Leyton & Leytonstone

Historical Society

Cooper’s Lane, Leyton

Where the adults had been born

It is also possible to use the 1851 and 1861 censuses to see how many of the adults in Cooper’s Lane had come from outside Leyton.  

Of those living in Cooper’s Lane in 1851 and born by 1830, and therefore more than about 21 years of age (104 in total), 34 were born in the parish of Leyton, 7 in Walthamstow, 1 in Snaresbrook, 3 in Wanstead, 1 in Chigwell, 1 in Waltham Abbey, 1 in Stratford, 1 in Forest Gate, 1 in West Ham, 1 in East Ham, 1 in Romford, and 14 elsewhere in Essex; 1 in Bishopsgate, 2 in the City of London, 1 in Hackney, 2 in an unspecified part of London, and 4 were born elsewhere in Middlesex; 1 in Woolwich, 1 in Lewisham, 2 elsewhere in Kent; 5 in Hertfordshire, 6 in Cambridgeshire, 2 in Lincolnshire, 2 in Suffolk, 6 in Norfolk, 1 in Northamptonshire, 1 in Sussex, and 1 in Wiltshire.

How settled were people in Cooper’s Lane ?  

Of those adults and children present in 1851, 50 had been there in 1841 but would not be in 1861.  22 were there in 1851 and would be there still in 1861.  3 were present in 1841, 1851 and 1861.  5 can be identified as there in 1831, 1841 and 1851 but not 1861.  8 were in Cooper’s Lane in 1851, 1861 and 1871.  6 were there in 1841, 1851, 1861 and 1871.  

Even of those not caught by the ten yearly census as in the street more than the one time in 1851, Frances Allen and her daughter Charlotte were in 1861 to be found in Carlisle Road, Leyton, Charlotte at 13 now able to help her mother earn money as a laundress.  Samuel Allen, gardener, and his wife Jane were in Cooper’s Lane in 1851, in 1861 at 1 Park Buildings, Chislehurst, Kent (now in the London Borough of Bromley), and in 1871 in Capworth Street, Leyton, with Samuel still working as a gardener.  Their son Samuel Joseph lived with them in Chislehurst but in 1871 was in Hoxton as a lodger.  He had been born at Westerham, Kent about 1850.  

Edward Baker was a farm labourer lodging with Isaac Hurry in Cooper’s Lane in 1851.  In 1861, having reached the age of about 70, he was in the West Ham Union Workhouse, a building that survives next to Langthorne Park, Leytonstone.  Michael Connelly, despite his Irish-sounding name, was born in Norfolk, was in Cooper’s Lane with his family in 1851; in 1871 he and his daughter Eleanor were in Holloway Down, an area in which Irish people had grown potatoes earlier in the 19th century.  William Offord, a labourer and one of a number of related people who had, from their birthplace of Southminster, Essex, reached Cooper’s Lane by 1851, was in 1861 keeping a general shop on Union Road, Markhouse Common, Walthamstow (a street that has disappeared since) with his wife Mary Ann and young children William and Emily.