Emma Maud ELLIS
We are very grateful to Emma’s descendant Taryn Ellis for her help with this story. She had already done the research and was kind enough to send us family photographs and some pages from her grandfather’s memoir, from which we have quoted some extracts.
Early years
Emma Maud Ellis was born Emily Aldridge at Hackney workhouse infirmary on 1 August 1879. Her mother Phoebe Aldridge had been admitted to the infirmary on 10 June. She was 17 and unmarried. From the limited records available, we do not know whether she remained in the infirmary through June and July, or whether she was discharged and readmitted.
Four months after Emma’s birth, Phoebe was married to George Broadhead at St James’ church in Bethnal Green.
Over the next 7 years, Phoebe and George had three children: two girls (Phoebe and Harriett), and a boy (George Thomas).
Tragedy
Sadly their mother Phoebe died from tuberculosis in 1887.
After their mother’s death, the three girls, Emma, Phoebe and Harriett, went to live with their grandmother Emma Aldridge, and their mother’s sister Ellen, at 14 Dainty Street in Hackney, and in the 1891 census they are enumerated there with surname Aldridge. It was
“…a small house in a mean street; from time to time a gentleman, top hatted, frockcoat, silver top walking stick and gold watch chain across his waistcoat came to see the girls and pay the grandmother money. Phoebe was not sure whether this was their true grandmother or not or if the gentleman was their father. In time the three sisters after very brief schooling were placed out to service as house maids.”
We are not sure what happened to George Broadhead after his wife’s death. In various documents he is described as a dresser, a horsehair dresser, a carman, a labourer, a cabinet maker, and a soldier. Nor do we know what became of his son George Thomas.
At the time of the 1901 census, Emma was working as a servant in the household of chartered accountant Harry P Archer in Hackney.
Marriage
In September 1910, Emma married James Thomas Ellis at St Mark’s in Kennington.
James seems to have been quite a character. In his youth he ran away from home several times. In 1900 he lied about his age to join the Gloucestershire Regiment. He served in the Boer War, and spent five years in India. These years were
“…in his opinion the best years of his life. Returning to England he had a lukewarm reception from his father who had not approved of his son as a common soldier.”
Transferred to the army reserve in 1908, James learned to drive a motor vehicle and qualified as a London taxi driver, and was “making good money” by the time of his marriage to Emma.
The couple’s first home was at 191 Mayall Road, Herne Hill . Their first child, James, was born in June 1911. In his own words:
“….my memories start from an early age with father announcing that as a reservist he had been recalled to the army in preparation for the outbreak of the 1914/18 war with Germany. I was then three years of age and have a recollection of riding with father and mother in a taxi to Waterloo station and watching father in uniform with kit bag, rifle and other equipment boarding a train crowded with soldiers singing and shouting as the engine with a tall funnel pulled the train from the station. My next recollection was his return at the end of the war, but during this period I saw from the road outside our house a German airship brought down by an airman named Robinson who was killed when his tiny single seater plane blew up together with the airship. Mother took me to see other places damaged by bombs dropped, all small incidents by today’s standard but very alarming at the time.”
[James’ memory is faulty here: William Leefe Robinson VC was the first RFC pilot to shoot down a Zeppelin over London, but he wasn’t killed. The encounter took place in the early hours of 3 September 1916. The Zeppelin crashed at Cuffley in Hertfordshire.]
A second son, Reginald Frank was born in 1920. We have a photo of the family in 1922:
By this time the family had moved to 89 Flaxman Road in Camberwell, where they would live until 1924 when, according to son James’ memoir, they moved to Dagenham.
Electoral registers reveal that the family were back in London by 1930 and living in Clapham; first in Edgeley Road and then in Killyon Road.
Emma Maud does not appear with husband James in the London voters lists after 1932 and this is probably the time that she was admitted to the mental hospital system. We do not have access to any case notes for her so we have no knowledge of the circumstances.
Emma died at The Grove hospital (otherwise known as Long Grove) on 22nd January 1940 from heart disease and arterio sclerosis. The home address entered on the death register was 135 Edgeley Road, where the family had lived circa 1930/31. This is another clue as to the date that she was admitted to hospital. Very few records have survived for Long Grove patients so we may never know precisely when, or what caused her to be admitted.