No 7. Louisa Kelsey and Robert Joseph Ripley
Date: 1890s
Why is it important: The importance of fishing in Emsworth.
Louisa Kelsey (1835-1916) from Bedhampton and Emsworthian Robert Joseph Ripley (1834-1921) married locally in 1858. Robert Joseph was described as a fisherman in all census returns, 1851-1911. The museum holds a reproduction of a wooden box used to transport oysters and inscribed with Ripley’s name and description "Shellfish Merchant". It is likely he was an oysterman until 1902, when the Emsworth oyster trade was decimated by the poisoning scandal. The couple had ten children and dwelled in Nile Street until the 1880s when they moved to South Street. In Victorian Emsworth Nile and South Street residents were dominated by fishermen.
View this in the Oyster Gallery in the northeast corner of the Museum