Phoebe Fisk was a member of the large and complicated Norfolk family of Fisks, Savages, and Crickmores who intermarried throughout several generations.
In 1841 Phoebe’s husband Richard was an agricultural labourer, like most people in Norfolk at that time, but in the 1851 census he was also the parish clerk in Stockton.
Phoebe bore nine, or possibly ten, children. Most seem to have survived infancy, but tragedy followed them in later life.
Phoebe lost her son Charles at the age of 19 in 1830. As far as we know, Phoebe’s other children survived her, but during her life she buried three daughters-in-law and three grandchildren. Her sons George and Benjamin suffered dreadful losses.
George’s first wife Mary died in 1849. In the 1851 census George and five of their children were living with Phoebe and Richard. His oldest daughter Mary, aged 10, wasn’t with them on census night but we shouldn’t make any assumptions from this.
We do know that George lost his three youngest children within the next six years. His sons Benjamin and Charles both died in childhood of hydrocephalus and his daughter Mary Ann had a fatal accident at the age of fourteen when she fell down a well and drowned.
Phoebe’s youngest son Benjamin lost both his first wife Frances and his second wife Elizabeth to consumption (phthysis), or tuberculosis, a common respiratory disease in the nineteenth century. Frances was buried on the same day as her nephew Benjamin in 1852. That year must have been an “annus horribilis” for the Savage family.
Mother of Eliza, daughter of Henry and Mary Fisk
Baptised Phebe Fisk on 4 November 1781 in Stockton, Norfolk
Married Richard Savage IV on 3 November 1806
Buried 20 March 1862