Heene cemetery records show tea traders, tea brokers and tea merchants, plantation growers and managers, clerks to tea traders and commercial travellers who dealt in tea. There are grocers who became involved with selling tea and the sons of vicars who became tea traders such as Denys Ranson, the son of Simon Ranson, a London curate who became the vicar of Pishill in Oxfordshire before moving to Worthing. Both are buried at Heene.
Tea, Camellia sinensis var. sinensis and Camellia sinensis var. assamica (the Indian variety) in all its variations and range of quality, from Orange Pekoe (w
hole leaves) to fannings or dust, and its origins in the British Empire, made livelihoods and careers for many people in this country, Worthing included. Some were directly involved managing estates in situ as Joseph Feltwell, 1851-1925, who was a tea planter and managed a tea estate in Darjeeling and only came to Worthing after retirement, others were involved with buying and selling or even the testing of the product here at home.
John Osborne Roche, born in 1853, living at Fernlea on Belsize Road is listed as working as a ‘market man and tea trader,’ while Harriett Goudge, 1828 -1910, of independent means, has one Edward Sullivan, described as a ‘tea-taster’ boarding at her house. She lived on Rowlands Road and later on Cowper Road.
Samuel Cheshire, 1835 -1916, trained as a tea dealer and eventually graduated to a broker. A broker sold to dealers and acted as an intermediary for growers and producers. In 1909, Samuel came with his wife Ada and daughter Alice to live at Pendyke on Belsize Road in Worthing.
Grocers were particularly suited to adding tea to their stock but there are others from quite different professions who took up the trade.
Thomas Lowden of Rowlands Road, is known to have worked variously as an accountant, public audit
or, debt collector, share broker, tea dealer, grocer and engineer while the father of Mary Backhaus of Wordsworth Road was both a draper and a tea trader.
More conventionally, Richard Dolding,1854-1901 started as a grocer’s assistant, then ran his own grocery shop before becoming a commercial traveller for a tea merchant. Merchants as opposed to traders or brokers were engaged in the blending and packaging of tea as well as the promotion and marketing of the product.
There are the wives, siblings and off-spring of those in the tea business buried in the cemetery. Eliza Moir, 1843 -1931, of St Matthews Road, Worthing marri
ed Samuel Gale, a commercial clerk who became the Secretary of a limited company of tea wholesalers and Harriet Pocock who married Hamilton Hancock, a tea broker. Mary Tilley, 1882-1920, a lady’s companion and teacher in Worthing was the daughter of Alfred Tilley, a grocer and tea dealer from Surrey while Charles Taylor, a barrister of Law, living at Old House, Heene Road was the son of a tea merchant from Lancashire and the brother of a tea salesman.
Philippa Matthews