James Osborne 1839 - 1925
James Osborne (1839-1925) and Margaret Catchpole (1841-1896)
James Osborne was our Great Grandfather. He was born in Chelsea in 1839 and lived all his life in London, St Giles, Soho, Westminster areas. He became a gun polisher like his father Thomas. As mentioned elsewhere, gun work was a common occupation among the Osbornes. In our family tree we have 10 Osbornes with gun related occupations, gun maker, gunsmith, gun polisher, gun engraver and so on. What the connection is, or who they worked for we don't know, but the pattern seems to be that in each generation one of the Osborne sons of a gun worker also becomes a gun worker.
The gun trade in Victorian times relied on a small army of home workers who undertook repetitive tasks. A gun polisher for example was responsible for finishing rough parts and bringing them up to polished standard ready for use in assembling a gun. So they would have a lot of similar items which they would deliver when finished to the master gunsmith. The gun was assembled by being passed from workshop to workshop, and in each workshop another part was completed and added. It was like a factory in an entire section of a town, lots of little alleys with workshops.
James married Margaret Catchpole in 1861. They had been living together for a couple of years in St Giles and already had one child with another on the way when they got married.
Ten years later in the 1871 census they’re living at 73 Dudley Street, St.Giles. They now have four children Edward, Frederick, James and Henry. This is Dudley Street from an 1872 engraving.
By 1881 they had had eleven children, the last being our grandfather Thomas Herbert Osborne born in 1881.
James seems to have split up with his wife Margaret sometime in the 1880s. They weren't living together in the 1891 census, Margaret was on her own in St Annes, Westminster, with the three youngest children, including our grandfather Thomas Herbert then aged 9. Margaret died on 3 November 1896 and about six weeks later James married Julia Levy Isaacs on 20th December 1896. He was probably living with her since he left Margaret.
James died in 1925.