Hello,
Is anyone aware whether there are any online records concerning the Marylebone Workhouse particularly covering the year 1881? I ask because I am trying to locate what happened to a then 19-year-old girl, who, in 1881, had been a servant in a 'Lodging House' at nearby 43 Manchester Street. She had been entered on the Census under the name of Lizzie CODLING. That may well have been the name by which she was known, but her actual 'Given' name was Elizabeth.
I am making this enquiry on behalf of a friend, whose family had been focussed around the Marylebone area, certainly since the early 1800’s. In particular, they were inquisitive about the origins of my friend’s Great Grandfather, who had become somewhat of a mystery. It would now appear he was born in the Marylebone Workhouse, on the 2nd November 1881. Louis BENOIT, the Head of House at 43 Manchester Street, had been born in France in 1822, and at 59-years-old was some 40 years older than his servant Lizzie CODLING. It was he who appears to have fathered Lizzie's illegitimate son. I do not know when the 59-year-old Louis BENOIT came to England.
I also have seen on an old map that the Marylebone Workhouse, where Lizzie Codling’s illegitimate son ‘Louis’ was born, was quite close to Manchester Street so she would not have had far to go when she presumably was ‘asked’ to leave the Benoit household.
It is apparent that she had transitioned across to 15 Victoria Place when she registered the birth on the 11th November 1881, but then she disappears, presently I can’t find her anywhere. Victoria Place no longer exists, but I understand that "Victoria Place was renamed as a new part of Fisherton Street in 1914 (the N.W. leg) and was extended during redevelopment to join what is now Lyons Place".
If there are any online records for the Marylebone Workhouse, I am hoping that they may be able to tell me when Lizzie [Elizabeth] CODLING was admitted there, as well as when she left. I don't for a moment expect them to record where she went. The 1881 Census states that she had been born in Suffolk.
Yours hopefully,
Alan