Cockrem, Miss Mary

Cockrem, Miss Mary, 10 Strand, Torquay

Mary Caroline Cockrem[1] (1830 – 1908) was born on 11 March 1830 in Torquay, the daughter of Edward Cockrem and Mary Caroline, formerly Hayward. She was baptized on 9 April 1830. Edward C. Cockrem was a printer and bookseller. About the time of Mary’s birth he began printing a weekly news-sheet listing arrivals and residents in Torquay which he published from 10 Strand, where he also ran his bookselling business.[2] He published the Torquay and Tormohun Directory and was the agent for London publishers such as the SPCK.[3] Gradually he diversified and took on selling of music and a circulating library[4]

Mary’s mother died in 1842 and Cockrem married again a few years’ later. From the 1851 census it appears that his new wife ran a boarding school in Paignton, where he and some of the family were living. Mary, however, together with her sister Jane, are recorded as booksellers, living at 10 Strand. Although she records herself as the head of household on that occasion, ten years later, though Edward was lodging elsewhere in Torquay, the 1861 census entry for 10 Strand records her status as ‘daughter’. Sisters Sarah and Frances and brother George were also resident there and the women were all described as ‘stationers’.

It appears that Edward remained the owner of the bookseller and stationer business in central Torquay. A note in the Torquay Times in 1906, on ‘Torquay Fifty Years Ago’, recalled that ‘Cockrem’s Book Society and Circulating Library, No 10 Strand was then a busy centre of gossip and intercourse’.[5]

In 1866 Mary Cockrem was the only Devon woman to sign the national Women’s Suffrage Petition to Parliament, presented to the House of Commons by John Stuart Mill, MP on 17 July 1866.[6]

Mary and her sister Jane were again listed as booksellers in the 1871 census, together with a nephew, William Barrett, aged 19, described as ‘assistant bookseller’. Edward Cockrem died on 4 September 1872 in Torquay leaving effects valued at ‘under £9000’. After his death the family maintained the printing and book business for a while, listing it as ‘Cockrem and Co’,[7] but by 1878 Arthur Westley had taken it over.[8]

Mary seems to have developed a peripatetic life once she had independent means. She is recorded as an ‘arrival’ on several occasions at 1 & 2 Montpellier Terrace and Montpellier House in the 1870s[9] and was living at 18 Upton Church Street in 1891. She died at Weston-Super-Mare on 7 September 1908, referred to as resident in Walney House, Hereford, and is buried in Torquay Cemetery. She left £495.

 

 

Entry created by Marilyn Smee and Julia Neville, January 2019


[1] Census and family information from www.ancestry.co.uk

[2] Information in footnote 3 has been amplified on this point by discussions in the Torquay Times (TT) reflecting on the first printing business in Torbay, see TT,  24 Mar 1905; 12 Jul 1907.

[3] Ian Maxted, Biographical Dictionary, Cockrem Edward C. Available at: https://etched-on-devons-memory.blogspot.com/2017/03/biographical-dictionary.html Accessed 17 Oct 2018.

[4] Alexander, James, Cider, College, Courtship, Council: A Life of Edward Frederick Bulmer, 312. (Bulmer was the son of one of Mary’s sisters.) Available on-line at https://www.academia.edu/32906088/Cider_College_Courtship_Council_A_Life_of_Edward_Frederick_Bulmer_1865-1941_An_Exercise_in_Book-Length_Autobiography_2009_?auto=download  Accessed 17 Oct 2018

[5] TT,  11 May 1906.

[6] The schedule of names is available at: https://www.parliament.uk/documents/parliamentary-archives/1866SuffragePetitionNamesWebFeb18.pdf  Accessed 4 Jan 2019. Many references to the petition refer to three other Devon women, from Honiton, as having signed. It has now, however, been established that they were from Homerton rather than Honiton, leaving Mary as the only signatory from Devon.

[7] TT, 18 Jul 1874.

[8]Ian Maxted, Exeter Working Papers on Book History, ‘Biographical and Bibliographical Information’, available at https://bookhistory.blogspot.com/2014/07/devon-book-trades-torquay.html . Accessed 3 Jan 2019.

[9] The first reference seems to be TT, 14 Sep 1874, at 1 Montpellier Terrace.

 

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