Eliza Mary Dee

EMD 1842 - 1922 - a detective story

Here at Completely Bromsgrove we love a good mystery and are fascinated by the story of this grave marker, found outside St Michael and All Angels in Stoke Prior and looked after by Jonathan and Jo Till, who live in what once was the rectory.

Who was EMD and why was the stone outside the churchyard? Gary Stokes takes up the tale.

Eliza Mary Dee of Clapham, who died at the age of 80, was buried on August 10th, 1922. The curate from Clapham conducted the service but there is no indication why her grave would be outside the boundary or why her name wouldn’t be on it.

Her husband George, an accountant at the John Corbett Salt Walks, sometimes called himself George Silver Dee and their surname is recorded in the 1881 census as Silverdee. Eliza Mary’s maiden name was Dee so it is possible that she married a cousin.

When the couple married in 1865, George was an orphan and a commercial traveller but at some point he upgraded to accountancy. He was also secretary of Stoke Works School’s Board of Managers in 1879.

Eliza gave birth to William in London in 1871, Charles in London in 1875, Ethel Georgina Mary in Stoke Prior in 1878 and Daisy Hannah in Stoke Prior in 1881. Daisy was baptised in October 1885 in Aston, Warwickshire, where the family were living by April 1881. Alice Mary or May was born in Aston in 1884.

Both Georgina and Daisy died in 1886, aged around eight and five, possibly around the same time as their father. Their deaths were registered in Aston rather than Bromsgrove.

We have been unable to find any reason for the family’s connection to Stoke Prior other than the fact two daughters were born there. The family seem to have lived in Stoke Prior from at least 1878 to January 1881 and are living in Aston by the 1881 census.

Both Daisy and Ethel died in Aston in 1886 and Daisy was brought back to Stoke Prior to be with her sister Mary. Were Ethel and George Silver brought back too?

After George, Ethel and Daisy died, Eliza returned to London. She was living in Tottenham at the time of the 1891 census and was at her son William’s house in Clapham in 1901 census when he was 30.

The 1911 census for daughter Alice at Gauden Road, Clapham, gives her relation to head of household as daughter, but Eliza is not present. The same address in the 1922 electoral roll has both mother and daughter.

Eliza’s death was registered in Wandsworth in 1922 and she was survived by four children, George, William, Charles and Alice.

For a family burial plot, Stoke Prior was perhaps the only obvious choice even though the family lived in the area very briefly.

Since this story appeared in the Bromsgrove Standard earlier this year, the church has received an email from Eliza’s family who live in the north of England. Another descendant was reading the paper online in Australia and contacted the family in the UK, who then contacted the church.

There is now contact with another descendant in Perth, Australia who knows about Eliza but was unaware that she was at rest at St Michael and All Angels.

We have now learned that Eliza and her family are all at peace in our churchyard, although no gravestones can be found. It is said that a previous vicar removed loose and damaged stones and placed them in the woodland. At the time, this would have been the church grounds and is now part of Jo and Jonathan’s estate. Eliza Mary Dee