This portrait of Daisy Fentiman is in the collection of glass plate negatives from
the Tom Carlyle Leaman photography studio curated at the Museum.
Daisy was born in June 1881, the daughter of Mary Jane Fentiman (born 1860); her father is unknown and Mary Jane is recorded in all census returns as single. In the 1880s and 1890s they lived with Mary Jane’s widowed mother Nancy Fentiman (born 1828) at 1 Russell Place, Lower Bristol Road. Mary Jane was a dress-maker and Nancy took in boarders – the 1891 census lists four (Agnes Hally, a young single woman with her five-year-old child Amy, and two middle-aged single men, John Williams and David Williams, presumably brothers).
Daisy’s work in the 1901 census was ‘Corset Fanner’. This highly skilled job involved closing by hand-sewing the open ends of cases of boned or steel corsets with a bar or ‘fan’ of silk stitching. We don’t know where she worked. There were several corset-making firms in Bath, such as C. Bayer & Co. in Lower Bristol Road who advertised in the Bath Chronicle 21 October 1909 for ‘respectable young women from 14 years of age and upwards to learn the Corset Stitching’. Bayers was a successful firm with a modern factory, and had introduced electric lighting.
The published records hint at family history beneath the surface. Although Nancy Fentiman and her late husband Anthony (an engine fitter) had lived in Bath since at least 1871 (they were originally from Burnley), Mary Jane gave birth to Daisy in Southampton. She was 21. So she was far away from where her immediate family lived, unmarried and, with no mention of the baby’s father, possibly she had brought ‘shame’ on the family by becoming pregnant. Who knows what the back-story might be; a boyfriend who promised to marry her and then dropped her when she announced her pregnancy? A more exploitative relationship, possibly a married man? Or even a rape.
A further glimpse into Mary Jane’s history is in the Bath Chronicle 19 July 1883 which contains the following report:
‘Bath Humane Society: suitable remuneration was given to Henry Lomax for his successful attempt to save Mary Jane Fentiman from drowning in May last.’ In May 1882 Daisy was just 11 months old and Mary Jane was 22. What happened? Was she on the path alongside the river in the dark and slipped in mud? Was she drunk? Or had she jumped into the water with the intention of taking her own life?
In 1907, Nancy Fentiman died aged 78. Daisy moved away from Bath: she married Edgar Wernham in 1907 in Woolwich. Perhaps she had stayed at home to help care for her elderly grandmother and, on her death, was free to change her life. In the 1911 census Daisy and Edgar were living in East Ham; Edgar’s job is recorded as ‘general engineer fitter & turner’. They had one child, Rowland, in1909. In 1921 they were living in Dartford and then in the 1939 Register in Bexley. Daisy died in 1958 aged 77 in Sidcup.
Mary Jane remained in Bath. In the 1921 census she was at 27 Oak Street working as a Stay Fanner at C. Bayer & Co.’s factory – the same skilled hand-stitching job that Daisy did before her marriage. Her death in 1926 aged 66 was registered in Wells. This may possibly mean that she died in the Mendip Asylum just outside Wells, but I have not applied to research these records; people were admitted to the Asylum suffering from diseases such as dementia and Alzheimers, as well as for psychiatric conditions.
A story of three generations of women, their struggles and troubles, lying beneath the surface.
Thanks to Pat Heynes who did the initial research into Daisy Fentiman.
Ann Cullis
Trustee & Friend October 2025