James, baptised on 4th July 1830, at All Saints Church, Heathfield was the sixth of nine children born to George Lovel Harmer and Elizabeth Barber. He was one of John Harmer’s younger brothers. You can read more about the family’s life in Heathfield here.
Moving to Brighton
By 1851 James’s parents, his brother Henry and his sisters Susan, Mary, Martha and Zilpah had left Heathfield for Brighton, and James probably left at the same time as his parents. In the 1851 census we find James, a 22 year old bricklayer, visiting his sister Mary (23) and her husband William Paine, also a bricklayer. Their address was 44 John Street, which is within easy walking distance of Lavender Street where his parents and Zilpah and Martha were living. Another visitor to the house was Ellen Moon, a 22 year old laundress born at Brighton.
This photograph of 41, 42 and 43 John Street taken on March 21st 1912 gives an idea of what this working class area looked like. All these buildings have since been demolished.
Marriage
In Mar Q 1853 the death of an Ellen Harmer is recorded at Brighton. By sheer chance I stumbled across a brief death notice for Ellen in the Sussex Advertiser, which records her death as taking place on 11th January at 22 Lavender Street. It also states that she was 24, and married. Her first name and age strongly suggest that the deceased was in fact Ellen Moon. That Ellen was born at Brighton strongly suggests that she was not married to a Harmer relative from Heathfield – if she was, there is no obvious candidate. That we find her in the 1841 census living with her bricklayer father even gives us a clue as to how she met James and the Harmer family. As I can find no marriage entry for James and Ellen, the implication is that she and James had been co-habiting, first at the home of James’s sister Mary, and post-April 1851 at 22 Lavender Street with his parents and sister Zilpah. James’s father George Harmer died at Brighton in Dec Q 1852, and it would be interesting to discover the causes of death for both he and Ellen. Living in such close quarters was an obvious contagion hazard.
James married Jane Dean (born 1826 at Brighton) on 30th July 1854 at St. Nicholas Church, Brighton. He was 24, and was still working as a bricklayer, and it would be useful to know whether he gave his status as bachelor or widowed. Like Ellen before her, Jane was the daughter of a bricklayer, and worked as a launderess’s assistant. Jane had lived away from home on London Road in her teens, working in service for a music master and his comfortably-off family. She had had a child, William Dean, out of wedlock in Sep Q 1846 when she was 20, and by 1851 was living with her parents, other relatives and four year old William at now largely demolished and rebuilt Zion Gardens.
By 1861’s census James (30) was living at 22 Gardner Street. He was still working as a bricklayer, and with him were Jane, 36 and William, 15.
Death of James
James met a very sad end. By 1865 he had moved to 18 Foundry Street, Brighton. On 24th Feb 1865, when he was 35, he was admitted to St. Francis Hospital, Haywards Heath – the Sussex County Lunatic Asylum and the very same institution where the powers that be had considered sending his brother John Harmer in 1860, and where their niece Sarah Ann was admitted in 1870. James was suffering from ‘acute mania’, ‘supposed cause : insanity’. His mental health issues allegedly only began in his 35th year of age. James passed away there on 28th March 1865. [Source: St. Francis Hospital, Haywards Heath (1854 – 1981) – HC 24/931: Reception documents on publicly-supported patients (1859-1940) : James Harmer 24/02/1865]
As usual, it will be interesting to obtain a death certificate, and to learn the recorded cause of death. James is likely to be buried in unmarked grave at the patients’ cemetery at the old hospital, along with his niece Sarah Ann.
Widowed Jane was living with her son William and his family at 61 Frederick Street in the 1871 census. She and James do not appear to have had any children.
