Mitchell, Mrs Harriet

Singer

Collection date: May 1911

Area: Nottinghamshire

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Mrs Harriet Mitchell at the Retford Union workhouse: age 87 1 song ‘Mary in the Silvery Tide’ (FT2608) on 1 May 1911: In the 1911 census for the Retford workhouse (RG14/20194 p3) Harriet was listed as a widow, aged 86, former housekeeper, born at Little Dinnington, Derbyshire. Sharp wrote her surname with one 'l' but all records show two 'l's:

She was born Harriet Baxter c1827 and was working as a domestic servant at Swithland, nr Loughborough in 1851. In April qr 1852 she married Joseph Mitchell (Loughborough 7a 202). Joseph was a plate-layer on the railway and the couple soon moved north to the town of Ordsall, Nottinghamshire (2 miles S of Retford). They lived there for the next 30 years. They had no children.

Most probably Harriet met and knew John Vallance, a shoemaker in Ordsall over the same period. John was a fellow inmate in the workhouse at the time of Sharp’s visit and sang for him too. Harriet’s date of death is not yet known.