Thinking about the past couple of years living with the Covid situation and how we remember those we have lost during this time, led me to think about death in the Georgian period and I thought I would take a look at items used at that time as keepsakes and tokens of love. This of course led me to mourning rings, objects which are rarely purchased today. I found myself on the British Museum website looking at some of the mourning rings and have tried to find out a little more about some of them, not necessarily who owned them, rather, whose death had instigated the creation and purchase of them.
Of course we have no idea which brother this particular ring belonged to. The ring is a gold hoop with a floral design and an enamelled skull engraved on outside; floral design, enamelled, covering whole hoop.
The next ring was to commemorate the life of Judith Sheldrake. Judith died on 26 October at the age of The British Museum queried whether she was from Hadleigh, Essex, but with a little research it would seem that she was actually from Hadleigh, near Ipswich and was buried at the parish church of Little Wenham, near Ipswich on 1 November The couple had married at Hadleigh in , so relatively speaking their marriage was quite short, but during that time they had at least 5 children, Robert, Thomas, Isaac Everett, Jeremiah and finally, a daughter, also named Judith, who was born in , so she was just under two years old when her mother died.
All the children was baptised in the non-conformist church. Robert remained in Hadleigh until his death in and there is no record of him having married again, so perhaps the mourning ring was his, as a constant remainder of his beloved Judith. We know little of his life, but we do know that he was a merchant and that he left a brief will in which he named his dearly beloved wife, Jane and his brother, William.
Our next ring was in memory of Barbara Davenport who died 4 November aged 57, according to the ring. Although the ring names her as Mrs Barbara Davenport, this would have been a courtesy title, as she was a spinster.
