William Lamb the butcher is a fine example of nominative determinism. Or makes you think about the card game Happy Families (Mr Bun the baker, etc). Or both.
His gravestone is one of those you can see, and easily read, at St Cuthbert’s Church in Carlisle. A delightful building, overshadowed somewhat by the nearby cathedral.
While his name rather jumps out at you from the headstone, he doesn’t seem to have left a great mark on history.
Who was William Lamb the butcher?
William Lamb the butcher died in 1808, aged 42, so he was born about 1768.
There’s quite a biography on the gravestone, including his parents, from which we can work out that:
William’s parents were William senior and Jane.
William Lamb senior died in 1814, aged 86, so he was born c1728.
Jane died in 1817, aged 79, so born about 1738.
That puts William Lambe at 32 and Jane (née Jane Irving) at 22 when they married, in St Cuthbert’s Church, on November 30, 1760.
Their children for sure were:
- William Lamb, born about 1768
- Elizabeth Lamb, baptised in 1770 at St Cuthbert’s Church
- Robert Lamb, baptised in June 1772 at St Cuthbert’s Church
- Ann Lamb, baptised in 1778, at St Cuthbert’s Church
William Lamb the butcher, born about 1768
William Lamb the butcher died before his parents, and with no wife named on the headstone, seems unlikely to have ever married.
Elizabeth Lamb, baptised in 1770
Elizabeth may have married a Thomas Baxter.
Robert Lamb, baptised in June 1772
Robert Lamb followed in his brother’s footsteps, as he also became a butcher.
He married Mary Nanson in July 1804 and had a daughter Jane soon after. The gravestone tells that grief struck the family just four years and nine months later, when little Jane died.
Robert and Mary then had a daughter Hannah, in 1809, followed by a son William in 1811, with both baptised in St Cuthbert’s Church.
Another son, James Scott Lamb, was born a few years later, and grief was soon to strike again.
1814, April 16, Carlisle Journal:
‘Deaths: On Tuesday, Mrs. Mary Lamb, wife of Mr. Robert Lamb, of English-street, butcher.’
The first thought is that her death related to the birth of James in some way. However, What we do know, from the gravestone (which has Mary on it) is that little James died in January 1817, aged three. That means he must have been born in January 1814 at the latest, so his mother’s death must have come at least three months after his birth.
Robert put a death notice for his little boy in the Carlisle Patriot.
A few months later, there was an advertisement in the local papers:
‘Convenient farm to let at Brisco, in the parish of St Cuthbert, about 3m from Carlisle, consisting of 5.5 acres of rich arable, meadow and holme land, well fenced and watered, now in the occupation of John Waugh.
‘Further details from Robert Lamb, butcher, Carlisle, who will show and let the farm.’
And in August 1817:
‘Fat Cattle Market List of subscribers to the Cumberland and Carlisle Society for General Improvements inc Robt Lamb. Meeting at the Coffee House, for dinner and to appoint a committee to draw up rules and regulations for the next anniversary cattle show.
Subscribers pledged 10s 6d each towards the premiums.’
The 1841 census has a Robert Lamb, 69, farmer, at Brisco. With Ann Lamb 74, Mary 30, and some agricultural labourers. Which has potential, given it is Brisco. A Robert Lamb married an Ann Johnston in Carlisle in July 1821
Ann Lamb the butcher, baptised in 1778,
Ann is on the headstone, having died in 1847 – unmarried. It seems she followed in the family trade, for the 1841 census for Carlisle includes:
King’s Arms Lane.
Ann Lamb, butcher, 60.
William Lamb, 30, farmer (whose age fits her brother Robert’s son)
and a female servant called Mary Tiffin.
And that’s it. An ordinary Cumbrian family who barely troubled history and whose lives we can barely guess at. But who left their mark nonetheless, on a slab of stone in a city centre.