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Thomas LUCAS (1817–1897)
His wife Emily LUCAS, née Goddard (c.1816–1886)
———
Their niece Mrs Mary Eleanor POTTAGE, née Lucas (1846–1897)
———
Their son-in-law James Arthur HOWSE (c.1860–1918)
Their daughter Mary Eleanor HOWSE, née Lucas (1850–1931)
St Giles section: Row 1, Grave B42

(1) Thomas & Emily Lucas

Thomas Lucas was born at Ox Street, Oxford on 22 March 1817 and baptised at St Thomas's Church on 13 April. He was the son of the shoemaker Thomas Lucas and Sarah Hughes.

Emily Goddard was born in Woodstock in 1817/18 and baptised there on 20 February 1818. She was the daughter of the glazier Edward Goddard and his wife Mary. At the time of the 1841 census Emily was lodging in Park End Street, Oxford with her future husband’s brother, the young tailor William Lucas, and his wife and two children.

On 9 April 1842 at St Martin's Church, Carfax, Oxford, Thomas Lucas, described as a printer of the Town Hall, Oxford, married Emily Goddard of Woodstock. They had the following children:

• Emily Lucas (born at Beaumont Buildings, Oxford in 1848 and baptised at St Giles’s Church on 22 August);
  died aged 3 years 6 months, funeral on 27 April 1851)
• Sarah Lucas (born at Beaumont Buildings, Oxford in 1848/9 and baptised at St Giles’s Church on 24 January 1849); died aged four months, funeral on 22 April 1849
• Mary Eleanor Lucas (born at Beaumont Buildings, Oxford in 1850 and baptised at St Giles’s Church on 26 May)
• Elizabeth Lucas (born at Beaumont Buildings, Oxford in 1852 and baptised at St Giles’s Church on 27 June)

At the time of the 1851 census Thomas (34), a compositor and printer, was living at Beaumont Buildings, St Giles with his wife Emily (33) and their two surviving daughters Emily junior (3), who died just after the census, and Mary Eleanor (3 months). They were to remain at this address (with the house number later specified as 20) until at least 1891.

By the time of the 1861 census Emily’s niece, Ann Elizabeth Goddard (20), who had been born in Summertown and was a dressmaker, was living with the family; and they also had a 14-year-old servant girl.

In 1871 Thomas and Emily were at home with their two surviving daughters Mary (20) and Elizabeth (18), and no longer had need of a servant; and in 1881 only their daughter Mary (30) was at home.

Mrs Lucas died in 1886:

† Mrs Emily Lucas died at Beaumont Buildings on 3 May 1886 at the age of 68 and was buried in St Sepulchre’s Cemetery on 10 May (burial recorded in the parish register of St Giles’s Church).

The 1891 census shows Thomas (a widower of 76 and retired) still living at 20 Beaumont Buildings with his daughter Mary (40), Mary’s husband James Howse (30) and their three young children (see 2 below). Also living in the house was Mary Edith Pottage (18), a dressmaker born in Bramham, Yorkshire: she is described as Thomas’s niece, but she was in fact his great-niece, the daughter of his niece Mrs Mary Eleanor Pottage (see 3 below).

Thomas Lucas died in 1897:

† Thomas Lucas died at 20 Beaumont Buildings on 6 June 1897 at the age of 82 [probably 80] and was buried at St Sepulchre’s Cemetery on 10 June (burial recorded in the parish register of St Giles’s Church).

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(2) Mary Eleanor Lucas and her husband James Arthur Howse

On 17 August 1886 at St Giles’s Church, Thomas and Emily Lucas’s daughter Mary Eleanor Lucas (35) married James Arthur Howse (25), a tailor of Cowley Road. They went to live with Mary’s widower father at 20 Beaumont Buildings and had the following children:

• Joyce Emily Howse (born at 20 Beaumont Buildings and privately baptised on 12 June 1887; received into St Giles’s Church on 2 October; died aged 3, and buried on 30 April 1891)
• Reginald Thomas Lucas Howse (born at 20 Beaumont Buildings and baptised at St Giles’s Church on 25 September 1888)
• Elsie Mary Howse (born at 20 Beaumont Buildings and baptised at St Giles’s Church on 25 August 1890).

