Peter Kitwood

PETER KITWOOD – SON The younger Peter Kitwood was baptised on 2nd December 1832. Like his father, he became a Sailor. In 1851, aged 19, Peter Kitwood was twice admitted to the Dreadnought Seamen’s Hospital. He was described as an Apprentice on both occasions and the records gave his length of service at sea with the Merchant Service firstly as five years and subsequently as seven years. He was first admitted on 28th January having suffered a “Febrile Attack” (meaning a fit or seizure). The Admission Register shows that he had been serving on the Henry & Elizabeth and that he was discharged on 4th February. Peter Kitwood was admitted again on 3rd November 1851, his last service being on the Comet, likely to have been the Blakeney registered Comet. He was suffering from “Intermittent Fever” and was discharged on 15th November. Peter Kitwood married on 25th December 1856 by Banns Sophia Wright, a Dressmaker; both Peter and Sophia were of “Full Age”, both living in Hempstead at the time of their marriage, and both signed their names on the Register. Peter’s occupation was described as a Sailor. No record can be found of Peter Kitwood in the 1861 Census but Sophia, 30, a Tailoress, and her three year old daughter Selina were recorded as visiting a family named Money in Hempstead. The family was not together and Peter Kitwood was possibly at sea when the Census was taken, two months after the Blakeney disaster, on 7th April; this might suggest that it was his father who assisted with the rescue. Ten years later, Peter and Sophia Kitwood, both 39, were living on the “East Side of the Street” in 1871, now with three children Mary Ann, 3, James, 8, and Selina, 1, all born in Blakeney. The couple’s daughter Selina Maria Kitwood had died in 1864, aged 6. The family had moved to Goole by 1881, when the Census shows the couple with three young children Selina, 11, Elizabeth, 9, and Anna, 8, all Scholars.

Five years later, the family suffered a great loss when Peter Kitwood died, aged 56, in the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum, Stanley, Yorkshire, leaving his wife and a young family. Peter Kitwood was buried in the parish church at Stanley on 19th June 1886. In 1891, still in Yorkshire, Sophia Kitwood was working as a Housekeeper/Domestic Servant to a Widower and his young daughter. Her daughter, Anna, had married in 1890 but Selina and Elizabeth were living together in Goole, working as Dressmakers. By 1901 and now aged 68, Sophia was living with her now married daughter, Selina, and her husband, Charles Baker, and their three young children. Ten years later and still in Goole, Sophia was then living with her daughter, Elizabeth, and her husband, Frederick Hewitt, with four teenage children by her first deceased husband George Stamps, and two babies with her second husband, Frederick Hewitt. Sophia Kitwood died in 1920, in Hastings, aged 87.