Continued from Coffee Shop (1) and Coffee Shop (2)
Fewer details are given for the 20th century descendants of the Cope family but are available by request
Harry married Alice Jemima Sarah Pemberton who lived at no.28 Commercial Road, only a couple of doors away. Alice's father John H. Pemberton, was born in Leeds in 1831 and was a printer. No.35 continued to be full of family for Harry and Alice had seven children of whom two died in infancy.
- Alice Ada b. Mar/Q 1885, m. Frederick J. Genner
- Henry Hugh Arrowsmith b. Dec/Q 1886, m. Alice Hurle
- Lilian Eliza b. Mar/Q 1890, m. Albert Burrell
- Eva Florence Cope, m. Victor L.King
- Arthur William Edwin, b.Jun/Q 1900, m. Gladys E.Marshall
- Edith d. in infancy
- Olive d. in infancy
It is not known when Henry's stepmother, Sophia, died, but Alice was to live at no.35 Commercial Road for the rest of her life.
There were still cousins of Harry's not far away. His uncle, Edwin had married Louisa Colwell in 1858 and in 1883 moved only a very short distance from Broadwall into Boundary Row. By this time he had ten children, the eldest, another Edwin, 24, the youngest, Emma, only four. Whether Edwin and his family visited the coffee shop regularly is not known but they were still only a short walk away. For full details of this family see Coffee Shop (1)
Harry continued to divide his time as his father had done. An 'expert on wood' he made model boats as a hobby. One of them was exhibited many years later at the Polytechnic. He showed his niece Ethel Barnes (our main souce for a fund of stories about the family, how he pulled the sails up inside the bottle with a fine thread. One story is told that that he built a full-size boat in the house - and then couldn't get it through the door as it was too big! He certainly did have a boat on the river which he named Little Alice. According to Ethel he also used to serve coffee at the Stock Exchange.
Newspapers
local and nationalRe-organisation William had moved into Commercial Road about the time when the Clerkenwell News was renamed the Daily Chronicle and became more than just a local newspaper. The printing works for this paper were immediately opposite the coffee shop and the workers flocked across the road for their refreshment. Then on January 17th 1888 the Evening Star was launched and that too was printed at the works on Commercial Road. Both newspapers continued to be produced there until the middle of the 20th century. In 1889 the County of London was formed, the original church divisions were reorganised into the boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark and many roads were renamed. Commercial Road was joined to Upper Ground Street which now became the name for the whole length of the road next to the river. In 1899 Princes' Street became Coin St and is now home to the Coin St Complex, mostly a massive car park. Duke St became Duchy St and many local streets were also renumbered as more buildings were crammed into the remaining plots. Barnes and Stockwells
Ada Cope's husband, Thomas James Barnes, came from Aylesbury. The Barnes family and some of their cousins, Stockwells, were moving into South London in search of work, mostly in the printing business. (One branch of the Stockwells living at Brockwell Park, did particularly well as printers.) Whether Thomas actually lodged with the Copes at no.35 or just used it as a convenient address (i.e. 'leaving a suitcase') when getting married is not clear. They were married at St Andrew's, Princes' Street (now Coin St), only a few minutes walk away, on September 22nd 1889. Thomas was just 21, Ada coming up to 22.
Thomas became a bookbinder for Eyre and Spottiswoode, a firm for which he worked until he retired fifty years later. If they did not live over the coffee shop in the next few years they were not far away, for the first five, or possibly six, children were christened at St Saviour's. Ethel Sarah died about the turn of the century and there are suggestions that there was another child who also died. The Barnes family then moved further away to Walworth and eventually to Pinner. Thomas and Ada's daughter Amy said that in seven years they moved seven times! She claimed that her father wanted to "get away from the chink of glasses." He would certainly have had to endure that in Commercial Road.
"Anyone for tennis?"
The house continued to be full of family. There are family stories covering a period of thirty or forty years which are often quite hard to date, so the 'correct' order of some of the following cannot be guaranteed!
There were cousins too, on the Pemberton side and the 1891 Census shows one of them, Ada Hutchings, aged 13 or 14, who was 'a servant' at the coffee shop and also noted as Harry's niece. Alice's sister and her husband, John Hutchings lived in Walcot Square in Lambeth, near where the Imperial War Museum is now.
The Cope and Barnes cousins made up parties for tennis. When Arthur at 13 wanted to play tennis with his cousin Amy and others his older sister Alice used to tease him. If he asked "Is my shirt clean?" she would give a silly answer. She was very fat and a great giggler.
