The Lazzam Family History 
by Arthur Raymond Lazzam

Antonia and Signora Lazzam were, according to the family tradition, natives of the City of Genoa, the great seaport of Northern Italy, which was in existence in Roman times, and their home address was, it seems, known to our immediate forbears.  As a wealthy maritime republic throughout past centuries it was a rival of Venice and, like that city, was rules by Doges.  Antonio was said to have been a compositor in printing, and so must have been fully literate at a time when many were not, and was believed to have come to Britain, where his work must have been either diplomatic or, since Italian as a language was very much in vogue then, cultural.  Italy was not yet a united country but it had been invaded  by the French under Napoleon, and so many Italians were pro-British.  Our pair will have arrived by ship under full sail, probably in the Pool of London quite close to the Tower, since the Custom House, and their new address, was nearby and would have brought with them their son, also Antonio, named after his father, a tradition which has survived until today.  St. Anthony is, of course, the patron saint of Italy, and we find a close of that name near St. Katherine’s Dock.  I cannot discover the date of landing since passenger lists were not kept then, but this was post-1810 when Anthony II, as I must call him, was born.

He first married Mary, a London-born girl of the same age, and they had two girls and a boy, Anthony III, from whom I am descended, the ancestor of the senior branch of the family, but on her early death in 1842 it would seem that John Edward Mackerell, another compositor, surely an associate of Anthony I, will have heard of the motherless children and arranged with his daughter, Ciscilia Caroline, born in 1825, to take up residence with them.  On the 21st July, 1845, she gave birth to a daughter whom they called Ciscilia Eliza.  It would seem that the parents did not marry until the 4th January, 1847; perhaps her parents would not permit this until she attained her majority at age 21, especially as the parties stated merely ‘of full age’.  The marriage took place at St. John’s, Bethnal Green, for the Mackerell’s home was apparently then in Digby Street, a turning off Globe Road not far from the present tube station.  Now Anthony III had been christened (baptised) at the church of St. Boltoph’s Without (ie. just outside Aldgate, the east gate in the City walls since Roman time, but just inside the city area), an old Saxon foundation.  The present building is the one concerned, despite wartime bomb damage, although the font has probably been moved forward a few feet into the circular porch.  Here the second Mrs. Lazzam followed Mary with her own little girl on the 9th November.

On the 3rd August, 1847 another son, William John, the ancestor of your branch of the family, was born to Anthony II by Ciscilia Caroline, but not baptised until the 8th October, 1848, more than a decade after his half-brother; and finally a second sister, Emily Elizabeth, was born on the 17th of September, 1849 and baptised on the 21st October, again at St. Boltoph’s where their mother had herself been baptised together with a sister, Emma Sophia, on the 15th June, 1828.  The climate can hardly have agreed with Antonio I and Signora Lazzam and we have no record of their deaths in Britain post- 1837 when State records commenced, so perhaps they returned to their native land, now free of Napoleon, ad do many elderly emigrants today.  Anthony II remained, only to die of consumption, as did so many in the last century, aged 48, on the 13th October, 1858.  All this time the family had been living at No.3 Crown Court, Seething Lane, Great Tower Street, quite close to the Tower and to Fenchurch Street Terminus, the only one then really in the city, which they will have watched being built: it was opened in August, 1831, to improve on the Minories a year earlier still; the next, Blackfriars, was not open until 1864.

Seething Lane is famous as the site of the old Navy Office and home of Samuel Pepys, author of the well-known diary: at one end lies St. Olave where he is buried, a church visited by King Haakon of Norway: at the other lies All Hallows, Barking by the Tower, founded by St. Ethelburga, the first Abbess of Barking, Essex, on a Roman site about 675 A.D., and so the oldest of all the City churches.  But since the City churchyards were all closed in the mid-1850’s Anthony II was not buried with his wife at All Hallows, so near their home, but was taken to Bow (now City of London and Tower Hamlets) Cemetery, as with some difficulty I have recently discovered.  The family remained in Crown Court while Anthony III grew up and married, at St. Mary at Lambeth, facing the Houses of Parliament, Caroline, the daughter of James Brayley Grimes whose mother was related to Edward Wedlake Brayley and son, a notable writer and a scientist.  Anthony IV, their eldest son, my grandfather, was also born there, but the Court was demolished when the Inner Circle underground railway was being constructed around 1884.  William married Martha Eleanor Molton at St. Mark’s Church, now vanished but near St. Katherine’s Dock, the daughter of a Custom House Officer: the Custom House still exists, just south of Seething Lane.