Great Grandma Ethel

 My uncle is continuing to regale me with his accounts of my maternal ancestors.  Last time was my grandfather. This week is the turn of my great grandmother Ethel (my grandma's mother).  It seems she had an interesting background.... (PS: I hope that he has all his dates correct).....

At some point in the mid 16th century a group of 30 siblings and cousins from a Jewish family trekked from Portugal to Devon.  The Portuguese name was somehow eventually changed to an anglicised version, and my uncle has traced a record of an ancestor, Thomas,  in that blood line appearing  in 1859.

Thomas lived in London and met and married Winnifred, who was born in 1866.   My great grandmother  Ethel was the second  of their 4 children, but a cousin thinks they might have lost twins between their first born and my great grandma.  They  then  had a 4th child before Winnifred sadly passed away, at the age of 33, when my great grandma was 3 years old.  

Thomas remarried  a widow, who had a daughter, also 3 years old.    Sadly, as not uncommon back then, this child passed away at the age of 6 years.   

My uncle recounts that his grandmother Ethel (my great grandma) told him that she felt unwanted, and when they went to lay flowers when the child's grave was finished with a headstone she was leaning over the grave, possibly to lay a flower, when her stepmother pushed her onto the grave and remarked, "It’s you who should be down there you little ***".     Eventually, at the  turn of the century, living in Chelsea, great grandma Ethel found employment with a live-in situation, as a chamber-maid in a middle-class household.

Meanwhile, going back again to the mid 16th. century, in Wiltshire lived Edward.  Later in 1857 his descendent Charles moved from Dorset to Chelsea.  Ethel was now a Housemaid/Cook and met Charles’ son, George in 1905.   They married in 1906 . They had five children and my uncle thinks there was a sixth who didn’t survive.

Ethel's husband, George, was a Hansom Cab driver who sat out in the open, in all weathers, causing him to eventually develop Tuberculosis [TB] . He died from it in 1915.   She was then a  widow with 5 children, at age 29, during WW1 - quite daunting one would think..  

It is reported that Ethel then met an Irish chap called Jack Smith and they married.   In 1919 they had a daughter Clair,  then in 1921, Winnifred    It is not known what Jack did for wages, but a great aunt told my uncle that Ethel would prepare the girls' lunch, before she went to work but it seems that Jack took both lunches every day.  Eventually  Clair told her mother  who confronted her husband who became rather violent. Fearing she and both little girls were in imminent danger, Ethel grabbed a chair, and whilst telling him what she thought of him, put him in hospital for 3 weeks.  No charges were laid, and he was never seen again.  

Later, during WW2, Ethel was Cook at the Munitions Plant on Hounslow Heath and was known to supply her  extended family with  her cakes, taking them down to the air raid shelter .  At various times,  she volunteered to put up  family members needing immediate shelter. and rarely had the opportunity to live alone and in peace    

Crikey! What a woman!