The Howse family remained at 20 Beaumont Buildings after the death of Emily’s father, and they can be seen there at the time of the 1901 census with their son Reginald (12) and daughter Elsie (10); they also had four people boarding with them. They were still there in 1911, and Reginald was now a clerk and Elsie a dressmaker.

James Howse died in 1918:

† James Arthur Howse died at 20 Beaumont Buildings on 17 December 1918 at the age of 58 and was buried at St Sepulchre’s Cemetery with his parents-in-law on 21 December (burial recorded in the parish register of St Giles’s Church).

Mrs Howse was still living at 20 Beaumont Buildings, the house where she was born, when she died in 1931, and was buried with her husband, parents, and cousin:

† Mrs Mary Eleanor Howse, née Lucas died at 20 Beaumont Buildings in January 1931 at the age of 80 and was buried at St Sepulchre's Cemetery on 10 January (burial recorded in the parish register of St Giles’s Church).

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(3) Mrs Mary Eleanor Pottage

The niece of Thomas Lucas who was buried with him and his wife in St Sepulchre’s Cemetery was the daughter of his brother William, landlord of the Queen’s Arms in Park End Street, and his wife Mary. Born in Oxford near the end of 1846, she was confusingly given exactly the same name as Thomas’s own daughter, Mary Eleanor Lucas.

Her marriage was announced thus in Jackson’s Oxford Journal on 15 February 1868:

Feb. 11, at Saint Paul’s Church, Deptford, by the Rev. Rupert Turner, Mr. T. Pottage, of Bramham, Yorkshire, to Mary Eleanor, second daughter of the late Mr. William Lucas, of the New-road, in this city.

Thomas Pottage was a tailor, and his two brothers who had both settled in Oxford were also tailors, and are both buried in St Sepulchre’s Cemetery: Ephraim Pottage and Samuel Pottage.

Thomas and Mary Eleanor Pottage had the following children:

• Frederick Tom Pottage (born in Bramham, Yorkshire in 1868/9)
• Amelia Annie Pottage (born in Bramham, Yorkshire in 1870)
• Mary Edith Lucas Pottage (born in Bramham, Yorkshire in 1872)
• Charles Arthur J. Pottage (born in Bramham, Yorkshire in 1874).

At the time of the 1871 census Thomas Pottage (32), a tailor, and Mary Eleanor (24) were living at Church Lane, Bramham with their children Frederick Tom (2) and Amelia Annie (seven months), two other tailors, two apprentice tailors, and a 15-year-old servant girl.

Thomas Pottage died at the age of 36 in 1875 (death reg. Wetherby district, which included Bramham, in the second quarter).

In 1881 Mrs Mary Eleanor Pottage, a widow of 34, was a lodging-house keeper at 41 Grand Parade, Brighton. With her were Amelia (10), Mary Edith (8), and Charles (6), her widowed mother Mary, her sister Anne Lucas, and her nephew Arthur Lucas (8). Her eldest son Frederick Tom Pottage (12) was in the London Orphan Asylum, Watford.

In 1891 Mrs Pottage’s son Frederick Tom Pottage (22) was boarding in Hackney and working as a draper’s traveller; Mary Edith Pottage (1872) was staying with her great-uncle Thomas Lucas in Oxford; and Charles Arthur J. Pottage (16) was a draper’s assistant living over a large shop at 18 Eltham Road, Lee, Lewisham.

Mrs Pottage died in 1897, just a month after her uncle, and was buried with him and his family:

† Mrs Mary Eleanor Pottage née Lucas died at the Acland Home, Wellington Square, Oxford on 17 July 1897 at the age of 51 and was buried at St Sepulchre’s Cemetery on 19 July (burial recorded in the parish register of St Giles’s Church).