Let’s hear it for the girls Julian McCarthy
We often think of Esther Hammerton, sometime Sexton of All Saints Church, as being someone special but not just because of her rescue from the grave in which she had two feet as opposed to the proverbial one.
The fact that she took on the duties of her late father leads us to think that, as woman working in a man’s world and carrying out the onerous tasks of church ‘Sexton’ (including the digging of graves), she was somehow ‘unique’ and an early example of female equality in the workplace.
A sexton is a parish officer, usually responsible for the maintenance of the church buildings and churchyard and, as mentioned above, for the digging of graves. At a time when women were barred from most public offices, Esther’s occupation to us may appear surprising but as research has shown she was not the first woman to hold this office, nor even the first one in Kingston upon Thames.An interesting account entitled ‘The Sextoness of Goodramgate’ by Sally-Anne Shearn can be found online wherein she advises:
“The existence of ‘sextonesses’ can be traced back to at least 1671 when a female sexton was recorded at Islington in Middlesex. A ‘sextoness’ was also employed at nearby Hackney in 1690 and 1730.
It is not yet clear how common this practice was, but in 1739 it proved controversial enough to prompt a court case when Sarah Bly, the widow of the sexton of St Botolph without Aldersgate in London, was elected to succeed her late husband to the post.
Mrs Bly had polled 209 votes to her opponent’s 196; crucially, forty of her votes came from female householders in the parish. Her opponent, John Olive, took the matter to the Court of King’s Bench, requiring judges to decide not only whether a woman could hold the position of sexton, but whether women could vote in such elections at all.
Fortunately for Sarah Bly and those who came after her, after five months of deliberations the court ruled that as women had held higher offices (Anne, Countess of Pembroke and hereditary Sheriff of Westmoreland was used as an example), and as ‘the office of sexton was no public office, nor a matter of skill or judgement, but only a private office of trust,’ it was perfectly legal for any woman who paid her church rates to hold the office and to vote in the elections for it.”
To consider Esther as the first to hold such office in Kingston is doing both her mother and a lady called Mary Gardner, who died in 1724, a disservice.
Vestry minutes dated 10th March 1729 record the unanimous decision to appoint Sarah Hammerton, wife of the deceased Sexton, as the new Sexton. She served the church for 12 years until her death in 1741 when minutes dated 14th March record that both Esther and Thomas Jarman are unanimously chosen as joint Sextons. Thomas being her brother in law who had been with her during the partial collapse and whose head had been pinned by stonework.
Esther’s mother therefore served the position more than twice as long as Esther who died in 1746.
But what of Mary Gardner, whose place Abraham Hammerton took as Sexton in 1724.
I have found that at the Vestry meeting dated 28th December 1721 the meeting discussed the complaint by the Sexton regarding payment of a charge for winding the clock. The meeting awarded her 20 shillings.
I have yet to find the date of her appointment in the Vestry minutes which commence in 1695. I will check again. Is it possible that she held the position prior to the first-minuted meeting in the 1695 – 1826 Vestry minutes?
Whatever the date of her appointment, surely she should be remembered as much as Esther and, of course, Sarah Hammerton.