Catherine Dibben was my mother’s mother’s mother’s mother – my second great grandmother. I have no daughters, so I am the last of her line.
There is something a little magical about daughters of daughters – like a Russian matryoshka doll, each generation nestled within the previous, carrying the family legacy forward. I began to wonder who was Catherine, what was her life like, and whether we shared anything in common.
This piece was developed during an excellent Pharos Tutors course led by Janet Few, Putting Your Female Ancestors into Context. The course encouraged viewing a woman’s life alongside the experiences and rights of other women of her time, helping to create a well-rounded portrait even where the documentary record is sparse. As a result of this course, I have told Catherine’s story across five chapters – Daughter, Wife, Mother, Business Woman, and Widow – each informed by the historical realities that shaped women’s lives in Victorian and Edwardian England.
Catherine was born in 1850 into a large and chronically poor family in the rural community of Hayling Island, near Portsmouth. In those days, Hayling – a bell-shaped island off south-east Hampshire – was linked to the mainland by a small wooden toll bridge and a ferry. The island consisted of just two small parishes, North and South Hayling, with only a few hundred residents who earned their living from farming, fishing, brick- and salt-making, and, on occasions, smuggling.
After marrying an Irish soldier, she left the island, returning around 1890 with her husband and two young daughters. By then, Hayling was beginning to develop into a popular holiday destination, and Catherine caught the spirit of the age. For more than forty years she ran a successful boarding house, offering clean seaside lodgings, home-cooked meals, and a touch of genteel comfort at moderate, middle-class prices.
A daughter of the Victorian era, born just before the Crimean War, Catherine’s story is one of determination and ingenuity. She lived through a period of extraordinary scientific and technological change – from the coming of the railways to the first motor cars – and, by the time she died, life expectancy in Britain had risen from about forty in 1850 to around sixty in 1931,[i] despite the millions of lives lost in the First World War.
During her lifetime, she witnessed Hayling’s transformation from an isolated rural backwater into a thriving seaside resort. She outlived her husband, her elder daughter, and a grandson, before dying peacefully in her sleep in 1934.
To understand how Catherine became the capable boarding-house keeper of her later years, it helps to return to her humble beginnings: the cramped cottages, limited opportunities, and quiet countryside that shaped the life of a girl born in poverty in mid-nineteenth-century England. It was there, through hard work and adversity, that she first learned the skills and strength that would shape the rest of her life.
Follow Catherine’s journey through the timeline below, and click on each stage to read more about her life:
[i] Office for National Statistics via https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/lifeexpectancies/articles/howhaslifeexpectancychangedovertime/2015-09-09 last accessed 24 Oct 2025
