Jessie Rose Bouts

Jessie Rose Bouts was born in May 1858 at her parents' home, 6 Cambridge Road, Islington. She had an older brother and two older sisters. In February 1863, her older brother died at age 9, then her father died six weeks later, aged 42. In June of that year, her mother also died, aged 43, leaving the three girls and an infant brother as orphans. It is possible that they were cared for by their grandmother who died in 1880, but the girls always said they came from Pinner and it seems that they went to the school for orphans of travellers at Hatch End, where they appear in the 1871 census. By 1881, Jessie was a draper's assistant living in a draper's establishment on Newington Causeway in Surrey, and her sister Alice was living in an establishment of Lace dealers in Mayfair.
In September 1884, Jessie and Alice arrived in Melbourne as unassisted immigrants aboard the Cathay. At Christmas time that year Jessie married Henry Samuel Wellington, who had come from London the previous year, and also worked in drapery. We do not know if they had previously known each other in London, but they both gave the same boarding house address on their marriage certificate. Alice and Jessie started a ribbon and lace shop and later had The Lace House in The Block Arcade in Melbourne. Their older sister joined them in 1895. She died in 1902. Henry and Jessie had five sons. They all lived at Pinner in Royal Crescent, Armadale, then by 1910 they were at Tivoli Road and Sutherland Road in South Yarra by 1912, the sisters working in the city until about 1920.
Jessie died in 1941 at age 83, six years before Henry.