Author: Watkis, Frances
Biography:
WATKIS, Frances (1790-1845: ancestry.co.uk)
She was born on 9 Apr. 1790 and baptised on 4 Dec. 1795 at Nantwich, Cheshire, one of at least eight children of William Watkis, attorney, and his wife Ann, whose maiden name may have been Filkin but there are other candidates. (A Miss Filkin appears in the subscribers list of 200 mostly local people.) Nothing is known of her education and she does not appear to have married. A Frances Watkis was listed as a female servant in the family of John Shand at Bromborough, Wirrall, in the 1841 Census. There is no other Frances Watkis in the area for the period but even so the fall from an attorney’s daughter who wrote the poem in eight books listed here to the status of female servant would require explanation. It seems likely she was the Frances Watkis who died aged 52, spinster, at 5 Bridson Street, Mount Pleasant, Liverpool, and was buried on 5 Mar. 1845 at St. Mary’s, Edge Hill, Liverpool. (ancestry.co.uk 13 Nov. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 13 Nov. 2022; GRO death cert.) AA