Writing for Fun
June 2018
My Inspiration - My Grandmother (Nan) - Jeanette Rothwell
This is a continuation of the story of my family. Last month I talked about my Uncle Arthur who ran into financial difficulties because of his gambling addiction. He was rescued on various occasions by my Grandmother and I want to talk about her now.
My Nan was a very strong woman who managed, nevertheless, to be very feminine and very good at manipulating the menfok in her life! She was my inspiration!
She was the youngest of a very large family living in a place called Green Street Green in Kent.. I can find 13 of her siblings in my ancestry search, but I am sure she told me that there were 16. She remained close to the brother who was next to her in age (George). He was my godfather together with his wife, Alice, who was my godmother. Alice was also Grandad’s sister. Nan’s eldest sister, Julia, was 20 years older and Nan hardly got to know her.
Nan had received a very cursory education, having to leave school and go into service at a very young age. However, she remained very alert, curious and forward thinking right until she died at the age of 86. She avidly read the daily newspaper and always had something to say about any controversial subjects.
In a nostalgic mood, she once told us that while she was in service ‘up at the big house’ one of the footmen fancied her but she was not interested and he managed to get her the sack because of this.
In 1907 she married someone called Percy Wiles and gave birth to a daughter, Dorothy. In my investigation of this lady, it seems that Dorothy married one Edward Houren but she died at the age of 21 from peritonitis. Edward remained in contact with my Nan. I called him Uncle Ed and he addressed my Nan as ‘Mum’. I thought that he was her son but subsequently discovered that he was in fact her son in law.
Percy Wiles appears to have vanished from her life, although she never divorced him. I think I can remember talk of him going to Australia seeking his fortune. She met and lived with my Grandad, Arthur Mingay, and took his name. Subsequently she gave birth to Irene Louise Rose (my mother) and Arthur William George (my Uncle Arthur). My further investigations discovered that she did in fact eventually marry Grandad, but after my mother was born. I believe, in those days, that if there had been no contact with the first husband after 7 years, it could be presumed that he had died, and it was OK to re-marry.
During the first World War, Grandad was sent to Salonica in Greece (its now called Thesalonica) and she was left to cope with two young children. Before he went to war he is listed as a “Handsome Cab cleaner”. During that war Nan worked in a munitions factory, preparing the webbing shoulder pieces that housed bullets for the soldiers. She subsequently worked in Lloyds Tobacco Factory which produced Old Holborn tobacco, and became a Forelady. She was not a wonderfully well woman and had various operations over the years, but she was very stoic and always soldiered on no matter what. She emphasized to the whole family to be honest and hard working and was certainly an inspiration to us all.
My Grandad died at about the age of 67. He had a younger brother, Fred, who never married but had lived with a lady who I called Aunt Bertha. However, in a very short time after Grandad’s death, Fred proposed to my Grandmother who was a pensioner by then. Her answer was unprintably in the negative.
She was always forward thinking. I lived with her and my mother up until 1963 when I got married and left home. They moved to a smaller flat and then to a new complex in Islington. My Grandmother, then in her seventies, was very excited about the move and talked about new curtains and covers which she had seen on television. She refused to live in the past and we could only get her to talk about her early life when she was in a mellow mood and had consumed a glass or two of port and lemon.
Nan died from an aneurysm, it says on her death certificate. My mother, who was with her, said that she was watching her favourite comedian, Kenneth Williams, on television. She suddenly laughed and then appeared to pass out. Mum went over to find out what was wrong and she had died laughing!