Emily Arabella Aldis (née Brome)

Daughter of the Rev. John and Elizabeth Anne Brome and sister of John Brome (all of whom q.v.). Trustees launched a counterclaim on her behalf against her brother on the Bromefield estate in Barbados under a deed to secure a lump sum of £3500 for her. The counterclaim was withdrawn, possibly because it was settled amicably.

1. Emily was born in Barbados and baptised there 22/10/1812. In 1871 she was living with her husband Charles, their unmarried daughter, Laura L. B., aged 29, their unmarried son, Osborne C. V., 28, and two servants, Emma Dettmer, 21, and Elizabeth Harding, 27 at Chester Square, London. (According to the ODNB, number 45B.)

2. Marriage of Emily Arabella Brome of Upper Seymour St. Portman Sq., daughter of late Rev. John Brome MA Trinity College Cambridge, to Dr [Charles James Berridge] Aldis, only son of Sir Charles Aldis November 1835.  Burial of Emily Arabella Aldis of Spring Grove Heston aged 64 on 04/09/1876 St Mary Virgin Norwood Green.

3. Emily Aldis's husband, Charles, is in the Oxford DNB as physician (as is her father-in-law Sir Charles Aldis). Charles Aldis was a public health reformer in London who did a great deal to further the cause of sanitary reform in the East End of London: "Very few upper-middle-class doctors ventured as frequently or deeply into the terra incognita of the East End and inner city districts." He was a Conservative in local politics but fought strongly against entrenched interests among both landlords and in local government.

T71/899 Barbados claim no. 4800 (Bromefield).

1. 1871 census; www.familysearch.org batch no. C51389-1.

2. Times 10/11/1835 p. 4; Ancestry.com, London, England, Deaths and Burials, 1813-1980 [database online].

3. Bill Luckin, ‘Aldis, Charles James Berridge (1808–1872)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/311 [accessed 11/09/2012], which describes Emily Aldis as 'daughter of the Rev. John Brome of Trinity College, Cambridge' and also shows Emily Arabella Aldis dying in 1863; J. F. Payne, ‘Aldis, Sir Charles (1776–1863)’, rev. Patrick Wallis, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/310 [accessed 11/09/2012].