The Trittons

Arthur Henry Tritton, a Chairman of the Epsom Bench, is already covered on this website, but he was just one of the Trittons associated with the area at various times. In fact, some of them actually lived in Epsom and Ewell, whereas Arthur was a Leatherhead resident.

To begin at the very beginning, we have John Henton Tritton, who was born in 1755. Mr Tritton married a Barclay and in the 1780s joined a Quaker banking partnership called the Black Spread Eagle, which then became, Barclay, Bevan & Tritton & Co (now just Barclays). All of the people who follow are descended from this man.

Here is a diagram, showing the relevant branches.

JOHN HENTON (1755-1833)
HENRY 1 (1790-1838)	ROBERT (1792-1877)
HENRY 2 (1815-77)	ROBERT BISCOE (1819-98)	VINCENT BISCOE (1835-1915)
HENRY JOHN (1842-1922)	ARTHUR HENRY(1855-1936)	CECIL BISCOE (1877-1935)

It seems that Henry 2 was the first Tritton to own Ewell House and his son, Henry John, inherited it from him in 1877.

Henry 2 was born in Clapham on 7 July 1815; he was of course a banker in the family firm and had ten children by his wife, Elizabeth Ann Maxwell, whom he married in 1839. These were as follows.

Name	Born	Married	Died
Emily Mary	1840	Admiral Sir Alexander Buller See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Buller	1920
Henry John	22.11.1842	Annie Isabella Buller	1922
Edward William	1844	Alice Jane Verney	1901
Caroline Elizabeth	1846	Charles Alexander Hall	1887
Anna Henrietta	1847	Charles Duberly	1920
Wilfrid Francis	1849	(1) Marion Amelia Churcher, (2) Daisy Barton	1930
Catherine Louisa	1850	Rev Clement René Sharpe	1912
Mary Eleanor	1852	-	1927
Elizabeth Anne	1853	-	1917
Edith Isabella	1855	John Henry Bridges (see also Ewell Court House)	1907

I am going to stay on track and not meander down the family byways, so let us move straight on to Henry John, banker, who can be found in residence in Ewell House in the 1871 census with his wife, children, in-laws and eight female servants. At some stage around the 1880s (and before 1888) they relocated to Down Cottage, Epsom, the implication being that there had been a financial problem, and indeed there had: we will come to it shortly.

Henry John was educated at Eton and became a Major in the Militia; he was a magistrate and High Sheriff of Surrey in 1882. His wife was Anna Isabella, daughter of the Reverend Richard Buller, Rector of Lanreath in Cornwall. You will have noticed that the name Buller has already cropped up in the chart above: the Alexander Buller who married Henry John's sister, Emily Mary, was Anna Isabella's brother, as was James Hornby Buller, who will make an appearance momentarily.

Although he was a banker, Henry John seems to have exhibited a certain lack of business acumen in relation to his own finances. It seems that he had left the family bank in 1878, selling his interest for £40,000 (over £3.5 million in today's money), although he said later that it had been worth £100,000 (approximately £9m); he was also drawing a yearly income of £7,000 (£600,000+) from the bank. He then began mortgaging both his property and the yearly income just mentioned and began to buy small farms, on which he made considerable expenditure; there was also a large liability in respect of a yeomanry cavalry club. The result of all this is that he was made bankrupt in 1888, with assets of £55,032 (approx. £0.5 million) and liabilities of £137,593 (£1.2m +). Thus, by the late 1880s he was living in a farm cottage on the estate of his brother-in-law, James Hornby Buller (1831-95), who was resident at Down Hall, Epsom: he was a magistrate, Colonel in the Army and a member of the Royal Bodyguard. Buller had bought the Hall in 1872.

One assumes that Henry John managed to extricate himself from the worst rigours of his financial woes, for, by 1901, he was living in Plympton St Mary, Devon, with the family still managing to maintain four female servants (and ditto in 1911). Anna Isabella died in Devon on 21 October 1914, followed by Henry John on 17 February 1922.

Henry John and Anna Isabella had five children. The eldest was Henry Maxwell Buller Tritton, born on 8 April 1867 in London. He was a 2nd Lieutenant in the 14th Hussars and died whilst stationed at Preston Barracks, Brighton on 15 January 1890: he was hunting at Chailey (near Lewes) with the Southdown foxhounds when his horse caught its hind hooves in jumping a gate, threw him and fell on him, causing fatal injuries. The next son, Richard Buller Tritton, was born and died in 1968. Then came a daughter, Mildred Isabella (1869-1942), who married landowner and magistrate Thomas Buller Bradshaw (died 1927, grandson of the Reverend Richard Buller - these were people who liked to keep things in the family!) of Lifton Park, Devon (near Launceston, Cornwall) and Millways, Launceston.

