Losing Grace

   Grace Ridge Cockram, Sarah's younger sister, was born in Stockleigh Pomeroy in 1819. She was nowhere to be found in the 1841 census, but surfaced in 1846 to marry James Wood at the St. Pancras Parish  church on Christmas Day 1846.  James was a carpenter whose wife had died leaving him with two children. He was from Plymouth, the son of a gardener. By 1846 older sister Faith Charity and her husband William Channon (also a carpenter) had already been living in London for at least five years. 1851 found Grace and James living at 32 Carlisle Street with three children, the eldest of whom was James' son by his first wife, also named James. Grace and James had two children of their own: three year old William and one year old Sarah Jane. Grace's brother John Cockram lived with them as well in their small two room place. He too was a carpenter.
   Within a few months of the taking of the 1851 census, the family fell on hard times. First, Sarah Jane died. I was devastated when I read the death entry, and can't imagine how Grace must have felt. In 1854 a cholera epidemic hit the area killing thousands and forcing many to flee.  The famous "ghost map" developed by Dr. John Snow shows Carlisle Street just at the edge of the affected area, with deaths at the end where number 32 was situated, but none at the other end nearer to Soho Square, where Sarah and her mother and sister lived. The cholera outbreak was traced to a pump on nearby Broad Street, so it would have been the nearest pump to Grace's household, but not to Sarah's.
   After 1851 I have not been able to find a trace of Grace. Her husband died in the Holborn Workhouse in 1855.  By 1861 their son was living with his uncle James Cockram at his farm in Shobrooke, described as a servant. He was still there in 1871, but was by then described as a nephew. James probably took him on as an apprentice, just as Sarah had been an apprentice on a farm in her early teens.
   So what happened to Grace. (tbc). James and Grace's marriage was witnessed by George and Jane Fletcher (she by mark only). These two were living at 41 Edmund Street in 1851. Edmund Street was the dress given on the marriage licence.