James was born on 22nd January 1808, the first child of James Barham and Mary Peskett. They had been married for seven months so the wedding must have been arranged in some haste!  James acquired  two brothers and two sisters over the next 6 years and three further siblings who died as infants. Greater tragedy was to befall him then when in 1821 his mother died at the age of 40.  James was 13 at the time and maybe had to shoulder some responsibility in the household.

James' father must have engaged some help in raising him and his siblings in the form of Elizabeth Hazelton, who quickly took on a more intimate role with their father, bearing him 8 children.

The 1841 census shows that James was living alone in Sutton-at-Hone (where his grandparents had lived) and working as a plumber. Later that year on 14th October he married Eliza Coe, daughter of John Coe, a labourer. She was also living in Sutton-at-Hone at the time, and is recorded on the 1841 census as living with William and Sally Wiggins. It would appear she was not born in Kent. The witnesses were his sister Mary Ann and her husband Francis Viner..

On 18th December 1842 a son, Augustus, was baptised, but within a year James died of consumption, on 22nd August 1843 at the age of 35. The informant on the death certificate was a William Watson, aged 25 and also a plumber, who lived there at the time with his sister and two brothers. He was buried on 28th August. Almost a year later his son also died in November 1843 aged 1. There is no further trace of his wife Eliza after this.

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