MY GRANDPARENTS - I - MY GREAT-GRANDPARENTS - I - MY GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS - I - MY GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS
KNOTT - I - BOWLES - I - WATERS - I - HARRALL - I - PAGE - I - WISEMAN - I - CROSS - I - CARTER
CORNWELL - I - HUCKLE - I - MORTLOCK - I - MANSFIELD - I - REYNOLDS - I - CARTER - I - ANABLE - I - STEARN
CHRONOLOGY - I - DRAMATIS PERSONAE - I - WHERE PEOPLE CAME FROM - I - CALENDAR
MAP OF ELY - I - MAP OF MEDWAY
MAP OF
CAMBRIDGE AND DISTRICT
WORLD WAR I - I - WORLD WAR II
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The
Wiseman family: the Waterside's labouring poor
My
Father's Mother's Father's Mother's family
The narrative can be read in conjunction with the Page family tree. You can see
places significant to the Wiseman family on the site map of Ely.
This family story includes material from, and links with,
the stories of the Page, Cross and Carter families. My direct ancestors are highlighted
in bold the first time they appear in the
narrative.
The Waterside district of Ely was, until well into the 20th Century, one of the poorest areas of housing in Cambridgeshire. Four of my sixteen great-great-grandparents lived and died there, and many of their descendants were born in the same small group of streets beside the river, including my father. What brought William Wiseman, a labourer from over the border in Mildenhall, Suffolk, to the Waterside district we will never know, but on 4th February 1841 he married Ely girl Elizabeth Appleyard in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral. They were my great-great-great-grandparents. They both gave their address as Ship Lane, off of Broad Street, in the Waterside district. This was probably an address of convenience, because the census of a month later finds them living in Hatch's Cottage at Stuntney, just outside the city but still in the Holy Trinity parish.
Elizabeth Appleyard was from an Ely Waterside family of long standing, related to the boatbuilding family of the same name. The Appleyard boatyard still exists in Ely today. But it is likely that Elizabeth was from a poorer branch of the family, as her husband William is not shown on any census as anything other than a labourer - indeed, by 1871 he is described as an unemployed labourer.
Elizabeth was six months pregnant at the time of the marriage, and in April she gave birth to a child. The couple called him John. Sadly, the little boy lived for just two weeks, and William and Elizabeth would have four more children who would die in infancy. In the poverty of the Waterside, this was not an unusal occurence, and soon after the death of the child William and Elizabeth moved back into the city slums, athough they would be recorded at various addresses in the parish registers, including out in the fen. Their seventh child, born in 1853 in the unfortunately named Common Muckhill on the Waterside, was my great-great-grandmother Alice Wiseman. William and Elizabeth had eleven children altogether:
John Wiseman Born Stuntney, Cambridgeshire, in May 1841. He was baptised in Holy Trinity parish on 5th of May, but buried in the Holy Trinity graveyard in the cathedral close on 12th May. At the time of his birth and death, his parents were living in Hatch's Cottage, Stuntney. Abraham
William Wiseman Thomas
Wiseman Susan
Ann Wiseman Emma
Wiseman Benjamin
Wiseman Alice
Wiseman Susannah
Wiseman Susan
Ann Wiseman Benjamin
Wiseman There is then a gap of eight years until James
Wiseman |
Alice Wiseman, my great-great-grandmother, was baptised in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral on 22nd October 1853. The 1861 census for Ely is lost, but in 1871 she was still living with her parents in Victoria Street, which runs between Broad Street and the River Ouse. Just around the corner in Broad Street, a 22 year old man was living in lodgings. His name was Henry Page, and he was my great-great-grandfather. On the 5th July 1873, Henry Page and Alice Wiseman were married in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral.
Henry Page was a stone dresser from Great Shelford in the outskirts of Cambridge. His work must have been in demand in the 1870s when Cambridge, and its colleges in particular, were undergoing a building boom, and there were several stoneyards in the town. Many colleges were adding new stone buildings in the gothic style, but perhaps Henry's work took him further afield, because It is likely that it was the restoration project at Ely Cathedral which had brought Henry to Ely. In fact, Henry had still been living in Shelford at the time of the 1871 census, but Alice was pregnant at the time of their marriage. After their marriage, Henry and Alice moved into a house in Broad Street, the main road through the Waterside, where their first child, also called Henry, was born in January 1874. The family would remain in this part of Ely for the rest of their lives. Several of Alice's great-grandchildren, including my father, would be born in the Waterside. Even today, it is possible to find Henry and Alice's descendants living in this small group of streets beside the river.
