Isaac Crabb was christened at Littleport on 1 November 1835, the eldest child of Thomas Crabb, an agricultural labourer of the Burnt Fen bank, and Susanna Pagett. He grew up to the fen work, and at twenty married Alice Gooch of Littleport. Then, about 1860, he did what fen men of his generation famously did: he took his family and a company of Littleport neighbours to London, to dig. The 1861 census finds them at 6 Warmington Road, Plaistow — Isaac a 'labourer on sewers' — in the years and the very parish of Bazalgette's great outfall works; another Littleport Crabb household lived at the same address, his brother William lodged down the road, and a Barber from home boarded nearby. The colony sent its children home for baptism and, by the mid-1860s, went home itself. Then in April 1868 Alice died, aged thirty, with the baby James — buried at Littleport in the same week — leaving Isaac with four children. The next March he married Rachel Barber at Ely, a Littleport labourer's daughter twelve years his junior, and the 1871 census sets them in Burnt Fen Bank Cottage, next door to his parents, as if the story would now stand still.
It did not. In July 1872 the Crown Inn auctioned the land Isaac worked — 'Lot 9… in the occupation of Mr. Isaac Crabb, who is under notice to quit at Lady Day next' — and the family's own memory, set down by his granddaughter Hilda, finishes it: 'Isaac had a dispute with his employer and simply packed his bags and put these and his family onto a train. The end of the line was Hull and so that was where they settled.' Hull was hard at first — their little Matilda died there, aged four, in 1876 — and Isaac worked whatever the town offered for thirty years: brickyard labourer at Cottingham, labourer, yard sweeper, and at last, at Alfred's wedding in 1905, railwayman. What changed his life was not the work. About 1881, when William Booth's new Salvation Army reached Hull, Isaac became a founder member — 'this brought about a huge change for the better,' Hilda said plainly, 'in his behaviour towards his wife and family' — and the Army became the family's church for two generations: the Madeley Street corps photograph on Alfred's page shows five of his grandchildren in its ranks, and a grandson would rise to Major.
Isaac died in January 1910, at Harrow Street, aged seventy-four. Hilda's account — 'at the time of his death, Isaac was a well loved and respected man. Hundreds lined the streets of Hessle Road as the funeral processed' — might once have been taken for a granddaughter's fond enlargement. It is not. The War Cry itself, the Army's national paper, carried the Hull West corps' report that week: Brother Isaac Crabb's funeral service conducted by Staff-Captain Vickers, the Citadel Band playing, 'a large attendance', and a Memorial Service after; and in the Hull Times his widow thanked 'one and all for sympathy and respect practically shown in the hour of need'. The fen labourer who dug London's sewers and rode the train to the end of the line was buried like a soldier.
Composed from validated records · 2026-07-29