Sarah COLEMAN (née POCOCK) (c1834-1916)

Sarah Coleman, née Pocock (c1834-1916), referred to by the family as “Aunt Sarah”, was the aunt by marriage of Julius Sladden.

Sarah Pocock was born about 1834 in Bristol, the second of four children of George Pocock, a schoolmaster, and his wife, Mary (née Rees).  Sarah was the cousin of the cricketer, W G Grace (Sarah’s father, George Pocock, and W G’s mother, Martha Pocock, were siblings).

On 4th August 1860 at Upper Holloway St John, Islington, Sarah married John Noakes Coleman, a brewer from Ash in Kent.  Eleven years earlier, Sarah’s cousin, Marian Rees, had married John Coleman’s older brother, George, so Sarah and Marian also became sisters-in-law.  It may have been under his uncle, John Noakes Coleman, that Julius Sladden trained as a brewer.

Sarah and John had four children:  Elizabeth, Mary Leanna, Thomas and Dora M.  At the time of the 1861 and 1871 census they lived at Brewery House, Great Mongeham, Kent.  In the 1880s and 1890s they lived at Kent House, Upper Deal Road and in 1901 they lived at Packington House Victoria Park, Bristol.

John Coleman died in Bristol in 1907 and Sarah died at 50 Zetland Road, Bristol, on 15th March 1916, aged 82.  Sarah’s passing, which was described as a great mercy, was mentioned in several letters written in March 1916.  “I am afraid she has been a sufferer for some long time and it is well she should have gone to her rest,” said her nephew, Julius, “her life must have been a rugged one but she was amicable and one of the uncomplaining sort.”