Publications
Finding the Father, by Dr Rosemary Arthur, published September 2015 in Sussex Family Historian (vol. 21 no. 7, article, pp.325-328) accessible at: W.S.R.O. [Lib 15860] & The Keep [LIB/508953]
Preview:In my grandfather's death I inherited his old leather-bound Victorian photograph album, containing some fascinating photos of his forebears from East Sussex. One of them particularly intrigued me; it showed a lovely young woman. On the back was written, in ink, "Ellen Maria BAKER, age 25" and, in another hand, "This was done at Bonning & Small." - rather a posh photographer for my family to afford, I thought. She was my Gt-grandmother's sister. Ellen Maria BAKER was baptised at St Clements, Hastings, on 26th February 1841, the seventh child of Charles BAKER, house painter, and his wife Maria (nee COFFRETT). At the 1861 census, aged 20, she was working as a barmaid at the Castle Hotel, Hastings. This may have been her downfall, as I suspect that it was there that she met the man who was to become the father of her three illegitimate children.