The fourth child, Blanche Georgina Hornby Tritton, was born in 1870 and married Plympton-born John Granger Mudge (c. 1873 - 1948) in 1923: he was a clerk with a charitable organisation. Blanche died on 18 May 1932.

The fifth and last child, Emmeline Caroline Alexandra, was born in 1871 and died in 1953; her husband was Devonian barrister Walter John Deacon Radcliffe (1858-1930). They had three sons (Walter Henry, Gerald Pollexfen Maxwell and John Copleston Buller) and two daughters (Dorothy Admonition Amy and Isabel Annie)

This branch was closely associated with Beddington, near Wallington, Surrey but several of them, including the aforementioned Arthur Henry Tritton, had Epsom and Ewell associations. Robert Tritton was another son of John Henton and brother of Henry 1.

Robert Tritton was born in 1792 and became a clergyman; he married Mary Hinton Biscoe, daughter of Vincent Biscoe of Hookwood (near Gatwick), Surrey, who died in 1835, aged 43. He was Rector of Morden in Surrey for 41 years and died in 1877. Two of his sons, Robert Biscoe and Vincent Biscoe, are the men we want but we will have a brief canter through the others (see chart below).

Name	Born	Married	Died
Rev Robert Biscoe	1819	Charlotte Lindsay	1898 Surrey
Rev William Biscoe	1820	Eleanor Willett Hanbury	1894 Hove
Mary Biscoe	1822	-	1834 Brighton
Anna Sophia Biscoe	1823	General Sir Daniel Lysons *	1911 London
Caroline Biscoe	1825	-	1832 Limpsfield, Surrey
Susannah Biscoe	1826	Rev Henry Seymour	1889 Bingham, Notts
Colonel Frederick Biscoe**	1827	(1) Selina Charlotte Marryat (2) Augusta Phillippa Fox	1904 London
Charles Biscoe	1828	-	1833 Surrey
John Biscoe	1829	-	1831
Elizabeth Biscoe	1832	Rev William Chetwynd Stapylton***	1893 Eastbourne
Vincent Biscoe	1835	Helen Catherine Kelson	1915 Berkshire

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Lysons_(British_Army_officer)
** Frederick's son, Sir Seymour Biscoe Tritton (1860-1937) was a distinguished consulting engineer.
*** Vicar of Malden, Surrey

Robert Biscoe Tritton was born in Brasted, Kent (near Sevenoaks) and graduated MA from Trinity College, Cambridge. He was ordained priest in 1843 and held various posts, his last appointment being as vicar of Bognor Regis from 1877-93. He subsequently lived in Leatherhead and died on 1 April 1898. His wife, Charlotte, was from Wimbledon and died in 1893 in Rome, but was buried in Sussex. Their children were as follows.

Name	Born	Married	Died
Robert Lindsay*	1850	(1) Helen Temple Craige (2) Lilian	1927 USA
Mary Charlotte	1852	Robert Montagu Hennell	1928 Sussex
Alice Maria	c.1853	Dr Clement Godson**	1931 Kent
Arthur Henry	1855	(1) Louisa Woolf Davies (2) Mabel Holloway	1936 London
Minna Elizabeth	1857	-	1893 Rome***

* veterinary surgeon
** eminent gynaecologist - see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2344197/pdf/brmedj07547-0051a.pdf
*** Minna died of pneumonia, just four days after her mother: they had presumably been on a trip to Rome together.

As mentioned earlier, Vincent, an East India merchant, married Helen Catherine Kelson (1859-1924) and they lived latterly in Sunningdale, Berkshire. These were their children.

Name	Born	Married	Died
Florence Helen	1860	-	1938 Berkshire
Vincent Biscoe	1862	Linda Curtis	1931 Hove
Hilton Biscoe	1864	-	1864
Charles Biscoe	1865	-	1924 Sussex
Hubert Biscoe	1868	-	1915 Berkshire
Cecil Biscoe	1877	Alice Euphemia Thompson	1935 Surrey

Vincent Junior was a stockbroker, and his younger brothers, Hubert and Cecil, were stock jobbers: in 1901 this latter pair, both unmarried at the time, were living in Epsom at Field House, Alexandra Road. Cecil remained in the town after his marriage and his final address was Rosebank, Epsom Downs.