Melksham Times Past

A column about days gone by in Melksham by local historian Lisa Ellis

The struggles of Sarah Colbourne Lundgren

This continues the narrative from the last issue, which focused on Carl Peter Lundgren, who’d committed perjury at the famous Tichborne trial. We next follow on with Lundgren’s wife and what happened next.

Sarah Colbourne came from a hard-working family; the men in the family followed the same profession for several generations: plasterer, tiler, decorator, etc. Even though she left school before the age of 16 to earn money as a dressmaker, she did read and write and was educated. The family lived in Coburg Square, which was later demolished to make way for the King Street car park. It wasn’t the worst part of town, but it wasn’t the best either.

As revealed in court testimony at the Tichborne trial in 1874, Sarah had an illegitimate child.

Although not identified during the trial, I believe the baby was named Walter, born in the second half of 1849. Sarah would have been 15 years old. Walter’s birth was registered to Anne (Carpenter) Colbourne, Sarah’s mother. It was also Anne and William (Sarah’s father) who baptised Walter on 18th September 1849. Anne would have been 46 years old – theoretically possible to have a child, but not necessarily advisable. Walter was a process of elimination as other illegitimate births in the Melksham area around that time were ruled out.

Sarah went to Cardiff around 1854 to live with her brother William, a widower. Their sister Elizabeth was living in the boarding house of Eliza Golledge, also in Cardiff. Some friends of Sarah kept the Scandinavian Hotel, and it was there she met Carl Peter Lundgren. William objected to their dating and he turned Sarah out of his home. Sarah then went to live with her sister Emma, who was working as a barmaid.

On 2nd April 1855, Sarah Colbourne married Peter Carl Lundgren. Her sister Emma was a witness.

It was only nine months later that Sarah might have seen the beginning of trouble with her husband.

She was aware of his past, that he’d been convicted of forgery of a bill of sale, but he was found not guilty of the crime on 18th December 1855.

By the 1861 census, Lundgren had fathered three children with Sarah; one had died in infancy. The following year, another child was born. Lundgren got into legal trouble again, and this is when everything fell apart.

Lundgren was sent to prison in 1862 for three years. After his release, Sarah lived with him for five weeks. He then announced he was leaving her and she bade him farewell at Reading, intending to return to her father’s home in Melksham.

However, Sarah and two of her children, Martha and Charles, were sent to the workhouse in Bristol.

Their oldest daughter, Emily, went to live with Sarah’s sister Emma at the Woolwich Dockyard. Ann, her spinster sister living in Melksham, wrote to ask Sarah to “forget all that’s happened in the past” and would she come to Melksham; she could also help support the children. Sarah agreed, but while preparations were taking place, Sarah threw herself off the stairway at the workhouse, falling 30 feet, in an attempt to commit suicide. The doctors were not hopeful for a full recovery and damage to her head and brain, was extensive.

Ann struggled to support Sarah’s children, and it was too much of a financial burden for a single woman. It became obvious that Sarah was not going to contribute to her sister for the maintenance of her children; both Charles and Martha were taken to the Semington Workhouse.

Six years later Sarah is next found living in Bristol with a man 13 years older named James Hawkins.

She’s using his surname and they presented themselves as husband and wife; he a tailor and she a tailoress. Lundgren had also moved on and he married Harriet Arrend in 1867.

After their separation, Sarah hadn’t heard from Lundgren again until she saw him during the trial in 1873 for his perjury during the Tichborne Case. The first Sarah knew of his latest troubles was when she was approached by three detectives and shown his photograph in December 1873.

Readers, I leave it here for now, but maybe someday I’ll find out what happened to Sarah’s three children and why Sarah ended up, and dying in, a workhouse in Woolwich. I hope this has encouraged you to look into your family tree, searching beyond the birth/marriage/death statistics — learning not just the what’s, but also the whys.

Pictured: Coburg Square, sandwiched between King Street, Market Place and Spa Road.