TRIGGER WARNING: Graphic Descriptions of Mental Health Issues
Sarah Gardiner was born to a good family. She had 11 siblings. Sarah Gardiner was born on February 8, 1868, in Deptford, Kent, England, her father, Samuel Gardiner Jr., was 45, and her mother, Catharine (née Jones), was 34. Her father’s father owned Gardiner & Co, a store in London. Her mother’s father was a wealthy landowner in Wales. She had a good start in life.
After her father’s death in 1888, we find Sarah living with her mother, one of her brothers and her unmarried sisters at 3 Hillside Road in Lambeth on the 1891 Census. Her mother Catharine, a widow at age 57, is living on her own means. Sarah (23) is a kindergarten teacher. It is around this time that Sarah and/or her sisters open a “Hillside School” out of that address.





“The Patient is a medium sized fairly nourished woman with reddish gold hair, sharp features, high cheek bones and blue eyes.”It is said that she is “quite cognisant that she has been maniacal,” and “she is reticent about the cause of her attack but it can be elicited that she has been attached to a man that it has preyed on her mind.” The notes of Sarah’s stay suggest she was quite restless and sometimes hysterical, attempting on a few occasions to injure herself. Two months in:
“her…last manaical attack passed off she now sleeps in observation…she is very thin and has aged much since she came in…she varies between depression and escallation.”Sarah is discharged in January 1902, but next spends time at the Cane Hill Asylum as a private patient between February and August. She’s admitted again, this time to Brockwood Hospital in Woking on April 30, 1903. The notes during this period suggest she had a sharp decline.
“during interview tried frequently to get tho the wall and to strike her head against it” “has refused food for three weeks and has not spoken for the same time”The remarks seem to suggest that she was what would be called manic depressive today, with suicidal tendencies. Sadly, Sarah Gardiner’s death is recorded on August 28, 1903. The cause of death is recorded as exhaustion from melancholia. She is buried in the family plot at Nunhead Cemetery. Main image: Brockwood Asylum (image via Wikimedia)
More About My Gardiner Family
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Sarah Gardiner
Sarah Gardiner’s prospects were bright. Although she didn’t marry, she trained to be a schoolmistress. Sadly, her life was tragically interrupted after a bike ride in September 1902.
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Samuel Gardiner Jr. and Catharine Jones
Samuel Gardiner Jr. married Catharine Jones on December 20, 1854, in Llanfyllin, Montgomeryshire, Wales. They had 12 children in the next 15 years.
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Dorothea “Frances” Gardiner Bowen and William Guy “Red” Hill
Frances Dorothea Bowen married William Guy “Red” Hill on June 12, 1935 in Tonawanda, New York. She was dead less than three months later.
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Catharine Gardiner and Ralph Horatio Sherwood
Catharine married Ralph Horatio Sherwood on July 25, 1910 in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. Their story is marked by tragedy.
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Frederick Samuel Gardiner and Mary Anne Whelan (and Clayton Loucks)
After being widowed with two young boys, Mary Anne Whelan remarried quickly, on September 26, 1922, to Frederick Samuel Gardiner.
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Robert Martin Gardiner and Laura Eleanor Bovaird (and Nellie Werner)
Robert Martin Gardiner emigrated from England to Canada where he married Laura Eleanor Bovaird on May 18, 1892.
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Mystery Solved – Mary Ann Whelan died October 11, 1957
It took a long, slow troll of the Hamilton Spectator, but I was able to locate the full obituary for my great-grandmother, Mary Ann Whelan, in the October 12, 1957 edition of the Hamilton Spectator. (More on Mary Ann here.) It reads: Mrs. Frederick Gardiner, the former Mary Ann Whelan,
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When Did Mary Ann Whelan Die?
I found amongst my grandmother’s photo collection the obituary for her mother. I knew she died in 1957 (as I’ve got a record of the grave site), but wasn’t clear on the actual date.
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Leading Aircraftman Leonard Joseph Gray
Leading Aircraftman Leonard Joseph Gray was killed in a tragic, preventable accident that led to changes in the way night flying is conducted in the military.
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Hilda Mary Gardiner and Frederick George Bowen
On June 30, 1922, 34-year-old Hilda Mary Gardiner married 24-year-old Frederick Geroge Bowen in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.