No exact date of birth exists for Robert Burton Dolby, but it is recorded he was baptised between July- September 1853 at St. Giles-in-the-Fields, Camden (a church famed for the St. Giles Bowl- the last drink paid for by the churchwardens for the condemned on their way to Tyburn; the parish was notorious for its Rookeries.)
Giles-in-the-Fields, Camden
Robert Burton Dolby was the son of John Dolby, a tailor born in Ufford, Oxfordshire (baptised 10th May 1829, the son of a servant.) John died in the winter of 1877, aged 48. His mother was Fanny Elizabeth (nee Hobbs,) tailoress, of Lickey, Middlesex. Born in 1828 she was not baptised until 9th March 1836 at St. Andrews Church Holborn.
St Saviour's Church
St Saviour's Church
Fanny died in April 1888 and was buried at St Saviours Church (where her grandson Burton William had been baptised eleven years earlier.)
Bloombury Square
Robert's place of birth was given as Bloombury Square. Formerly known as Southampton Square it had been the home of Benjamin Disraeli and Edward Lutyens (who designed the Cenotaph and the Thiepval memorials.) Once a respectable area of middle-class London, by the time of Roberts' birth many of its fine Georgian houses had been demolished to make way for utilatarian Victorian ones, as the middle-classes migrated north, and the burgeoning working classes moved in. The area would later become an intellectual and literary hub becoming home to the clique of English writers, philosophers and intellectuals known as the Bloomsbury Group.
Walworth (1910)
The 1861 census shows the Dolby family living at 9 Theobold Street, Walworth. As well as his parents and two brothers, George (5) and Charlie (1), Robert shared the family home with his maternal grandfather Burton Hobbs, a carpenter and widower (and the reason for his middle name.) The house was also shared by another tailor and tailoress John and Elizabeth Kerman and their son Frederick.
By 1871 the family (minus grandfather Burton Hobbs) had moved to 7 Westmoreland Place, not far from the newly built Workhouse on an area of Walworth Common developed for the numerous and expensive poor. By this time the 17-year-old Robert was using his middle name Burton and working as a porter.
A glimpse of St John The Evangelist's Church, Brixton
On 25th June 1876 Robert married Georgiana Blackett in a service at St John The Evangelists Church, Brixton. He was now living at 42 Inville Road, Camberwell, having followed in his family's 'cloth merchant' footsteps and become a woollen draper.
In April 1877 their only child Burton William Dolby was baptised at St. Saviours Church, Southwark.
From 1893-1895 the couple, with child Burton William lived at 66 Royal Road, Southwark.
A view of Stoke Newington
In 1898 the family had moved to 39 Albert Street, Stoke Newington living in 4 rooms on the first and second floors of the property.
Some time before 1901 their son Burton William (also a woollen draper) had moved to Christchurch, Hampshire where he died between January- March 1899 aged 21.
By 1901 the couple had moved to 87 Grosvenor Park, Stoke Newington. Georgiana had become a draper's assistant.
By this time Stoke Newington was entering a period of social decline, with overcrowding and poor sanitation leading to squalor and disease. The area had a number of 'tenemented dwellings' and figures of 13.5% overcrowding and 18.5% poverty were recorded. Like Bloomsbury Square the affluent upper- and middle-classes had fled to the suburbs paving the way for an influx of 'the poorer class, transient young foreigners and Jews.'
A decade later in 1911 Robert and Georgiana had moved to 41 Buxton Road, Thornton Heath, West Croydon.
In 1923 the couple had moved a stones throw from where they had lived in 1871. They now resided at 161 Portland Street, Westmoreland Road, Southwark.
In 1929 Robert Burton Dolby was living at 3 Sedan Street, Thurlow, Southwark.
Before his death Robert was living at 44 Reigate Road, Worthing. He died on 8th March 1931 at Hopedene Nursing Home, Wordsworth Road. He left an Estate of £247 11s.