Rosa Fell

 

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My much loved Nan, Rosa Alberta (Rosie) Tyson nee Mackenzie was named after her own admired and respected grandmother Rosa Mackenzie nee Fell.

Rosa FELL married the very Scottish Kenneth Scobie Mackenzie in Deniliquin in the Riverina district of New South Wales in 1859. Both were relatively new immigrants but from very diverse backgrounds like so many of our early settlers.

Kenneth was born in steamy tropical Demerara, (later British Guiana but now Guyana) to Scottish parents Roderick Mackenzie and his wife Mary Ann Scobie in Georgetown. The Mackenzie’s had a sugar plantation just out of town. When older siblings succumbed to various diseases endemic to that area, he was taken back to Scotland by his mother as a very small boy to be raised in the healthier climate of his Scottish relatives in Ross-shire and Sutherland. The most of his early days were spent with his mother’s sister, Elizabeth Gair in Tain with excursions further north to cousins at Creich, Keoldale and Melness, in Sutherland in Scotland’s far north.

Rosa on the other hand was born and raised in the noise, hustle and bustle of London. Her parents were Lawrence Fell an Irishman and Eliza Albert from Kent. They were married at St Dunstan’s in the East in 1835. The ruins of the church destroyed in World War 2 still stand near the Tower of London. As Eliza was by then 24 she was probably working in the East End.

St Dunstan’s in the East

Eliza’s childhood was fairly typical of that of a seafaring father. Her parents Christopher and Jemima Albert, had lived at various Thameside ports after their marriage in Chatham in 1809, as Christopher was a Gunner in the Royal Navy. On his Navy pension papers he is listed as having been born in Prussia, joining the Royal Navy in 1793. A veteran of plenty of campaigns against the French, I wonder what tales he told his children and grandchildren? Indeed he was aboard the Leviathan in the thick of the battle at Trafalgar, not far from Nelson’s Victory.

Rosa was been born in 1836, in Newington, Surrey just south of the Thames, where her father worked as a hatter. The family then moved to the East End to 96 Pennington St which was just behind the London Docks. Lawrence had completely changed occupations and was the landlord of The White Hart there in 1840 when her younger brother, named for his father was born.

  Opposite The White Hart, dock warehouses for wine lined the southern side of the street. The area was densely populated with all those associated with a busy wharf. It was one of those areas of London, where the Irish congregated looking for work as conditions deteriorated back home.

 By 1841 the family had moved to another pub, The Duke of Sussex at 10 Rosemary Lane, just by the Royal Mint and only a few yards from The Tower. Rosemary Lane had a well known if slightly non-respectable regular second hand clothes market of a Sunday where stolen goods were known to have changed hands. It is hard to imagine a market day today. The streets became completely clogged with stalls and roving sellers by the middle of the day, and street entertainment went on throughout the whole day and into the evening. Even house fronts became shops for the day selling absolutely anything that might have been normally thrown out. To feed the crowd that gathered, there were roving sellers of pies, fish, cooked meats sweets and fruit. It was noisy and smelly but above all for a little girl, exciting!

Thomas Rowlandson  -Rag Fair Rosemary Lane

The area was also not far from the very busy Katherine Docks and of course The Tower overshadowing all.

One imagines business at the pub would have been brisk!

In the 1841 census Rosa’s name is given as Rosetta and also living with the family are possible relatives, twenty-four year old John Fell a hatter from Ireland, Rosetta Fell 22 also from Ireland and Eliza’s young sister Harriet Albert, 10 helping out as a servant.

Rosa's world started to unravel, when her mother Eliza died in October 1842. She was followed a fortnight later by her little two year old Lawrence. Less than two years later in May 1844, Rosie now eight was left an orphan when her father, too, died of tuberculosis after a few weeks in Guy’s Hospital. 

Within the year her grandfather Christopher Albert had also died leaving his widow Jemima with her youngest son, William then only 11 probably still with her and maybe young Rosa.

 Could Jemima manage on Navy pension? Family legend maintains that Rosa spent some time in a convent. Certainly by 1851 she was living along with 14 other like orphans in a Catholic Charity Orphan school for girls in Hampstead on the north western outskirts of London.  Places for children in these orphan schools were sort after and usually found by recommendation. The girls were basically trained for domestic service but also became quite well educated in reading and writing, skills that would be of great advantage in Rosa's later life.

(.......to be continued)