Emily Bent Payne (nee Clarke) was Charlie Payne's mother, and is referred to in his diaries as 'Mother' or 'Ma'. Emily was the eldest daughter of Detective Chief Inspector George Clarke and his wife Elizabeth, and was born in Marylebone on 28 September 1853. She appears to have suffered some ill health as a young woman, but precisely what caused this is unknown. On 10 August 1876 she married Henry Stableforth Payne at the church of St John Evangelist, Smith Square, Westminster. The couple had seven children between 1877 and 1891. In 1877, shortly after the birth of her first child, Harry, she was a defence witness at the Old Bailey trial of her father for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. He was acquitted. Emily and her husband lived in Westminster after they were married but moved to East Dulwich by 1891. After her husband had died in 1909, she moved to Hither Green where she was living with sons Harry and Norman, and daughter, Beatrice in 1911. Later, i.e. 1917-1919 she was living with her two daughters in Forest Hill. She died, aged 78, on 2 April 1932 at the home of her youngest son, Norman, in Croydon. She was buried at Brookwood Cemetery, Woking.
