Susanna Padget

1815 – 1903

✓ Validated against records · 2026-07-08

Susanna Padget is the woman behind the gap that stood on the Crabb page — Thomas Crabb's wife, Isaac's mother, and the eldest child of John Padget, a Littleport farm labourer, and his wife Mary. She was baptised at Littleport on 15 June 1815, entry No. 199 in a register where the trade column reads Labourer down the whole page; the vicar who christened her, John Vachell, would watch the parish rise in the riots eleven months later. The records never settle her name — Paget at the font, Pagett at her wedding, Susan Crabb in every census — but her family's pages carry Mum's spelling, Padget.

She married Thomas Crabb at Littleport church on 15 February 1835, nineteen years old, by banns and — the entry records it — with the consent of her parents. She signed with her mark. Their first child, Isaac, was baptised that November, and nine more children followed; from 1851 to 1881 the censuses set the family out on the black land east of the Ouse — Burnt Fen, Burnt Fen Bank, Ten Mile Bank — and in 1871 they had Isaac and Rachel for near neighbours: her son, married to her sister Hannah's daughter. The two Padget sisters tied the Crabbs and the Barbers together twice over.

Thomas was buried in May 1887, and Susanna's last sixteen years are the plainest record of what a fen labourer's widowhood was. In 1891 she is alone in two rooms at The City, Littleport, her occupation entered as pauper, in a run of schedules that is widow after widow, most of them paupers in two rooms; in 1901, at eighty-five, she is at The Holmes, one of six widows in a row of identical two-room cottages, every one of them Littleport-born. She died where she was baptised, in the first quarter of 1903, aged eighty-seven.

Her page closes the gap the Crabb tree carried: through Susanna the line now runs unbroken from Ida Crabb back through Isaac to John Padget and Mary, and behind them to Thomas Padget and Mary Aspland, married at Littleport in 1792 — where the Padget record, for the moment, stops.

Composed from validated records · 2026-07-08

Family

Parents

JPFatherJohn Padget1793–1878

The children of John & Mary

Susanna Padget b. 1815this page · · Hannah Padget b. 1823 · · · · · ·

Marriage

TCSpouseThomas Crabb1811–1887

Children

ICChild · the line continuesIsaac Crabbmain line1835–1910

Life

Confirmed — anchored to a recordEstimated — inferred

1815

Baptised at Littleport — entry No. 199

15 June 1815 at Littleport, Cambridgeshire

No. 199 — [Baptized]
June 15 [1815] — Susanna Dr. of — John & Mary — Paget — [Abode] Littleport — [Quality, Trade or Profession] Labourer — [Ceremony by] John Vachell Vicar. (Three entries above her, No. 196: Sarah, daughter of Christopher & Mary Crabb, baptised
June 12 — a Crabb and a Padget christening on the same leaf, twenty years before the wedding. On the whole opening every father but a blacksmith is entered 'Labourer'.)
— Littleport baptisms 1815 — Bishop's Transcript, entry No. 199

Read at the image record Evidence

Confirmed against the original record, read at the image:

Littleport baptisms 1815 — Bishop's Transcript, entry No. 199 — England, Cambridgeshire Bishop's Transcripts, 1538-1983 — Littleport composite volume (baptisms 1718-1832), image 584 of 872, printed Rose's Act page [25], entry No. 199. Read at the image (FamilySearch ark 3:1:3QS7-892X-HQWM), 8 July 2026. Also in the CFHS transcripts (fmp Cambridgeshire Baptisms, GBPRS/B/323608293/1: 'dau of John, lab, & Mary, otp'). read at the image

1816

The riot year

Susanna was eleven months old in May 1816, when Littleport's labourers — men of exactly her father's class and parish — met at the Globe Inn and the fen erupted. The rioters marched on Ely behind a punt-gun mounted on a farm wagon; the vicar of Littleport, John Vachell, who had baptised Susanna the June before, fled his vicarage as it was ransacked. A Special Commission sat at Ely that summer: five men were hanged, and the parish watched dozens more gaoled or transported. The Padgets appear nowhere in the trial record — but the hunger that drove the rising was the weather of every labouring family on that page of the register.

Historical context Evidence

Background composed for this site from published history. It frames the family’s world; it is not one of Mum’s records.

