Catherine Mabel CRUSO (1840-1921)

Catherine Cruso lived in Chipping Norton close to the Rawlinson family and attended several social events there where Julius Sladden was also present.

Catherine Mabel Cruso (1840-1921) was born at Hook Norton, Oxfordshire, in 1840, the elder of two children of Edmund Cruso, a surgeon, and his wife, Louisa (née Parry).  Her father was the resident surgeon at Hook Norton Lunatic Asylum.  Catherine was just two years old and her younger brother, Henry Edmund Tilsley, only a few months old, when their father died in 1843.  In 1851 Catherine was staying with her aunt, Mabel Tilsley (her mother’s sister), who lived with her husband, Henry, at Rock Hill House, Chipping Norton.  Henry was proprietor of the asylum where her father had worked.

By 1861, Catherine was living at 1 Old Town Stratford-upon-Avon with her widowed mother and brother.  Her aunt, Mabel Tilsley, who was also by now widowed, was also staying there.

In 1868, Catherine’s mother died and by 1871 (incorrectly listed on the census as Kate Isabel) she was back with her Aunt Mabel at Rock Hill, Chipping Norton, which was not far from the home of Abram Creswicke Rawlinson, a solicitor, and his family.  Catherine remained in Chipping Norton until the death of her aunt in July 1882.  Catherine would have met Julius Sladden on a number of occasions before he moved to Badsey in early 1879.

In 1891, Catherine, who never married, was visiting the Huxley family in Canterbury, Kent, and by 1901 she was “living on her own means” with one servant in Canterbury.  She died at St Stephen’s Lodge, St Stephen’s Road, Canterbury, Kent, on 28th August 1921.