Harriet Scrivener's story (part I)

Harriet Scrivener was the daughter of William Scrivener and his wife Hannah, formerly Hawkes. William and Hannah (possibly) married around 1840 and their daughter was born at Elizabeth Street, Luton, in 1851. By the 1871 census, Harriet is living at 23 Stuart Street, Luton with her parents (William is a Groom); like her mother and sisters Marguerite and Sarah, she is working as a hat sewer, a small cog in the straw plait industry of Hertfordshire/Bedfordshire. She is still with her family at Stuart Street, aged 21, when her illegitimate son Frederick Hipgrave Scrivener was born on 19 April 1872. In August 1873, Harriet married Frederick's father, Jesse Ephgrave, both giving the Scrivener family home in Stuart Street as their address. Their second son Edward Thomas was born a few months later, towards the end of 1873.



Harriet's husband Jesse Ephgrave was born in 1852 in Redbourn, Hertfordshire. His mother Mary, formerly Hedges, was widowed by the death of her husband Frederick Ephgrave, a baker, before the birth of their son Frederick in November 1858. Mary remarried, to Edward Thomas Dexter, a baker, in 1861. Jesse followed in his father's footsteps: in 1871 he is a journeyman baker aged 18 in the household of Charles Cooper, Baker, in 23 Bute Street Luton. Perhaps he was waiting until he was able to return to Redbourn as a baker in his own right before being able to marry Harriet. It is possible that their first son Frederick lived mainly with grandmother Mary and her 2nd husband Edward (1881 census) during his early years. Harriet and her other children (Arthur, William, Clara, Alice, George, Ellen and Rose ... all names passed on to subsequent generations) continued to work as sewers, plaiters and binders in the straw industry over a number of years, according to the censuses up to 1901.



Harriet was widowed in 1926, when Jesse died of a cerebral haemorrhage aged 73. She died five years later, aged 80, of 'senility'.