The following year, Henry and Alice and thier infant son had moved around the corner to Annesdale, which runs at the other end of Victoria Street to Broad Street, for the birth of their second son William, and on 31st March 1879 their third son, my great-grandfather Arthur Page, was born in the Annesdale house. Henry and Alice would have thirteen children in all. They were still living in Annesdale at the time of the 1881 census. Henry was no longer a stone dresser, declaring his occupation as an agricultural labourer. The restoration of the cathedral was complete, and there was little other work for a stone dresser in the Isle of Ely. Henry and Alice and their family were back on Broad Street by the census of 1891, and their address makes it clear that they were living next door to the Cutter Tap public house. After 1891, the family moved to Newnham Street, possibly then to Ship Lane, and then to Willow Walk, where the last Page child, Ellen, would be born in 1899. All these streets are very close together.
A few weeks after the 1891 census, Henry's father Robert died in Great Shelford. His mother Eliza died there three years later. Alice's father William died at home in Back Hill, Ely in 1896. After a funeral service in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral, he was buried on 17th October in Ely Cemetery in plot D601. Alice's mother Elizabeth, formerly of the poorer strand of the Appleyard family, survived her husband. Most curiously, she is to be found on the 1901 census at the age of eighty living as a boarder in Fulham, west London. I cannot account for this, but it seems to be her. There do not appear to be any of her relatives in the same house. She died there in 1906, aged eighty-three.
These are the thirteen children of Henry and Alice Page:
Henry Page Born Broad Street, Ely in January 1874. He was baptised in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral on 4th February. In 1901, Henry is shown as a railway labourer, and in 1911 as a labourer in the jam factory. He lived at several different addresses in the Waterside area in the years after the 1891 census. He was still unmarried in 1911. On Boxing Day 1916, Henry was a witness at his brother Thomas's marriage to Emily Price in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral. Henry died at the age of 62, and was buried in Ely cemetery on 3rd November 1936, in plot G140. William
Robert Page Emma
Page Arthur
Page John
Page Herbert
Page Herbert married Eliza Woodbine in the 4th quarter of 1908, possibly at St Mary's in Ely. They moved into a house in Back Lane. Their first child was called Herbert after his father. He was born in Back Lane, Ely on the 12th December 1908, and baptised in Holy Trinity parish on the 20th January 1909, probably in St Peters. Their next child, Charles Henry, was born in Back Lane on 29th May 1910, and baptised in St Peter's on 22nd June. During the course of the next year, the growing family moved to a house in Harlocks Lane. Their third son Harry was born in Harlocks Lane on 14th June 1912, and baptised at St Peter's on 6th July. Their first daughter Alice was born in Harlocks Lane on the 5th May 1914, and baptised at St Peter's on 27th May. Herbert had been discharged from the army reserve with a good character in January 1914, but he re-enlisted with the Suffolks as soon as the Great War broke out. A keen musician, he was a drummer boy in the 2nd Battalion (12th foot) of the Suffolk Regiment, and he was wounded in October 1914 at the First Battle of Ypres. He returned to England where he would spend the next six months joining the Battalion band. By early 1916, Eliza was pregnant again, but Herbert was called back to duty in France. I have heard a story from several sources that, the night before embarking, Herbert did the rounds of the pubs of the Waterside, drumming out a tattoo on the tables to say goodbye to his friends. It was the last time they would see him. Returning to Flanders, he was killed on the 2nd of March 1916 at St Eloi, on the Ypres Salient in Flanders, while engaged in bomb-throwing duty. He was 33 years old. He is remembered on the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres. On the 1st September 1916, almost exactly six months after his death, Herbert and Eliza's daughter was born in Springhead Lane, Ely, home of the Woodbine family. Her name was St Eloi Souvenir Felixstowe, a grandiloquent name for a child of the Waterside, but a perpetual memory of her father's final resting place, and perhaps a clue to his residence while recovering from injury the previous year - did Herbert and Eliza spend time on the Suffolk Coast? St Eloi was baptised in Holy Trinity parish on the 20th September 1916, two months to the day after Herbert's brother Arthur had been killed in the Battle of the Somme. Robert
