Joseph Sidney Lescher – obit 1893

The Tablet,Page 29, 15th July 1893

We regret to record the death of MR. JOSEPH SIDNEY LESCHER, at the ripe age of 90 years, by which a link is broken with a long Catholic past. Born in 1803, Mr. Lescher was, about the year 1810, for a short time at a school at Carshalton, in Surrey, under the Dominican Fathers, and was afterwards amongst the first, if not the first, of the students at Ushaw College. In after life Mr. Lescher took an active part in City affairs, until about twenty years ago he retired from active life in order to devote himself more largely to those works of charity and beneficence which had always occupied his leisure. It has been said of him that he was never known to refuse an appeal calling for the exercise of genuine charity. The extent of his means was the extent of his charity—a charity that went hand-in-hand with an earnest faith and with extreme simplicity of heart and character. He was happy in having given to the Church a son, Father Wilfrid Lescher, of the Dominican Order, and an only daughter, Sister Mary of St. Wilfrid, of the Order of Notre Dame, now the Superioress of the Everton Valley Convent, Liverpool. Two of Mr. Lescher’s nieces had joined the same Order, the elder one, Miss Frances Lescher (better known as Sister Mary of St. Philip) being the Foundress and present Superioress and presiding genius of the Mount Pleasant Training College at Liverpool. Another of his nieces, Miss Monica Lescher, is present Lady Abbess of East Bergholt, where her sister holds the office of Mother Prioress, and there are others of the family at Atherstone, and at the Convent at Taunton—all following the family tradition of service in the cause of Catholicity in England.

The funeral took place at Kensal Green Cemetery on Monday last, after a Solemn Requiem Mass, sung by the Dominican Fathers in their church at Haverstock Hill, whither the body had been taken over night. The Very Rev. Father John Procter, Prior, sang the Mass, and there were present in the church and at the funeral, amongst others. Mr. F. Harwood Lescher, Mr. Herman Lescher, and the Rev. Wilfrid. Lescher, 0.P., sons of the deceased ; the Rev. Edward Lescher, Mr. Lescher, of Boyles Court, Mrs. F. Harwood Lescher, Mrs. Herman. Lescher, Mrs. Patrick Grehan, and Miss Clare Grehan, &c., &c.

Herman Lescher – Obituary 1897

The Tablet Page 35, 27th March 1897

THE FUNERAL OF MR. HERMAN LESCHER.—A Requiem Mass was said at St. Mary’s, Cadogan-street, on Monday morning, for the repose of the soul of Mr. Herman Lescher. After the Mass, the last blessings were given by the Bishop of Emmaus. The crowded state of the church and the mass of wreaths and crosses of flowers were ample testimony to the general esteem and affection in which the deceased had been held by troops of friends. After the service the body was taken to Paddington and thence to the Dominican Priory at Woodcheater, near Stroud, where it was laid to rest just outside the sanctuary window. Among those who accompanied the coffin to Woodchester were : Mrs. Herman Lescher and Master Robert Lescher, Mr. J. F. Lescher, of Boyles Court ; Mr. and Mrs. Harwood Lescher, Mr. T. Edward Lescher, Miss Carmela Lescher, Father Wilfrid Lescher, 0.P., Mr. and Mrs. Cyril Wilson, Mr. G. Wheeler, Mr. H. Wheeler, Father M. Gavin, S.J., Father Davies, Mr. and Mrs. James O’R. Nugent, Mr. Stephens, and Mr. T. W. Hill.

Mr. Herman Lescher, the third son of the late Mr. J. Sidney Lescher was born at Hampstead in 1849. Educated at Ushaw and Downside, he afterwards studied farming with Mr. Dale, agent to Mr. Berkeley, of Spetchley. He then took a farm at Henley-on-Thames, where he remained for about three years. Subsequently, he came to London, and qualified as a chartered accountant, and in a few years attained a high position in the financial and commercial world. In 1887 he married Mary Agnes, second daughter of the late Mr. Robert Wilson, and leaves two children.

Rev. Wilfrid Lescher – Obituary 1917

Page 28, 13th January 1917

THE REV WILFRID LESCHER, 0.P.

