Harriett Daw, Bram Stoker's Cook in 1881. The problem of a small spelling error.

Bram Stoker was the author of Dracula, the famous vampire novel, published in 1897. From the early 1880s he lived in Chelsea, London, with his wife Florence.

Bram Stoker and family in the 1881 census (link)

The household in 1881 included Bram and Florence, their infant son Irving, and three servants. The youngest was Emma Barton, the 15-year-old Housemaid. I posted her story the other day.

The story of Emma Barton, Housemaid to Bram Stoker in 1881 (link)

Today I'll continue with the Cook, Harriet Daw, who was 21 and single in the 1881 census.

The problem with Harriett and spelling

I haven't found a matching Harriett Daw in the census or in the other easy records to find on Ancestry.co.uk. Almost immediately, though, a Harriett Dew appeared. Off by one letter. Matching, sort of, as to place of birth. Matching as to age.

Other people's non-verified family trees have a Harriett Matilda Dew traced from birth to death, including marriage in 1882. Missing: an entry for the 1881 census. These gaps are also suggestive that the two Harrietts are actually one.

So, with a giant flashing red light warning that we may be talking about two different people, here is the story of Harriett Matilda Dew, as found in the public records on Ancestry.co.uk.

Daughter of a Carman

Harriet was named after her mother, Harriett. Sometimes there is one "t" in "Harriett", sometimes two. Harriet Matilda was baptized on June 13, 1858 in St. Paul's District Parish Church, Lisson Grove. Her mother's name was Harriett Eliza, and in the baptism register, although both parents are named, only the occupation "Laundress", a word that would only apply to a woman, is given.

Harriet Matilda had a brother, John (full name, John Thomas Henry Dew), two years older and named for their father, John Thomas Dew. Both John and Harriett were christened at the same church, on the same day.

In 1861 the young family was living at 10 Upper Lisson Street, Marylebone, London. The father was a Carman.They lived reasonably close to Paddington Station, and he worked for the Great Western Railway for a good part of his life, it appears.

I can't get to 10 Upper Lisson Street on Google Maps today; perhaps the street no longer exists, or maybe this part of it has been taken up by later road-building, or destroyed in the Second World War. However, on Lisson Street as it now is, I found this charming Google Street View picture. Possibly the best one I've found to date.

(Link in case picture does not display properly below)


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Ten years later, in 1871 on census night, they had a "Nurse Child" in the house. Her name is hard to read and probably misspelled. Literally, it looks like Lousia Cate, but my guess is Louisa Cole may be closer. She was 6 years old, and the only other thing we know is she was reportedly born in Notting Hill.

I have looked for a connection between Louisa (using either surname, Cole or Cate) and the Dew family. I can't find one strong enough to mention.

The phrase "Nurse Child", in the most general sense, means a child in the care of a woman who is not the child's natural mother. It's more of a fostering arrangement than what we would think of as babysitting. If the child had only been there for a day or two, on the census I would expect her to be called a Visitor.

Women could earn money by looking after children, often while their (not uncommonly unmarried) mothers went out to work. In desperate situations, that was what a mother had to do to feed herself and her child.

This is another piece of social history that would be interesting to know about, but it doesn't advance our understanding of Harriet Dew particularly, since Louisa and Harriet were not in the same house in the next census. Any speculation that there may have been a close relationship between Louisa and the Dew family is just that: speculation.

Marriage in 1882
In 1882, so within about a year of Harriett's appearance in the census as the Stokers' Cook, she left to become the wife of William Edmund Frid. They were married on Christmas Day. On the marriage certificate, Harriet's father is John Dew, deceased. Unverified family trees say her mother had died earlier. Her only sibling, John, was married in 1876 and, like their father, worked as a Carman for the railway.

Mr. Frid was a Carpenter. Before marriage, he was apparently living with an aunt and uncle in London and was unemployed. I am only guessing that his fortunes changed, at least I hope so. In 1891, Harriett and William had four children, three girls and a boy.

Although the Frids lived in Marylebone at the time of Harriett's marriage to William, (both at Welling's Place on the marriage certificate) and were there in Marylebone again in the 1891 census, all four children were born in Mortlake.

That's not how I personally got my vampire bloodline, but it does have a personal connection, because for two years, about a hundred years later, we lived in the same part of town. I hope the Frids liked it as much as I did.

An early death in 1895

Her little children were still young when Harriett died in 1895.

Did William remarry? What became of the motherless children?

It's not far-fetched to speculate that Harriett died in childbirth, given her age. That is pure speculation. The death certificate would give a cause of death, but you have to pay for those.

The family in 1901

Six years after their mother died, Harriett's children and their father were still living together, in Marylebone. William, the father, was a Carpenter Joiner, and his son William working for a Butcher. No occupation is listed for any of the three girls.

Because of the misspelling (or to be more clear, the assumption that there is a misspelling), the descendants of Harriett Dew may not know their ancestor cooked for "Dracula" himself. I hope they see this post and do some further research to see if my hunch about Harriett Dew and Harriett Daw being the same person is correct.

This article is one in an ongoing series, starting with Bram Stoker, author of Dracula in public records: BMD (Birth, Marriage, Death).

Next: A brick wall: Elizabeth Jarrald, widow, Nurse to Bram Stoker's baby son in 1881

Emma Barton, Bram Stoker's 15-year-old parlourmaid in 1881

The 1881 census showed the Stokers living in Chelsea, London, at 27 Cheyne Walk. In the household we saw Bram, his wife Florence, their baby son Irving Noel, Bram's brother, George, and three servants: Emma Barton, Harriett Daw, and Elizabeth Jarrald.

