John Henry SILLMAN (1924–1932)
St Mary Magdalen section: Row 51, Grave N54
IN
Treasured Memory of
JOHN HENRY,
DEARLY LOVED ELDEST SON OF
NORMAN & MILDRED SILLMAN
WHO FELL ASLEEP MAY 1ST 1932,
AGED 8 YEARS
“OH DEAR BRAVE HEART,
GOD BLESS THEE.”
.
John Henry Sillman was born in Sunningwell Road in south Oxford early in 1924 baptised at St Mary Magdalen Church on 3 February. He was the eldest son of Norman Sillman and Mildred Fleetwood.
John’s father
Norman Sillman was born in Oxford 17 April 1898, the son of the milkman Henry Sillman and his wife Annie. At the time of the 1901 census Norman (3) was living at 3 Gloucester Street, Red Lion Square with his parents and his older brother Percy (7). Norman was still there with his parents in 1911.
John’s mother
Mildred Fleetwood was born in Oxford in 1896/7, the daughter of the bricklayer’s labourer Charles Fleetwood and his wife Edith. At the time of the 1901 census Mildred (4) was living at 6 Wellington Street with her parents and her siblings Florence (5), Rose (2), and George (1). In 1911 the family was living at 15 Wellington Street, and Mildred (14) had left school and was helping with the housework while her mother Edith (35) went out to work as a charwoman. There were two more children: Charles (8) and Edith (6).
On 17 April 1923, Norman Sillman (24), an electrician of 6 Beaumont Buildings, married Mildred Fleetwood (26), a domestic servant of 19 Hayfield Road. They had three sons:
- John Henry Sillman (born in Sunningwell Road early in 1924 and baptised at St Mary Magdalen Church on 3 February)
- Michael C. Sillman TWIN (born in Oxford in 1929, reg. second quarter)
- Peter P. Sillman TWIN (born in Oxford in 1929, reg. second quarter).
Norman and Mildred Sillman evidently began their married life in Sunningwell Road, south Oxford, and the precise address is given as 20 Sunningwell Road in Kelly’s Directory for 1928.
Their eldest son John died in 1932:
† John Henry Sillman died at the Radcliffe Infirmary at the age of eight on 1 May 1932 and was buried at St Sepulchre’s Cemetery on 5 May (burial recorded in the parish register of St Mary Magdalen Church).
His parents did not live in St Mary Magdalen parish, but the fact that John was baptised there indicates that the family probably worshipped at its church. This suggests that the nineteenth-century rule that only people who lived in a parish could be buried in the relevant section of the cemetery was probably more relaxed.
John’s father Norman Sillman was listed at 155 Magdalen Road in east Oxford in 1935, and was still there in 1976. He died in Abingdon in 1985. John's identical twin brothers outlived him by over eighty years: Michael died in 2015 and Peter in 2018. They each had three children.
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