Page On July 22nd 1908, Robert married Frances Louisa Baker at Norton in Suffolk. However, a few weeks before this he had been accused of fathering the child of Harriet Rose, probably the girl shown at the age of 17 at Lawshall on the 1901 census. When interviewed, Robert denied making any agreements, and also denied being the father of the child, but by February 1909 he had relented, and agreed to start paying from next pay day, at the rate of seven shillings a week. However, in July 1909 the Relieving Officer of the Sudbury Union workhouse wrote to Robert's superior officers demanding that Robert make maintenance payments for the child, including any arrears, reminding them that Robert had admitted paternity and even signed an agreement to pay. Robert was discharged from the army in 1910 after eight years service. He was living with his wife Frances in Annesdale, Ely, for the birth of their son Edwin Robert on 27th August 1910. Edwin was baptised in Holy Trinity parish at St Peter's church on 21st September. However, by the time of the census in April of the following year, Robert, Frances and Edwin had moved to Norton, Suffolk, where they had been mairred two years previously. Robert was employed as a swine herdsman. Edwin is too young to be Robert's child with Harriet Rose, but intriguingly Robert and Frances declared on the census form that they'd had another child who died. Meanwhile, at the same census, Harriet Rose was working as a cook on a farm at Rougham, near Bury St Edmunds. There was no child with her. Robert re-enlisted with the Suffolk Reserve in 1914, and was shortly after transferred to the Northamptonshire Regiment. He was wounded in 1916 and invalided out in 1917 when his discharge papers noted he was fit to work. He joined the Labour Corps after the War in 1919, being finally discharged as surplus to military requirements in March 1920, when he returned to Long Melford in Suffolk to live with his wife and children Edwin, Arthur, Herbert and Frank. In about 1920, a photograph was taken outside of Melford Hall of all the local men who had fought in the War and survived it, and it is likely that Robert is in this photograph. Robert died in Sudbury in 1935 at the age of 51. Susannah
Page Sarah
Page Thomas
Page Charles
Page Sarah
Page Ellen
Page
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Arthur Page, my great-grandfather, was born on the last day of March 1879 at the family home on Annesdale, beside the river. His father Henry gave his occupation as a farm labourer. Arthur was baptised in Holy Trinity parish on 27th April. His father again gave his occupation as an agricultural labourer at the time of the 1881 census, when Arthur was two years old. At the age of twelve, Arthur was the second of seven children at home on the night of the 1891 census in Broad Street, where the family had moved after June 1888. By 1895, the family had moved again, to Newnham Street. They had completed their journey to the northern end of the Waterside by 1899, when they were living on Willow Walk, later to be the road where Arthur's grandson, my father, was born.
On the 12th January 1901, a few days before a remarkable period in English history drew to a close with the death of Queen Victoria, Arthur Page married my great-grandmother Sophia Cross in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral. Sophia's surname was probably the most common of all surnames in the poor Ely Waterside area. She was born on Broad Street on 9th January 1882, the eldest of nine children and the daughter of a railway worker. Her mother was Sarah Carter from Prickwillow, just outside of Ely, but her father Thomas Cross was from a Waterside family of long standing. A few weeks later, at the time of the 1901 census, Arthur and Sophia were living in Bull Lane, today called Lisle Lane, off of Waterside. The 22 year old Arthur gave his occupation as a baker's labourer. Sophia was already pregnant with their first child, who would be a boy, and was born on 22 November 1901. He was named Arthur Thomas Harry after his father and his two grandfathers. A few hundred yards off in Broad Street, Arthur's mother Alice was living with seven of her children, but her husband Henry was not with her. In March 1901 he had been sent to prison for six months for cruelty to Alice and the children. However, although they had apparently been living apart for a long time, Henry's wife Alice's relationship to the head of the household was described as Wife rather than as Head on the 1901 census.
Soon after their son Arthur's birth, Arthur and Sophia themselves moved to Broad Street, where their eldest daughter Violet Eleanor was born on 6th August 1904. Soon after Violet's birth, Arthur got a job as a railway porter with the Great Eastern Railway, and the family moved some 20 miles to 7 Goodyers Yard, Narrow Street, Peterborough, where their third child Beatrice Sophia was born on the 30th January 1906. Arthur and Sophia were back in Ely and living on Back Hill for the birth of Florence May on 28th May 1907. It was recorded that Arthur was still a labourer for the Great Eastern Railway. In January 1909 Arthur was a witness at his brother John's marriage to Lilian Kidd in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral. Arthur and Sophia's second son, Percy, was born in Back Hill on 10th May 1909. By the time of the census in April 1911, Arthur was a general labourer working for the Co-op.
