The 1841 census listed another Thomas Norris in Uttoxeter besides the one who was a relieving officer [1]. This second Thomas was a printer and bookseller living in the Market Place and was somewhat younger, having been born in 1809 [2]. He was at this stage unmarried and living with his mother Ann and sister Jane. He married Ann Caroline Fowler of Leominster in 1845 [3] and went on to be steward of the Wesleyan Methodist church in Uttoxeter. His sister Jane married a Wesleyan minister (John Peaviour Johnson) in 1844 [4].

However, it is their mother Ann who is the most intriguing figure. She was born Ann Schofield and married Thomas & Jane’s father John Norris at Leek in 1806 [4]. Sometime after Thomas’s birth in 1809 and that of Jane in 1814 the family decamped to Pentwyn in Llanfair Kilgeddin, Monmouthshire [5]. John Norris had been a baker but became a farmer in Wales. By 1834 Ann was a widow and was living in Uttoxeter again. In May of that year she requested to register a printing press and thus the firm of A. Norris & Son of Uttoxeter was born [6]. This must have been quite a departure from her life as the wife of a baker then farmer. What happened in those 20 years between 1814 and 1834 remains to be uncovered.

Ann died in Uttoxeter in December 1848 aged 72 [7]. Her son continued the business in the name of A. Norris & Son until the 1860s when it hit the rocks financially [8].

[1] TNA, HO 107/1007 1841 census for Uttoxeter

[2] SRO, D3891/1/8 Uttoxeter St Mary Register of baptisms

[3] SRO, D3891/1/20 Uttoxeter St Mary Register of marriages; Derby Mercury, 21 Feb 1844, p.3

[4] SRO, D1040/5/10 Leek St Edward Register of marriages

[5] Gwent Archives, D/Pa 71.1-71.8 Records of parish church of Goytrey, Monmouthshire

[6] SRO, Q/SB 1834 T33 Printing press declaration 1834

[7] SRO, D3891/1/34 Uttoxeter St Mary Register of burials

[8] Perry’s Bankrupt Weekly Gazette, 11 Oct 1862, p.7