Lucy Iles is born in 1837 in Thornbury, north of Bristol, and directly west of London. She is one of seven children born to Daniel Iles (ropemaker) and Mary Dawes. You can see the entry for your three year old great great great great grandmother Lucy in the 1841 Census below.
Note she has mostly sisters but an older brother named Daniel.
All the Iles children are Baptised into the Church of England together on January 12, 1851. Lucy would have been 12 years old.
Was it common for an entire family to all be Baptised on the same day? If not , why would this have been the case for the Iles family?
And, a few months later that year we find 13 year old Lucy working as a domestic servant in the heart of London.
Yes, Lucy Iles of Thornbury is working as a servant for the Pearson’s of Halifax Yorkshire on Priest Court , St Leonard, Foster Lane, literally in the shadows of St Paul’s Cathedral. Next time you visit St. Paul’s, sneak out the back door and go visit Priest’s Court.
Yes, Lucy is only 13 years old! Her older sister Martha is also working as a servant, but back in the Thornbury area. Yes, all of Lucy’s siblings, except for her older brother Daniel, are still living with Mom and Dad back in Thornbury. So, how is it that little 13 year old Lucy ends up as a domestic servant in the big city of London? Was their some kind of family connection that brought her there? My guess is she followed her older brother Daniel to London. Daniel, was married in St John the Baptist, Hoxton in 1854 just as Lucy would be 6 years later. But who knows for sure, it could have been the other way around for all we know. Maybe older brother Daniel followed his young independent adventurous sister!
We will probably never know the exact circumstances that brought Lucy to London. We however are fortunate that this brave little girl made her way from Thornbury to the big city. For somehow, in the late 1850s in London England, Lucy meets an Italian cabinet maker by the name of Cristoforo Setacci. Or, should I say , Cristoforo somehow meets Lucy Iles. Maybe, as the song goes, “he followed her down to a bridge by a fountain where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies, somebody called him ,he answered quite slowly. The girl with the name Lucy Iles ” ? And there the Setacci to Stacey story began. And the rest, as they say, is your family history.