A CAUTIONARY TALE

Studd Street today.

Here's a little insight into the problems of researching old documents. A few posts back I said that in 1861 Elizabeth Ann Bayliss, age 14, was working as a servant for a comb manufacturer named James Mitchell in Mudd Street, Islington.  Not being familiar with this street, I consulted THE A-Z OF VICTORIAN LONDON which reprints G.W. Bacon's very detailed survey maps of the city in 1888.  No mention of Mudd Street.  I returned to the original Census document of 1861 and yes, it looked like it was clearly "Mudd Street."  I decided to work back through the census pages until I found another street in the area - one I was familiar with or one that was listed in the A-Z.  The first on I found was Theberton Street. Quickly I turned back to the mysterious "Mudd Street" and realised that the census taker's handwriting really said "Studd Street".  Well, I must have been laughing for a full five minutes. Why?  Because I worked in Studd Street for 32 years!  If number 6 Studd Street, where Elizabeth Ann worked, was one of the surviving Victorian houses in the street (there is a number 6 but the street was possibly renumbered in the 1880's) then I walked past it every time I went to work!  In the above picture you can see some of the surviving Victorian houses on the right hand side of the street - the present number six being about half way along.  At the far end of the street you can just see the yard of the old Northern District Postal depot where I worked. I believe the site was occupied by a builder's yard belonging to the firm of Dove Brothers in 1861.