John's grandfather George Bowden (b.c 1784) seems to have settled in Great Torrington, Devon after his marriage in 1818 to Mary Broom from Buckland Brewer. He was a husbandman at this time but by 1821 he had become an innkeeper, having bought the freehold of the Boot public house in South St. He also had a share in another property and land elsewhere. He died aged 51 in 1835, leaving his widow with 6 children aged between 4 and 16. He willed all to his wife and appointed her and schoolmaster John Harper as guardians to his children. By 1841, sons John (b.1819) and George (b.1821) were running the Inn with her. John, the malster, now had a wife and baby daughter too, having married Mary Squire daughter of Robert Squire, carpenter at the Independent Chapel in January 1840; he was aged 20 and she was 23. Son John (b.1841)was their second child, four more were to follow. Their last son, Thomas, was born in 1848, after the death of his father in November 1847.
The Boot, it seems, was not the highest class of tavern during the 1840s. The building fell into disrepair, with an order being made by the town council in 1851 to put up guttering. There were also convictions and fines against both John and George on several occasions for assault, and one, in 1845, for fighting in the streets on Sunday. (It is unclear which was the greater offence, the fighting or the fact that it was on a Sunday.) John's cause of death there in 1847 was typhus, a disease spread by lice or fleas and associated with poor hygiene. By 1851 his mother with his brother George as the brewer were there on their own, though grandson John (b.1841) is recorded there too on the census. Innkeeper Mary died in 1857 and the place was no longer a pub by 1861. It was eventually demolished, possibly in the late 1860s.
John's widow Mary had moved out of the pub after her husband's death in 1847 aged 27 and in 1851 was living nearby as a 'pauper glover' with her children, including son John. It is reported that he as sent to work in a local box factory at about this time.
John was 15 when he arrived in London, courtesy of an unknown benefactor. By 1861 he was 18 and living with his 14 year old sister Mary Jane. They are both listed as pupil teachers at St Pancras National School. (In the very next household in the same building were two brothers, aged 20 and 18; 4 years later, Mary Jane was to marry the younger lad, one George Binden Gaywood from Witham, Essex They were my great-grandparents.) John and Mary Jane's mother was also in London, living-in as a servant to a barrister in Bloomsbury.
John went on to train at St Mark's Chelsea, a Church of England teacher training college in 1863 and 1864. He became friends with a fellow student, George Rayment,of whose father Ebenezer Rayment more below. After qualifying, John became an assistant master at the Hampden Charity Schools and then master of the Brompton Parochial Schools. (These details from research by Dr Gillian Gear.) In 1869 he became the superintendent of the Boys' Farm Home, East Barnet, to which he was to devote the rest of his life. His mother became Matron and sister Elizabeth was employed there also, as an assistant.
The home was established in 1860 by Lt. Col. William James Gillum, a gentleman officer who had been wounded at the siege of Sebastopol in the Crimea and as a result had a wooden leg. It had close links with a similar home set up in 1858 in Euston Road near Regents Park and where Ebenezer Rayment, who had served as a sergeant with Lt. Col. Gillum in the Crimea, was superintendent. The school was certified (and later inspected) as an Industrial School.
It took in boys who were destitute and headed for a life of crime. Most were ill-educated and mal-nourished; either orphaned or left to their own devices on the street while their one remaining parent was at work. Boys were aged between 7 and 16 years and had not yet been convicted of any crime, or were too young to convict. The aim was to provide a disciplined environment where they would learn to perform necessary everyday tasks and receive training for future employment, so that they would be able to maintain themselves when they left.
The home had a strong Christian ethos and ran its own farm, bakery, laundry and woodworking facilities; it was in many ways self-sufficient. Excess produce and articles made by the boys would be sold locally, small items of furniture, wood and watercress, are examples recorded. The boys also ran a local milk round. By 1871 there were 60 boys in the home, with ages ranging from 7 to 16; numbers rose to 69 the following year. The home had a good reputation and maintained contact with many former pupils. It is true, though, that it was selective in its admission of children, and could expel completely hopeless cases.
In 1868 John Bowden married Martha Rayment, sister of his fellow-student George and daughter of Ebenezer Rayment. She moved to the Church Farm Home and took over as Matron after the death of John's mother Mary in September 1870. George, who had become master of the Euston Road boys' home after the death of his father in 1865, married John's sister Elizabeth (known as Bessie) in 1870.
John and Martha had six children, two of whom died young. Later reminiscences by daughter Hannah Davies (née Bowden) were of a happy, active and sociable childhood. Martha herself died in 1885 aged only 41, having caught typhoid from a boy she was nursing. John remarried in 1888, to Kate Louisa Francis. She had been a music teacher but became Matron of the Home after her marriage. John eventually retired at the age of 60 in 1901 and died in 1908 at Southgate. There is a memorial to him and a number of other family members in the Great Northern Cemetery (later known as New Southgate Cemetery). His widow Kate joined her three unmarried sisters in Blean, Kent where she died in 1926.