Florence lived for 58 years and spent at least 37 of those years – two-thirds of her life – in The Square. When she did move, it was to Old Whittington, about a mile away.
She never had an occupation outside the home, as was usual at the time and the only practical way to bring up large families. She had nine children, of whom eight had survived to the time of the 1911 census: the oldest survivor was born when Florence was 22 and the youngest when she was 45.
It is hard to envisage what kind of a life women like Florence had: 25 years of almost constant nappies (in the days when they all had to be washed); eight children ranging from a new-born to a twenty-two-year-old in a house with three bedrooms; three coal-miners in a house with no bathroom (and no pit-head baths in those days).
No wonder Florence was worn out and died in what we would consider middle age.
Mother of Joe and daughter of Robert and Esther Cameron
Born Florence Amelia Cameron in 1865 in Chesterfield, Derbyshire
Married William Johnson on 28 July 1885
Died June 1923