In 1851 John Sampson was a Copper Miner living in Higher Lux Street with his wife Lucy. Ten years later John and Lucy had moved to Winsor Row in St Cleer, lodging with his mother and two brothers, James and Richard. John had had a career change and had become an ‘Inspector of Waterworks’. In 1871 he had progressed to ‘Superintendent of Waterworks’, Lucy was working as a Cook for the Attorney Christopher Childs, they both lived in the Childs’ servants’ quarters in Dean Terrace on New Road.

Promotion to ‘Manager of the Liskeard Waterworks’ enabled Sampson to take a lease on no.6 Manley Terrace, Station Road. The 1881 census lists the occupants as John (58), Lucy (56), their niece Ellen (19) and Louisa Gillett (68) a widowed Lodger. Manley Terrace is named after the Rev. Orlando Manley who, in 1842, owned the field on which the terrace is built. The field measured one acre, three roods and nine perches and was classed as Arable land. The tithe payable to the Vicar of Liskeard was 4 shillings and 10 pence.

Sampson is mentioned in the book ‘The 1891 Blizzard in the West’ by A.H. Swiss. The water supply to Liskeard stopped when the leat feeding the reservoir on St Cleer Downs was blocked by an immense snow drift. Now the ‘Inspector of the Water’, Sampson organised the removal of the snow drift when ‘For nearly twelve hours a gang of men dug at the drift and succeeded in freeing the leat and saving the town from a water famine’.

Lucy died in Liskeard on November 23, 1893, and on February 18, 1898 John and his only child, daughter Nellie, boarded the ship ‘Ophir’ at the start of a 56 day voyage to Adelaide, South Australia. The passenger list described them as a ‘Gentleman’ and a ‘Lady’. The purpose of the trip was to visit John’s brother Richard, who had become a pillar of the community in the township of Gawler, near Adelaide. Sadly, at the age of 76, John Sampson died in Gawler West on December 31st 1898 and was interred in the nearby Willaston Cemetery.

By Brian Oldham, museum volunteer and Bard of the Gorsedh Kernow