Alice married Frederick Genner (according to the GRO index) or Jenner (as spelt by Alice in her will) who ran a billiard hall in East London. Later Fred worked as a traveller for a firm dealing in Japanese fancy goods. At Christmas he would come home with Japanese crackers filled with quality items, for example real pearl jewellery. Alice is said to have run a cycle shop in Abbey Wood. She and Fred had no children.
Cope DIY
Henry Hugh Arrowsmith Cope, the third Henry Cope, worked at Woolwich Arsenal. He tinkered with cars and with the help of fair-haired Arthur built his own radio. In those days the radio would have been a crystal radio, quite small in size with a tiny tinny sound which was quite difficult to hear as the signal was not amplified at all. Arthur eventually moved away and ran a coffee shop in East Sheen until 1934.
There were not many cars around at that time, but the Cope family relied more on their pony and cart, kept in stables under the house at the back a couple of doors away. The local map of 1872 shows just one or two gaps where there must have been a way through to the road. For their outings the nearest large open space was now Clapham Common.
Visit of the Prince of Wales
This whole area of Lambeth was part of the Duchy of Cornwall, that is, belonging to the Duke of Cornwall, (aka the Prince of Wales, heir to the throne) or in other words it was the property of the Crown. The story is told of how once the Prince of Wales called to inspect his property, he being the landlord. He arrived with his entourage, all the local residents hanging out of the windows or crowding round to see. Harry, still with his apron on, had been left to '"get on with it" by the womenfolk who had all fled. "How much is that fish (on the slab)?" the Prince asked. "Twopence," replied Harry, hoping that the Prince would not notice the 'fly-blown' picture of Garibaldi on the wall.
A newspaper reporter noticed that there was one person who was not at all fussed by the visit of a prince! Young Alice was far too busy cleaning the windows and didn't pause in her task. The newspaper headlines the next day proclaimed the fact in large letters.
"Woman cleans windows when the Prince of Wales visits"
or something similar. This episode has not yet been dated but Alice was born in 1885 and married in 1918. The Prince could therefore have been George V, born 1865 who became Prince of Wales 1901-1910, or his son Edward who was inaugurated as Prince of Wales in 1910 at the age of 15 and was very briefly king as Edward VIII in 1936.
The picture of Garibaldi had probably been placed on the wall back in the sixties. It was not an age of change. The wood of the table tops was scrubbed daily, the floors swept, the customers served, and the food and the drink remained the same for sixty years as it did in most households. At some time a fish tank was added in an alcove but there was not the modern frenetic demand for constantly changing décor. There were always children running up and down the stairs and playing between the tables with their red and white checked cloths. Ethel Barnes, born in 1906, told of riding her tricycle up and down between the tables, but not presumably while there were customers in the shop!
Two independent accounts of number 35 reveal that there was quite probably a connecting door through to number 34. Viewed in the nineteen-twenties it was variously described as a bricked-up doorway upstairs and as a small flight of stairs with a door at the top. It was obviously not on the ground floor. At number 34 in 1881 lived a family called Brown, though there does not at present appear to have been any connection with William's son-in-law of that name as Archibald Brown was born in London while both John Brown and his wife Sarah, who were his contemporaries, came from Rainham in Kent.
The ghostly dog
Henry George Cope - Great-Uncle Harry - died on September 24th 1931. His wife Alice continued as the coffee shop proprietor until her own death on February 24th 1934. It was hard to manage on her own and some of her children returned to help out for a while. Her grand-daughter, then aged about 12, remembered what a lot of washing-up there was to do as she had to help with that. She was told that there used to be a dog, possibly called 'Spot.' on the premises. She heard barking but she never saw the dog. It may have been in the middle of the night when she heard it for she wasn't sure that she hadn't dreamt it. The dog was supposed to have been kept in the cellar. One of the adults - to tease her - said it was locked in the cellar. She was scared but at the same time sorry for the dog.
Harry's widow, Alice tried hard to make the coffee shop a going concern. Granddaughter Betty remembered spending long days there when she was twelve making endless steak and kidney pies. Her cousin Geoffrey who lived a few streets away at the time, said he spent many a day reading a book at one of the tables but basically being very bored when his mother went along to help.
From coffee to bicycles
Alice died in 1831 but Arthur, who had previously had his own coffee shop in Kingston, was ready for a change. Lilian, his older sister, had married and gone to live in Southport. Perhaps Arthur had been there on holiday and had thus already met his future wife who came from there. He sold the coffee shop - presumably the lease, for it would not have been freehold - married Gladys in 1935 and also went to live in Southport where he ran a bicycle shop for a number of years. It must have suited him better as he had always enjoyed tinkering with machines.
Not long after the closing of the coffee shop it was demolished and replaced by a post office. That has also gone and the whole area has been extensively rebuilt. No trace of the shop now remains.