Little is known of my grandfather as he died just one month after I was born
and he in West Ham while I was in Rangoon. However I remember hearing family
stories of how he walked from the Braintree area of Essex to London to seek
employment and became apprenticed to a tailor.
It would appear from piecing together family gossip with information obtained
from census records that Walter both lived with and worked for Mr. William Bull
of West Ham and went on to set up his own business making suits and
made-to-measure sailors’ uniforms and owned his own
shop.
Walter had an older sister Charlotte
who lived in and around Braintree all her life and Walter’s eldest son Sidney
married Charlotte’s eldest daughter
Emily.
The family was very religious and, according to my mother Gladys, Walter always wore a top hat on
the way to church *. His wife Sarah was a Sunday school teacher.
Information provided by
Olive Knight.
* Census records from 1841 to 1861 show that many of the Barkers of Wimbish were given biblical names.
Malcolm Knight