The Quaker Connection
Charles Berridge married Emily Arabella BROME, daughter of the Rev. John BROME MA of Trinity College Cambridge and Upper Seymore Street, Portman Square, London, the 9th of November 1835 at St. James, Westminster. She died four years after her husband on the 30th of August 1876 (64) at Western Lodge, Spring Grove, Isleworth, Middlesex, though late of Seend, Wiltshire. A wealthy woman, possessed of property in England and the Caribbean (she was born in Barbados), her Will, dated the 4th of February 1874 and proved the 13th of September 1876, effected the sum of £35,000 to her son Osborne Charles Vyse ALDIS who was the sole executor. Originally proved with effects under £200, the Will was resworn in October 1877 with effects under £35,000. The Will refers to a settlement dated the 5th of September 1856 which names son Osborne and daughters Emily Arabella Frances Maria and Laura Lefroy Brome; trustees were named as son Osborne and solicitor William Alexander Tooke Hallowes.
Charles and Emily had two daughters and one son. Emily Arabella Frances Maria ALDIS was born the 2nd of September 1836 at Old Burlington Street, London. On the 28th of February 1859 she married, at St. George Hanover Square, Samuel William TURNER, son of Samuel Edward TURNER, a gentleman of Greenwich, London. Following an Oxford education, Samuel William took Holy Orders and served both in England and abroad, including a 3-year spell as Consular Chaplain in China between 1863 and 1866. Further information on this TURNER family is beyond the scope of this account. A second daughter, Laura Lefroy Brome ALDIS, was born the 25th of December 1841 and died, aged 70, the 15th of October 1905. She never married, and lived at 32 Fopstone Road, Brompton, Middlesex. In her Will she left £2,720 to William Fairbank MD.
The only son of Charles James Berridge and Emily Arabella was Osborne Charles Vyse ALDIS who was born the 27th of January 1843 at Old Burlington Street, London. Educated at St. Paul’s London and Caius College Cambridge where he was a Greek scholar, he chose not to follow his father and grandfather into medicine or to pursue his own different career. Apparently unable to cope with the advantages of his privileged background and the fortune inherited from his parents, especially his property-owning mother, he became the black sheep of the family. No trace of his Quaker ancestry is in evidence in his life and behaviour. When he died in 1916 in Chelsea, London, he left no Will. He took a club in Wellington Street, Chelsea, London, which failed. His financial problems led to his forging a signature to a Power of Attorney, an act which resulted in a criminal conviction for fraud and a sentence of 18 months’ hard labour in Holloway, as widely reported in the national press. The date was the 3rd of May 1886 when Osborne was aged 43.
