Sydney Francis Underhill
Mayor of Oxford 1910/11
Sydney Francis Underhill (1860–1934) was born in Oxford on 23 March 1860, the seventh child and fifth son of Alderman Charles Underhill (Mayor in 1887).
In the 1850s Sydney’s father had opened a new grocery shop at 37 Cornmarket Street and moved house with his second wife, Ellen, to Diamond Villa in South Parade. Sydney can be found there with his parents in the 1861 census at the age of one, with his older half-siblings Frederick R. (16), Ernest (14), and Ellen (13), as well as Emily (5), who was probably a full sister. In 1870 Sydney’s father took a lease on Woodbridge Lodge (now 57 Banbury Road and a Hertford College house), and the the 1871 census shows Sydney here as a boy of 11, with a new younger brother, George F.
In 1881, when he was 21, Sydney was still living with his parents at 57 Banbury Road. In 1888 he married Emily Matilda, the fourth daughter of the Revd Dr James Spence of the Poultry Chapel, London, and they moved to 2 St Michael Street (which was then numbered 20b New Inn Hall Street) on the opposite corner to the family grocer’s shop at 37 Cornmarket Street. He and his wife had two sons, Sydney and Kenneth, born in 1890 and 1894.
Sydney followed his father Charles on to the council as well as into the grocery trade, and was the first Oxford shopkeeper to use electricity.
Sydney Underhill was elected to the City Council in 1898 as Liberal representative of the South Ward. The 1901 census shows him at the age of 41 living at 2 St Michael Street with Emily and his two sons Sydney (10) and Charles Kenneth James (6), and a cook and housemaid.
In 1905 the family moved into a newly-built house at 203 Woodstock Road (right), and Underhill’s third son, Charles Kenneth James, was born there and baptised at St Michael’s Church on 9 May 1906. His two elder sons both won scholarships to Winchester and then scholarships at Brasenose and Balliol in 1909 and 1913 respectively.
Underhill was made Sheriff of Oxford in 1909/10. He was elected Mayor for 1910/11, and George V was crowned during his mayoral year on 22 June 1911.
Underhill moved out of 203 Woodstock Road in 1920 and went to live in London. He died at his home at Newcombe Park, Mill Hill in July 1934 at the age of 74, and was buried in St Paul’s Churchyard at Mill Hill.
See also:
- Charles Underhill, Mayor 1887 (his father)
- Oxford Journal Illustrated, 15 September 1915, p. 8 ("Who’s Who in Oxford")
- Oxford Times, 20 July 1934, p. 17a (obituary)
- 1861 Census: Oxford (St Giles), 891/93
- 1871 Census: Oxford (St Paul), 1436/113
- 1881 Census: Oxford (St Giles), 1500/5
- 1891 Census: Not in index
- 1901 Census: Oxford (St Michael), 1385/31