Sarah White, Yateley's Postmistress

The Yateley History Project's Census Team listed the employers and traders of 1851. At the bottom of their alphabetical list was the rather remarkable Mrs Sarah White, Postmistress. In this exhibition we concentrate on the employees and appointments of the Post Office, and the history of Chaddisbrooke and its immediate neighbour, The Old Vicarage. Mrs Sarah White was Postmistress, and she lived and ran the Post office at what is now called The Old Vicarage. In 1851 she was 77. Ten years later she was still listed as Postmistress in the 1861 census, and died at the age of 89 in 21 July 1862. She had not always been Postmistress, and just managed to grow old in the job. In the 1841 census, already a widow, at the age of 67, her occupation is given as `glazier,' that of her dead husband William White. All that branch of the White family were plumbers and glaziers -- the lead was used to hold the glass in the windows. It is reasonable to suppose that Sarah White was actually the matriarch running the business. So she took the job of Postmistress long after other would have retired.

The were 32 people over 70, out of a population of 833, in the 1851 census. The Census Team commented:

This structure may have arisen by chance, but on the other hand there may have been a good reason for the accumulation of older people in Yateley (and the shortfall aged in the early fifties). Of the 32 people over 70 in 1851, only 4 claimed to be in work. In 1861 only 8 persons were over 80, of whom 3 claimed to be in work, including Sarah White. In 1851 the miller was her lodger, and in 1861 she employed the 17 year old Elizabeth Bunch as her domestic servant -- so Postmistress was not just a titular position.

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