.  Sydney, 14, was still a student.  The 1921 Census gave even more details about the family, recording that they were renting their house which was constructed from wood, James senior had earned 1320 Canadian Dollars in the past year while his son earned just 400, and all four of them could read and write but could only speak English and not French.  This was not a concern, however, as Toronto was a predominantly English-speaking city.

The 1931 Census requested yet another piece of information, which was whether there was a radio in the household.  James and Catherine, still at Ivy Avenue, owned one of the 173,200 radios that had been sold since broadcasting began in 1920, although this meant that less than 8% of households had one. Still living with them was their son Charles Sidney and his wife Evelyn.  Charles’ occupation was a ‘radio assembler’, so perhaps it wasn’t too surprising there was a radio in the house!

Catherine and James moved to 303 Chisholm Avenue in about 1945 around the time that James retired.  At the time of writing, no official death records for Canada were available, but Ancestry.com public Family History Trees indicate that Catherine died on 23rd February 1953, just a few weeks before her 77th birthday, and that her husband James passed away the following year on 4th March aged 78.

Eliza Steer

Catherine and Harriet’s half-sister Eliza Steer had gone to Canada in July 1882 under the Home Children emigration scheme when she was 12 years old, but what became of her after that has not been traced.  As Eliza had not been living with her half-sisters back in 1881 in the Guildford Union Workhouse, Catherine and Harriet may not even have been aware of Eliza at all.

December 2023, updated January 2025

Sources

      Ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com (Canada), Fold3.com (military records)
      Archives Hub    archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk
      CanadianBritishHomeChildren.weebly.com
      FindMyPast.co.uk / British Newspaper Archive
      Gloucestershire Genealogy    glosgen.co.uk
      General Register Office    GRO.gov.uk
      Guildford Dragon News    Guildford-Dragon.com
      Government of Canada    parks.canada.ca
      Hayes (Kent) History    HayesKentHistory.org.uk
      Internet Archive    archive.org
      Library and Archives Canada / Home Children Records    bac-lac.gc.ca
      Peckham Heritage (Maria Rye)    PeckhamHeritage.org.uk
      The National Archives, Kew      media.nationalarchives.gov.uk
      Wikipedia.org

For a full list of references click here