Bram Stoker and family in the 1881 census (link)

In a moment, we'll take a closer look at the servants, starting with Emma, the youngest.

Looking at the censuses over the decades, and at the other records that pop up on Ancestry.co.uk without much search effort required, here's what I have pieced together.

Of course there are gaps, but my aim is not to be encyclopedic. It's more to see what we can find out from the primary sources, without much work or expense.

I have access to all the records on Ancestry because I pay for the full meal deal every year as my big Christmas present to myself. Sometimes I link to pages on there that might not be visible unless you're signed in and have access to the records. However, I won't leave you wondering. Where I can't be sure everyone can follow the link, I will include the information here.

OK, on with Emma.

Emma Barton, Housemaid to Bram Stoker and family in 1881, in Chelsea, age 15

Emma Barton was born in late 1865, it appears, in Woodford, Essex. Her birthplace is also listed as Walthamstow sometimes. Her parents were John Barton, a gardener, and his wife Sarah. Family trees that I have not tried to verify show Sarah's last name was Wilby, and that she died in 1880.

Here is the current Google Map showing Walthamstow and to the east of it, Woodford. The City of London is to the south-west.

(Map not visible? Here is a link to the same thing on Google.)


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Emma was christened Emma Louisa, though the name Louisa doesn't come up in the census records I've seen, so I assume she always went by Emma. She had an elder sister, Harriett, and an elder brother, William. The other six children were younger.

What I have found for Emma boils down to this. She apparently lived at home with her parents and all the other children until the 1881 census, which would have occurred just a year after her mother died. At the age of 15, in 1881, Emma was the housemaid for the Stokers in London. How she got that particular job is a mystery to me. I expect there were well-established ways of hiring servants, and I also expect that with a little research on my part, I could probably find books on the topic.

What I imagine, from whatever I've absorbed of English 19th century life by osmosis, is that "good servants are hard to find", that girls in service at this young age had to be trained up, and that the lady of the house would have been to a certain degree responsible for that training. It wasn't necessarily the job of the senior servants, though I imagine they would have had quite a big role. But Florence, Mrs. Stoker, would have been the one to set the standard she expected the servants to maintain.

I don't know for certain that this was Emma's first job. Given her age and the timing of her mother's death, I'm guessing it may well have been.

What happened to Emma?
I can only partly answer this question.

In 1891, she was single, and working as a waitress. My guess is it was at a relative's coffee house in West Ham. On census night, she was a visitor in the household of Thomas Barton and family at 280 Victoria Dock Road, West Ham. Thomas may have been a relative, though in the census, Emma is called a visitor rather than a niece, for example. Thomas was a Coffee House Keeper, hence my speculation.

The census doesn't say where Emma actually lived, only where she was on census night.

Here is a link to the Google Maps Street View for 280 Victoria Dock Road, approximately, today. There is a hotel at that address now. The Street View may open at a slightly different spot, where there are some older buildings. Whether they were there in 1890, though, I can't tell.

Here's the Street View that the link should take you to.


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In the 1902 business directory for the area, Thomas Barton has "dining rooms" at 280 Victoria Dock Road.

Emma Barton in 1901: More responsibility

By ten years later, it looks like Emma has moved on, and who knows how many jobs and homes she may have had in between. The 1901 census shows her as the senior servant, the Cook, in the household of a Jeweller (Leonard Reeder, or Needes, hard to make out) and his wife, in Willesden Green, still in London. There was a younger parlourmaid, age 22, working there too. Emma was still single in 1901, and by now, age 35.

What became of her after that, I don't know. I've seen at least one family tree saying she died some years later in Canning Town. I haven't seen proof of that. There is an Emma Barton who is married to a Mr. Barton, in the 1901 census, living in Canning Town. That's where the Thomas Barton Coffee House was so who knows? But, in 1901, Emma Barton formerly of the Stoker household was single and living in Willesden Green.

What happened to Emma Barton's family?

With such a large family, I took the easy route and didn't try to trace every single person. In broad brush strokes, it looks like the eldest daughter, Harriett, stayed home to care for the other children and the father, but by 1901, she was no longer with him. (In 1891, she is erroneously listed as the mother of the children who are still at home.) Some family trees (unverified) show her as getting married in 1892 and going on to have children with her husband.

The eldest boy, William, married and had a family living in Woodford / Walthamstow in 1901. He was a gardener, just like his father.

In 1891, the sixth child, Emily Mary Barton, then 20, was living in Woodford with an uncle, Frederick Barton, and also a Gardener, his wife, and their 15-year-old son.

Various family trees suggest that most of the children got married, and none died particularly young. The youngest, Florence Rhoda Barton, in 1901 was the housemaid for George Moss, a 44-year-old Jeweller, and his sister, Frances, age 38, both of whom were single. They lived at 35 Addison Road North in Kensington, which is not far from Holland Park and looks like quite a nice neighbourhood.

Emma's father, John Barton, was in 1901 living as a Boarder with an 80-year-old widow named Charlotte Stringer, who kept a confectionery shop. This was in Lancing, Sussex. John, age 63, was working as a Gardener, with none of his children under the same roof.

The Barton family did seem to maintain a presence in the Woodford area.

Emma, however, was on her own it seems, working as a servant and living in other people's homes, perhaps for the rest of her life. Or maybe she got married in her late 30s or later. It's not out of the question.

Dracula was published in 1897, after Emma had long departed the Stoker household. Did she ever dine out on stories of living with the famous author? Who knows, but I expect some of the past servants much surely have enjoyed bragging about their association, at least a little.

This article is one in an ongoing series, starting with Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, in public records.

Next: Dracula's author, Bram Stoker, and family in the 1891 English census