It is from this Zilpah, John Harmer’s sister, that the Underwood line of Brightonian Harmer descendants originates.
Zilpah, born 1836 and baptised on 1st January 1837 at at All Saints Church, Heathfield, was the eighth of nine children born to George Lovel Harmer and Elizabeth Barber. You can read more about the family’s life in Heathfield here.
Early life in Brighton
By 1851 Zilpah, 16, and her parents George (64) and Elizabeth (60) had left Heathfield, and were living in a divided-up house at 22 Lavender Street, Brighton. George was still working as a shoemaker as he had done in Heathfield, and his wife was a charwoman, a term for a live-out cleaner employed by the middle or upper-working classes. Zilpah was working as a housemaid for another family.
Altogether four households were crammed into the house. Two were unconnected to the Harmers, but in addition to George, Elizabeth and Zilpah, Zilpah’s sister Martha Lovell Revell née Harmer (21), her husband Charles Revell (30), and their two daughters Martha (5) and Elizabeth, known as Fanny (2) were also renting rooms.
Zilpah’s father George died at Brighton between Oct and Dec 1852, and her mother Elizabeth died at Brighton one year later. Presumably Zilpah lived with other family members after her mother’s death, as she would have unable to pay the rent on her housemaid’s wages. Alternatively she may have found a live-in position as a maid. Fortunately for Zilpah within a few years she had met and married Henry Underwood.
Marriage
Henry was baptised at the Chapel Royal, Brighton, on 4th December 1835, the son of Henry (a waiter) and Ann Underwood. He was born at Devonshire Place but by 1851 the family were living at 101 Upper North Street. In that year 15 year old Henry was working as an errand boy. Henry’s father died in 1854, and his mother Ann quit the house.
When they married at St. Nicholas’ Church in 1856 Henry and Zilpah were about 20 years old. By April 1861 when the census was taken they were living at newly built 11 Pelham Square off Trafalgar Street, a substantial and attractive house in a very desirable location. Zilpah, it seems, had definitely fallen on her feet.
Henry was working as a billiard marker, which meant that he kept score at a billiards room or hall. He would ultimately become the proprietor of a billiards hall, which was located just after 42 Cannon Place. Folthorp’s 1862 street directory lists G. Bedford as the proprietor, but by 1864 Henry Underwood was in charge. We know that he ultimately purchased the venue, and this may have been around 1863 – fast work for the son of a waiter! Cannon Place runs from the seafront, between the Grand Hotel and the Metropole Hotel, up to Russell Square. In the 1800s it was popular amongst well-to-do visitors to Brighton for its high class boarding houses. Most of the handsome Victorian terraced properties which once lined it on both sides were demolished in the 1960s to make way for a car park, and today it is hard to imagine what a pretty street Cannon Place once was.
This photograph, taken between 1866 and 1868 looking west from the seafront shows the one-storey billiards hall to the right of the picture:
The billiard rooms are last mentioned in the 1884 street directory. The hall was still standing in August 1961 when the photograph below was taken. Ultimately it was demolished and replaced with a new conference suite for the Metropole Hotel.
Children
Henry and Zilpah’s marriage bore seven children:
Zilpah Harmer née Underwood (1858 – 1929)
Henry George Underwood (1859 – 1903)
Frank Underwood (1861 – 1926)
Albert Underwood (1863 – 1937)
Alice Collins née Underwood (1865 – ?)
Florence Allen née Underwood (1867 – 1921)
Bessie Sargant née Underwood (1869 – 1933)
If you are descended from any of the above I would love to hear from you!
The family left Pelham Terrace around 1864 and took up residence at 93 Upper North Street where we find them in the 1871 census. In the same year they moved a few doors up to number 99, next door but one to Henry Snr.’s childhood home. This would remain the family home until 1889.
TAKE PIC – 99 UPPER NORTH STREET IN 2019
On 26th September 1874, at the age of just 39, Henry Snr. died at home of ‘malignancy’, or cancer as we would call it today. He was buried at the Extra-Mural Cemetery on Lewes Road, which we know courtesy of the records of his chosen funeral directors, Attree and Kent. Henry left his circa £1500 estate to Zilpah Snr. In 1874 that was a small fortune.
Zilpah Snr. kept the billiard rooms going until December 1877 when she transferred the licence to John Alfred Bowles (Brighton Guardian, 12th December 1877).
Death
Like her husband, Zilpah also died young, on 12th Oct 1881. Her cause of death was consumption, and she was just 46.
At the time of Zilpah’s death, her children still living at home (as per the April 1881 census) were:
Zilpah, 23 (Governess, out of employ)
Henry George 21 (Shopman, Tobacconist)
Frank, 19 (Solicitor’s Clerk)
Albert, 17 (Cashier, Italian warehouse)
Alice, 15 (General servant)
Florence, 13 (Scholar)
Bessie, 11 (Scholar)
‘Miss Underwood’ is listed in the street directories at 99 Upper North Street from 1883 – 1888, and in 1889 ‘F.W. Underwood’ (Frank). After this the house passed out of the Underwood family’s hands. An auction of the house’s contents in September 1889 gives us an idea of the family’s lifestyle:
