Author: Hewitt, Elizabeth Catherine
Biography:
HEWITT, Elizabeth Catherine, formerly BOAKES (1801-80: ancestry.co.uk)
She was baptised on 2 Oct. 1801 at St. Michael’s, Highgate, London, the only child of Thomas Boakes and his wife Ann Baker, who had married at St. Marylebone in 1794. She married Joseph Hewitt (1785-1865), a not very successful man of business and sometime schoolmaster, on 20 June 1822 at Kensington, London, and they went on to have three children. Her Meditations (1830) on the figure of Christ, signed “E. C. H.,” was followed by Scripture Emblems (1839) which was advertised in late 1839, but no copy has been located; and Mind and its Culture (1855), which combined her religious beliefs and teaching experiences to give an account of educational training. She ran a number of ladies’ seminaries in various locations in Kent: Maidstone, Woodlawn, Loose, and finally Oaklands Ladies Boarding School at Farleigh, about 15 miles south of Eltham. (The 1861 Census listed him as proprietor but the 1851 Census recorded him as “out of business.”) Her husband died on 12 Feb. 1865 at Oaklands, leaving an estate of under £300. Later that year she underwent bankruptcy proceedings. Thereafter she seems to have lived with her son and his family at Crayford, Kent, acting as governess to his children (1871 Census). She died on 25 Sept. 1880 and was buried four days later at Boughton, Monchelsea, Kent. (ancestry.co.uk 3 Apr. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 3 Apr. 2022; Post Office Home Counties Directory [Farleigh, Kent] [1855], 343; Kentish Mercury 18 Feb. 1865; London Gazette 17 Nov. 1865; LES 4 Oct. 1880) AA
Other Names:
- Mrs. Hewitt