I joined today (22/7/2011) and am a great great grandson of Stephen Nathaniel Langham, Champion of the Middle Weights. After he retired from boxing and became a licenced victualler, he married Elizabeth Watson on 10 Dec 1853 at St Martin in the Fields, Westminster (one of the witnesses was Ben Caunt, heavyweight champion boxer & Elizabeth's uncle). Elizabeth never appeared in any census records as Nat's wife because she died from peritonitus on 3 Oct 1860 at their home at Cambrian Stores, 12 Castle Street (now Charing Cross Road), Westminster. Cambrian Stores was a "fighting house" as evidenced by Nat's letters in The Times e.g. on 9/5/1860 (see The Times Digital Archives).
Nat and Elizabeth had two sons (both died during childhood, as evidenced by the first grant of Letters of Administration re Nat's estate in 1872) and two daughters, Alice (my great grandmother, who had eight children) and Elizabeth (she had one child with an unnamed father and the child died at age 1; she married a widower when she was 30 but had no children with him).
Nat's marriage certificate showed his father as Nathaniel Langham, framework knitter, but his father was really unknown - Nat's mother, Mary Langham was unmarried, although she had four children, including Ann Langham (1812-1897); Ann had her first two children with no known father(s), her next two with widower Joseph Looms and finally two more with Thomas Coley.
