Every family historian, in the course of their research, has had the experience of finding themselves distracted by something totally irrelevant. This happened to me while I was indexing the Creed Registers for the Bromley workhouse and first came across the name Amelia Dolding.
I first ‘met’ Amelia Dolding, in a manner of speaking, on 25 October 1889. She was just another entry in the register: I recorded it before passing on to the next one. But then she began to appear again and again. She entered the workhouse no fewer than 24 times between 1888 and 1893. I subsequently found that this was a typical pattern of her life for at least 30 years from 1881 to 1911.
Her average stay was about four months but after each discharge, she remained out for only few weeks, sometimes indeed only for a day or two. On several occasions in the early years she was accompanied by one more of her children: Fanny, Matthew and/or Luke. Each of the children eventually go their own way, appearing only as her next of kin in later entries.
Intrigued by this unhappy woman’s plight, I wanted to know more. And what a story it
The Workhouse Creed Registers, as distinct from the Admissions and Discharge Registers, were introduced under the