1835

Married Thomas Crabb — by banns, with consent

15 February 1835 at Littleport, Cambridgeshire

Thomas Crabb — of this Parish, Bachelor, and Susan Pagett — of this Parish, Spinster, were married in this Church by banns with Consent of Parents this fifteenth Day of
February in the Year one Thousand eight Hundred and thirty five. By me Richard Hart Curate of the parish. This Marriage was solemnized between us { Thomas Crabb { Susan Pagett X her mark. In the Presence of { Thomas Lee X his mark { Mary Bent X her mark.
— Marriage of Thomas Crabb & Susan Pagett — Littleport, 1835

Read at the image record Evidence

Confirmed against the original record, read at the image:

Marriage of Thomas Crabb & Susan Pagett — Littleport, 1835 — England, Cambridgeshire Bishop's Transcripts, 1538-1983 — 'Littleport. Baptism Records 1833-1857, Marriage Records 1833-1837', image 49 of 433, first of three entries on the 1835 marriages page. Read at the image (FamilySearch ark 3:1:3QS7-896W-FVT9), 8 July 2026. Corroborated: England Marriages 1538-1973 index; Boyd's Marriage Indexes bride entry 'Susan Paget, 1835, Littleport'. read at the image

1835

Married Thomas Crabb

15 February 1835

15th February, 1835 to Susanna Pagett— From our research

Mum’s record Evidence

From our research.

1891

Widowed — two rooms at The City

1891 at Littleport, Cambridgeshire

The City [ditto] — 1 house — 2 rooms occupied — Susan Crabb, Head, Widow, 76 — [occupation a ditto chain resolving to] Pauper — [born] Cambs, Littleport. Her stretch of The City is widow after widow, most alone in two rooms: William Kent, widower, pauper, of Suffolk (sched. 161); William & Hannah Nicholas, 78 and 70 (162); Susan Butcher, widow, 76 (163); Susanna herself (164); Mary Nightall, widow, of Sunderland (165); Ann Gill, widow, 86 (166).
— 1891 census — The City, Littleport

Read at the image record Evidence

Confirmed against the original record, read at the image:

1891 census — The City, Littleport — 1891 Census of England, Wales & Scotland — The National Archives RG 12/1299, folio 28, page 22, schedule 164; Ely registration district, Littleport sub-district, ED 2; ecclesiastical parish St George. Read at the image (findmypast), 8 July 2026. read at the image

1901

The Holmes — six widows in a row

1901 at Littleport, Cambridgeshire

The Holmes [ditto] — 1 house — 2 rooms — Susan Crabb, Head, Widow, 85 — [no occupation] — Cambs, Littleport. Schedules 128-133 are six widows in a row, each alone in two rooms, every one Littleport-born: Mary Fulcher 80, Mary Gillett 84, Sarah Walker 82, Susan Crabb 85, Charlotte Lee 70, Rebecca Smith 72.
— 1901 census — The Holmes, Littleport

Read at the image record Evidence

Confirmed against the original record, read at the image:

1901 census — The Holmes, Littleport — 1901 Census of England, Wales & Scotland — The National Archives RG 13/1547, folio 55, page 21, schedule 131; Ely registration district, Littleport sub-district, ED 4; ecclesiastical parish St George. Read at the image (findmypast), 8 July 2026. read at the image

1903

Died at Littleport, aged 87

1903 at Littleport, Cambridgeshire

Susan Crabb — birth year 1815 — death Q1 1903 — Ely district, Cambridgeshire.— GRO death index — Susan Crabb, Q1 1903, Ely

Confirmed in index record Evidence

Found in an index or transcript — the original page not yet read:

GRO death index — Susan Crabb, Q1 1903, Ely — England & Wales deaths 1837-2007 (GRO index), Q1 1903, Ely district, Cambridgeshire — Susan Crabb, birth year 1815; the sole result for the name in the district 1902-04. Searched findmypast, 8 July 2026. index entry — original not yet seen

Our research

Susanna across the records

Research · Littleport

Her own arc is read: baptism and marriage at the Bishop's Transcript images, the 1891 and 1901 censuses at the enumeration pages, the death in the GRO index. The married decades (1841–1881) stand on Mum's census readings on Thomas Crabb's page. Still open:

Burial: Littleport St George burials 1903 are not online — Cambridgeshire Archives lookup (Jon's action, or a record-office order — a purchase).
Death certificate, Q1 1903 Ely district — optional; a purchase.
The family censuses 1841–1881 at the images (they live on Thomas Crabb's page at Mum's hand) — a round-two upgrade, ours.
Her mother Mary's maiden name — waits on the Littleport marriage register 1813–37 at Cambridgeshire Archives (see John Padget's thread).