Mrs Rose Stokes

On 18 October 2015 The Odiham Society commemorated the five civilians who lost their lives as a result of the bombs which fell at the junction of High Street and Church Street 75 years ago, with a blue plaque and an exhibition in the Cross Barn.

Rose or Rosa (her birth registration name) was born in Portsmouth in 1886. Four years later in 1891 she was living in Hope House, Penhale Road, Portsea with her parents, Charles Thompson, a general porter, and Esther Thompson, a staysmaker, her brother Thomas (13) and sister Esther (8)[i].  By 1901 the family consisted of Rosa who was working as a corsets machinist, aged 14, plus her widowed mother and brother and sister.  The family were then living in Queens Road, Portsmouth[ii]

In the last quarter of 1912 Rose married Manfield Stokes of North Warnborough, in Odiham.[iii]     Their first son, William was born in 1914.  He was followed by the births of Maurice in 1915, Alfred S in 1920, Frederick Norman in 1924 and Alan in 1926[iv]. William and Alan are pictured with their mother, Rose, in the photograph below.

According to the Electoral register[i] of 1929. Rose and Manfield were living in North Warnborough. Ten years later the 1939 Register records Manfield as a builder’s labourer with a home address as 27 Salmons Field, Odiham[ii].  Manfield died later that year, aged 59.

A year later Rose also lost her life – a victim of the bombing of Odiham.  She was 54 years old.