Reporting on a case at the Eastbourne Sessions in May 1889, where a local wood merchant charged a young Gypsy named Andrew Dighton (Deighton/Dyton) with unlawfully eloping with his daughter, Caroline Smith, newspapers took a romantic view.
‘Mr. Smith stated that his daughter was under 18 years of age and had manifested a strong passion for the young Gypsy, who is a good-looking youth about her age. Mrs. Smith sent her daughter shopping, but instead of going on the errands she went to the Gypsy and urged him to elope with her from Eastbourne. Dighton strongly refused, but Miss Smith pleaded so passionately with her Gypsy lover that he was forced to submit and they left Eastbourne secretly, taking with them a small tent.’
After this there appears to have been an amusing attempt to catch the runaways, who ‘passed on to Brighton, Uckfield, Tunbridge Wells and Woolwich, followed by their fathers, and the police,’ the press adding that ‘it was not until the girl was found living with Dighton in the tent on Plumstead Marshes that the detectives caught up with them.’ The magistrate hearing the case decided to discharge Andrew Dighton, who pleaded that ‘the girl had proposed and urged the elopement against his will, and that he did not know she was under 18.’ (Andrew was born in 1869, the son of Andrew Dighton and Janetta/Ellen, and was first baptised in Crockenhill, Kent, on 23rd June that year and then again with his sister, Migela, at Plumstead, Kent, on 12th November 1871; Caroline appears to have been one or two years younger.)
By the time Andrew and Caroline married in 1893 they were already parents to two little boys, Andrew and Henry. Finally, on 30th January the union took place at Etchingham, in Sussex, where Andrew Dighton, 23, son of Andrew, wed Caroline Smith, 22, daughter of John, hawker, and where Andrew’s mother, Ellen Dighton, was one of the witnesses. The couple’s first child, Andrew, had been born on 17th May 1890, and baptised at the Holy Trinity Church, Lamorbey, Kent, on 15th June that year, son of James Andrew and Caroline Dighton. It is the first time we see Andrew using an additional name, which was, incidentally, his grandfather’s, but it wasn’t to be the last. The baby Andrew is with his parents in the 1891 census, aged 11 months, but he died in 1897 and was buried on 4th June at East Wickham, Kent.
Andrew and Caroline’s second son, Henry, was baptised on 23rd July 1892 at the church of St. Peter & St. Paul, Shoreham; William was baptised in the same church on 13th July 1894; Eliza at East Wickham, ‘daughter of a Gypsy,’ on 20th June 1897; John at the same church on 11th June 1899; Thomas, baptised at St. Michael’s, East Wickham on 16th August 1901, but dying the following year; Samson, born on 27th August 1903, was baptised at Gravesend, in Kent,on 20th November 1903; Isaiah at East Wickham on 4th June 1905; Levi, also at East Wickham, on 26th July 1908; Isabel Emily was born in 1911; Caroline, baptised on 1st July 1914 at St. Augustine’s, Belvedere, Kent.
The couple were not only to have a large family, but a long union and they, as well as their children, were to continue to favour Kent. Henry Dighton married Abigail Baird, daughter of James hawker, at East Wickham on 10th November 1912 and they baptised Emily Isabella at Belvedere on 4th February 1914, Henry in the same church on 16th May 1917, Abigail was born in 1919, but died the same year; Adolphus was baptised at Belvedere on 26th July 1922 and Samuel, at the same place, on 23rd November 1924. William Dighton wed Beatrice Pearce, daughter of Charles, hawker, on 6th February 1921 at Belvedere, where they baptised Samson on 3rd January 1923 and Isaiah at the same location on 18th December 1924. Eliza Dighton married John/Levi Boswell at St. Michael’s, East Wickham, on 25th February 1917; John Dighton appears to have formed a union with Mary Gumble, who he is with in the 1939 records. Samson was in a partnership with Esther; his brother, Isaiah, married out of the county, at Woking, in Surrey, on 21st April 1930, as son of Andrew, dealer, to Georgina Deacon, where he made his mark on the wedding certificate. Levi seems to have married Catherine Devlin in 1938 in the registration district of Dartford; Isabel Emily had also wed there in 1931 to Arthur Miles, son of Arthur. Caroline, meanwhile, married in the same church in which she had been baptised in November 1933 to Arthur Jackson, with witnesses John Dighton and Eliza Boswell, and where her father is recorded, once again, as James Andrew Dighton.
In the 1939 records several members of the family are camping out in tents, while working at Hollingbourne, Kent, on a farm. This includes Henry and Abigail, with son Samuel, born in 1923, and daughter Caroline, born 1925; William and Beatrice, with their son Samson, born in 1922; John with Mary Gumble, together with his brother, Samson, wife Esther and a son, Harry George, born in 1928. In Erith, Kent, Levi is with his parents, Andrew and Caroline Dighton, living in Occupation Road and in the same road are Arthur and Caroline Jackson, who had a son, Isaiah, born in 1934. Isaiah and Georgina Dighton, however, remain in Woking, Surrey, where he is working as a lorry driver.
Andrew Dighton was to die in January 1941, although hsi widow, Caroline, did not get probate, presumably owing to the war and subsequent difficulties, until 1950, when the sum of £158.7/- was awarded to her. Caroline herself had a very long life – indeed at her burial in 1957 it was claimed she was 90 years of age, actually she was pretty near, probably in her late eighties, after what had been an adventurous life, partly surely because she had run away with a Gypsy lad.