Louisa Stamps

Louisa Stamps was the mother of William Hunt Painter's wife, Jane. She came to live at Stirchley Rectory in 1894 aged 80 and died just three years later in 1897. 

 

However, in that short time, she clearly made an impact on the small village. One of the few memorials in this church is dedicated to her memory. 

 

Baptised at St Martin's-in-the-Bull Ring in Birmingham in February 1814, Louisa was the daughter of William and Jane Wynn. At the age of 27 she married 36-year-old Joseph Stamps of Wolverhampton in September 1840 also at St Martin's Church. There is evidence that her father died later that same year. 

 

Joseph was a clerk and the couple are first found living together in the 1841 National Census on Bristol Street. At that time this certainly was not one of the city's slum areas, but an area of small terraced rows close to the city centre whose residents were artisans or lower middle class.  

 

Ten years later the couple were living in Islington on the edge of Edgbaston in a solidly middle-class district. Their neighbours were small merchants and bank clerks, and almost everyone had a servant, including the Stamps. Joseph was now a merchant's clerk. Jane, aged 10, was at Sparkhill School at Showell Green, then a rural district outside Birmingham, a private boarding school for 15 girls aged 10-18.