We regret to announce the death, on December 31, at 10.30 a.m. at St. Peter’s Priory, Hinckley, of the Rev. Wilfrid Lescher, 0.P., P.G., aged sixty-nine. He was buried at Mount St. Bernards, Charnwood Forest, on January 5, the Requiem being celebrated at Hinckley by Very Rev. Father Bede Jarrett, 0.P., while Father Laurence Shapcote, Father Vincent McNaliob, Father Lewis Thomion, Father Michael Browne, 0.P., were present in the choir. The chief mourner was his nephew, Mr. Edward Lescher. Father Wilfrid had been a well-known figure in English Catholic. life for many years. He came of the old Lescher family, of Boyles Court, Brentwood, a younger son of Joseph Sidney Lescher and Sarah Harwood, but was born at 17, Church Row, Hampstead on October 2, 1847. His school days were spent at the famous Catholic Academy of Mr. James Butt, at Prior Park and at Ushaw, whence he passed to join the Dominican Order at Woodchester, September 3, 1864. Ordained priest on March 8, 1873, he was stationed successively in various Dominican Priories, besides remaining for nearly seven years as chaplain to Mathew Liddell, Esq., of Prudhoe Hall. Later he obtained leave to study theology at Louvain, under Father Lepidi, 0.P., at present Master of the Sacred Palaces in Rome, and returned to England in 1884. In 1889 he was elected Prior of Woodchester, and in 1910 Prior of Pendleton. He also was for three years chaplain to the contemplative Dominican Nuns at Carisbrooke. But his main work consisted in preaching and writing. In the latter field he was a strenuous fighter, especially for the Anti-Vivisection Society (on the general committee of which he served for some years) and in Catholic controversial literature. But of late years he has been especially prominent in the discussed authenticity of St. Dominic’s founding of the Rosary. Following the Papal tradition he defended the conservative view in letters, pamphlets and articles, which exhibited his dogged loyalty of character and the warmth of feeling which lay behind an exceedingly impassive appearance and manner. After three months of general enfeeblement resulting from a slight paralytic shock, he died of suffusion of blood to the head on the last day of the year. Those who followed his intense devotion to the Rosary will notice with a sense of fitness that his last Mass was said on the octave day of Rosary Sunday. A staunch friend, a just and fatherly ruler, his going will be felt by a wider circle than his own Order.—R.I.P.

John Gray 1819 -1893

John and Emily Gray in 1889, with George, Jesse, and Kitty

John Gray 1819 -1893 is Grandpa’s father. So my great grandpa

Grandpa was born in 1890 when his father was 70.

Emily Foreman is John Gray’s second wife, and the mother of Grandpa, Auntie Kitty, & Uncles George and Jesse, and is therefore Great Grandma Gray.

John Gray was born in 1819, and the most detailed address in the 1861 census records him being born in Broad Street in the City.

He married Amelia Susannah Hopkins at Saint Andrew By The Wardrobe in the City on 6 May 1841. His father is also John Gray, and a tailor. Her father is George Hopkins, and a butcher. John is 22, and Amelia 21 when they marry.

His address is given at 5 Pilgrim Street in the City. It is just off Ludgate Hill.

Exactly a month later, on the 6th June 1841, John and Amelia are listed in the census as both aged 20, and living in a shared house in Merrow Street in Newington, Lambeth.

John and Amelia have four boys and a girl.

  • John William 1844, – not known
  • Edward Ludochowski, 1850 – not known
  • Nelson Charles,1853- 1936 in Poplar
  • Richard Emmerson, 1856 – 1927 in Wakefield
  • Jessie Emma Brickell 1860 – 1944 in Essex

So Grandpa’s half-brothers, and sister. All born between 1844 and 1860.

John Gray marries Emily Foreman on October 21st 1883 at St Philip’s Church Camberwell, when he is 63 and she is 25, and are both shown living at 746 Old Kent Road. George Laverton Foreman (Emily’s brother) is one of the witnesses not John Laverton Foreman, Emily’s father.

John Laverton Foreman also remarries in 1883 on February 11th as a 47 yo widower to Eliza Sparrow 39 at St Mary Magdalene, Southwark. Her parents are witnesses. His father’s profession is a wheelwright, and her father Elijah Sparrow is a gardener.  Both are living at 12 Darwin Street.

John dies between Oct and Dec 1885 aged 52 in Camberwell

John, Amelia, and the children live at 5 Francis Street Newington in 1851. Then at 1 Walworth Terrace, Newington, Lambeth in 1861, and finally at 75 Upper Grange Road Southwark in 1871.

Amelia dies in 1877, and was buried on 11th August 1877, aged 57. Her address is given as 75 Upper Grange Road, Old Kent Road. Buried in Norwood Cemetery, Norwood Road, Lambeth.

John continues to live at 75 Upper Grange Road, and is living there in 1881 with his daughter Jessie, her husband, and his 1 year old grandson Edwin.

By 1891 he is living at 186 Selsdon Road, Croydon next to the Pack Horse pub with Nelson Gray his 38 yr old widowed son, and his second family. Two years later he is dead.