In September 1878, she leased for seven years a semidetached cottage called 2 Vine Cottages, later renamed Mayfield and now 9 Park Road, from Miss Elizabeth Ives, who lived with her widowed mother, Jane, at number 1. The house was described thus, ‘a small but very respectable house, and its appearance would suggest that it is the dwelling of a person in good circumstances’. Ironically the street was only two streets parallel to that where Isabella Bankes died twenty years previously. She did not see much of her neighbours, with Jane Ives remarking, ‘I did not know Mrs Thomas personally, I knew there was a lady of that name living next door’. Mrs Thomas did not have any close friends in Richmond, only a number of acquaintances, and this worked to her disadvantage.