Miss Eleanor SOTHAM (1800–1871)
St Giles section: Row 23, Grave F27½
SACRED
TO THE MEMORY OF
ELEANOR SOTHAM
WHO DIED NOVEMBER 27, 1871
AGED 71 YEARS
Eleanor Sotham was born at Wootton, near Woodstock, Oxfordshire in 1800 and baptised there on 10 December. She was the daughter of Thomas Sotham and Elizabeth Parker, who were married at Wootton on 2 March 1791. Her twelve siblings were also baptised there: Elizabeth Charlotte (1792), Thomas (1793), Matilda (1795), John (1797), Emma (1799), William Henry (1803), Nathaniel (1804), Mary (1806), Frederick (1808), twins Katherine and Martha (1810), and Maria (1814).
By the time of the 1851 census, Eleanor’s parents Thomas (83) and Elizabeth (81) had moved to Souldern near Bicester, and were looked after by her sister Elizabeth (55). Their father died aged 90 and was buried at Souldern in 1857, and their mother died the following year aged 88 and was buried with him on 28 May.
Eleanor went into service, but is hard to find in the 1841 and 1851 censuses. In 1861 when she was aged 60 she was housekeeper to the Coventry family at Coventry House, Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire.
It is uncertain where she lived at the time of the 1871 census as she and her unmarried sister Elizabeth, who were both described as annuitants, were paying a visit that night to Hammersmith, to the home of the widow Mrs Elizabeth Stewart (79).
Eleanor died later that year in Oxford at a grand house, and may have just been visiting a former employer:
† Miss Eleanor Sotham died at Bevington Road at the age of 71 on 27 November 1871 and was buried at St Sepulchre’s Cemetery on 1 December (burial recorded in the parish register of St Giles’s Church).
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