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Charles Montagu BURROWS (1853–1854)
The Burrows family’s servant Miss Ellen STREEK (c.1826–1902)
St Giles section: Row 18, Grave F38

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For more information about Charles’s father Professor Montagu Burrows, see his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and his briefer Wikipedia page.

His autobiography is also available at the Oxfordshire History Centre (Stack, 920/BURR).

Charles Montagu Burrows was born at 29 St Giles’s Street, Oxford in 1854 and baptised at St Giles’s Church on 24 May. He was the son of Montagu Burrows (born at Hadley, Middlesex in 1819) and Mary Anna Gardiner (born in Fareham in c.1817).

Charles’s father Montagu Burrows was a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and their first two children Edward and Frances were born in Alverstoke, Hampshire in the early 1850s. Burrows was appointed Commander in the Navy in 1852, and almost immediately decided to study at Oxford: he was matriculated at the age of 33 on 4 March 1853 by Magdalen Hall (one of the few societies that then admitted married men).

For a very short time the family lived at 29 St Giles’s Street (one of the small houses demolished to make way for the Mathematical Institute), and their first son Charles Montagu Burrows was born there early in 1854 and was baptised at St Giles's Church on 24 May. He died the same year:

† Charles Montagu Burrows died at 29 St Giles’s Street at the age of five months in October 1854 and was buried at St Sepulchre’s Cemetery on 5 October (burial recorded in the parish register of St Giles’s Church).

At the time their next two sons were baptised at St Giles’s Church (Stephen Montagu Burrows on 27 January 1857 and Alfred Burrows on 8 February 1860), the family was living at The Crescent in Park Town.

In 1861 Mrs Burrows was paying a visit to a lieutenant’s widow in Fareham with her two eldest children Edward (9) and Frances (8).

Montagu Burrows materially assisted in the building of the Ss Philip and James’s Church, which opened in 1862. In that same year he was appointed the first Chichele Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford

In 1868 Burrows became the first leaseholder of 9 Norham Gardens. He can be seen there in the 1871 census (when the house appears to have been numbered 5) with his wife and their three sons Edward (19), Stephen (14), and Alfred (11). In 1881 he was there with his wife and children Frances (28) and Alfred (21); and in 1891 and 1901 just with his wife and their four servants.

Charles’s father Montagu Burrows died at 9 Norham Gardens in 1905 and his mother Mary Anna Burrows in 1906: they are not buried in St Sepulchre’s Cemetery.

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Ellen Streek

Ellen Streek, who was servant to the Burrows family for over forty years, was born in North Fareham, Hampshire in c.1826. At the time of the 1841 census she was aged 14 and living in North Fareham with her father Stephen Streek, who was in the navy, and her mother Mary and her older siblings Elizabeth (20) and Henry (15).

Ellen was already the servant of Montagu & Mary Burrows in 1851, before they had any children: Burrows was then a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and Ellen (23) was their cook, living with them at St Mark’s College, Fareham.

She probably became the children’s nurse very soon after that census, and moved with the family to Oxford in 1852.

Ellen was still described as the family’s nurse at 9 Norham Gardens at the time of the 1871 census: she was probably then looking after the younger children Stephen (14) and Alfred (11), and their cousin Mabel Gardner (7), who was living with them. By 1891 she was the family housekeeper, and still had this job in 1901, when she was 75 years old.

Ellen Streek retired to east Oxford and died there in 1908. The Burrows family did not forget her, and she was buried with their infant son in St Sepulchre’s Cemetery:

† Miss Ellen Streek died at 61 Aston Street at the age of 82 in March 1908 and was buried at St Sepulchre’s Cemetery on 30 March (burial recorded in the parish register of St Giles’s Church).

Her effects came to £1,173 11s. 3d., which suggests that the Burrows family had looked after her well, and her executor was a Mrs Sarah Moss.