Thomas Robert KNIGHT (1844–1877)
His niece Miss Ada Margaret COLES (1874–1930)
St Mary Magdalen section: Row 26, Grave L65½
IN LOVING MEMORY OF
THOMAS ROBERT
KNIGHT,
WHO DIED JULY 19,
1876,
AGED 31 YEARS.
–––
“HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED SLEEP.”
–––
AND OF ADA
MARGARET COLES,
HIS NIECE
WHO FELL ASLEEP
MAY 26, 1930
Footstone:
T R K
1876
A M C
1930
.
For more information about this family, see the separate grave of Matthew & Jane Knight: these were the parents of Thomas Knight, and the
maternal grandparents of
Ada Margaret Coles
(1) Thomas Robert Knight (1844–1877)
Thomas Robert Knight was born at Clarendon Mews, Paddington on 17 October 1844 and baptised at St John's Church there on 1 December. He was the son of Matthew Knight and Jane Wakefield (see their separate grave for Thomas’s siblings and more about his parents’ background).
At the time of the 1851 census Thomas (9) was a pupil at a boarding school in Eastbourne, and his family was living in Rugby, where his father worked as a servant.
By 1861 Thomas Robert Knight (16) was lodging at 14 John Street West and working as a clerk in H.M. Printing Office. His father was now living and working at Balliol College in Oxford. He was to spend the rest of his working life here, rising to the position of butler to the Master.
By 1871 Thomas Robert Knight (26) was working as a banker’s clerk and boarding at St Pancras. He returned to Oxford in the later 1870s, possibly to be near his parents because he was ill, and when he died in 1877 he was living in St John Street in Oxford (at the south end, which was in St Mary Magdalen parish):
† Thomas Robert Knight died at St John Street at the age of 31 in July 1877 and was buried at St Sepulchre’s Cemetery on 22 July (burial recorded in the parish register of St Mary Magdalen Church).
(2) Miss Ada Margaret Coles (1874–1930)
Ada Margaret Coles was the niece of Thomas Robert Knight above, one of the twin daughters of his sister Ellen. She was born at Cranham Street in early 1874 and privately baptised by St Paul’s Church on 27 February), so was only three years old at the time of her uncle’s death.
For more about her parents and siblings, see the grave of her parents Henry and Ellen Coles.
Her father was a solicitor's clerk, and in 1881 Ada (7) was living at Kingston Road with her parents and her younger brothers Percy (4) and Arthur (ten months), and one servant.
By 1891 Ada’s parents were running a shop, and Ada (17) was helping out as a shop assistant. She was still at home with her parents ten years later in 1901, and by 1911 had taken over their shop.
Ada’s father Henry Coles died at 128 Kingston Road on 18 January 1928 at the age of 80 and was buried in a different grave in St Sepulchre’s Cemetery.
Ada died at the same address in 1930, but evidently space in her father’s grave was being reserved for her mother, and so she was buried in the St Mary Magdalen section of the cemetery in the grave of the uncle she would barely have remembered:
† Miss Ada Margaret Coles died at 127 Kingston Road at the age of 55 on 26 May 1930 and was buried at St Sepulchre’s Cemetery on 29 May (burial recorded in the parish register of St Mary Magdalen Church).
Ada’s mother Mrs Ellen Coles died at 127 Kingston Road at the age of 73 in 1933, and was buried at St Sepulchre’s with her husband on 28 November.
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