It is difficult to trace what happened to Arthur's father Henry during these years. In 1908, Arthur's brother Herbert gave both their parents names as his as next-of-kin on his army attestation papers. But Henry and Alice were recorded as living at separate addresses. Henry was lodging at the Queen's Head, Waterside, Ely, while Alice was living at Back Hill, Ely. Arthur and his wife Sophia were also now living on Back Hill.
By the time of the 1911 census, Arthur and Sophia had five children in the Back Hill house, but Arthur's mother Alice was not there. She was ill with stomach cancer in Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge. Arthur's father Henry was also not in Back Hill, but at least he reappeared on the 1911 census, and he was close to home, living in the Ely Workhouse. A few months after the 1911 census, Arthur and Sophia had a sixth child, Dorothy Louisa, known as 'Doll', who was born in Back Hill on 26th August.
Then, on the 4th March 1912, Arthur's mother Alice died of cancer at the Back Hill house. She was notified as the wife of Henry Page, labourer. Alice was buried in Ely cemetery on 7th March, in plot F1138. A year later, on 26th April 1913, Arthur and Sophia's last child was born, a girl, my grandmother Phyllis Alice Page. She was given her recently deceased grandmother's name as a middle name. Arthur's father, Phyllis's grandfather Henry Page, died of a stroke six months later, on the 21st October, in the Ely Workhouse. His occupation was given as general labourer of Back Hill, although there is no evidence that he ever lived there. He was buried in Ely cemetery on 24th October, in plot F954.
These are the seven children of Arthur and Sophia Page:
| Arthur
Thomas Harry Page, born in Bull Lane,
Ely on 22 November 1901. He was baptised in Holy
Trinity parish on 18th December, probably at St
Peter's church. His middle names were those of
his two grandfathers, Thomas Cross and Harry
Page. As the eldest child, Arthur must have been
aware of the death of his grandfather Harry Page
in the Ely workhouse in 1913, and he became the
man of the family when his father was killed in
the Battle of the Somme in July 1916, when he was
just fifteen years old. Arthur was living and
working in Yorkshire in the 1920s, and in the
second quarter of 1926 he married Ethel Gertrude
Elizabeth Payne in Wortley, to the north of
Sheffield. Ethel was pregnant at the time, and
their son Arthur Percival was born in
Peterborough on 24th September 1926. I'm not sure
how long they lived together as man and wife, or
if they stayed in Peterborough or returned to
Sheffield, but my grandfather Joe Knott met
Arthur in the early 1930s in Sheffield before
returning home with him to Ely, where he met
Arthur's sister who would become my grandmother,
so he certainly stayed in the area for a while.
Thereafter, the Electoral Rolls of the 1930s
through to the 1950s show Arthur living with his
mother Sophia Page at 20, Waterside, Ely. It did not become clear to Arthur's family for several years that he was married and had a son. The boy, Arthur Percival, married Dorothy Irenea Brooks in Poplar, London in 1946. They had five children. Arthur Percival died in 2003, Dorothy in 2010. Arthur Page was the one of my grandmother's siblings that I knew best. In later life he continued to live in Ely, the electoral rolls of the 1960s showing him living at 185 High Barns. He would often call around to my grandparents' house while I was visiting, and visited us in Cambridge from time to time. I remember him as a gentle, quiet man who always had time for me. My father photographed him in the early 1980s. He died in Ely in 1988. Violet Eleanor Page was born in Broad Street, Ely on 6th August 1904. She was baptised in Holy Trinity parish on the 31st August, probably in St Peter's church. On a photograph taken in the 1920s she is strikingly beautiful. She married Frederick William 'Bill' Cooper in the Lady Chapel of Ely cathedral on 30th November 1929. Violet's brothers Arthur and Percy were the witnesses. The 1936 Electoral Roll shows Violet and Bill living at Soham Road,Stuntney as does the 1939 Register. She was still there in 1960. She was a witness at my grandparents' marriage in August 1932, and was photographed holding me as a baby in 1962. I remember her in later life as eccentric, often wearing what I thought of as unusual hats. She died in Cambridge in 1978. Beatrice Sophia Page, known to the family as Beatie, was born in Peterborough on 30th January 1906. Her father's occupation was given as a railway porter. She was given her mother's Christian name as her middle name. Beatrice appears to have given birth to an illegitimate child called Ronald Page in the Holborn registration district in London in 1925, when she was nineteen. Presumably, she was in service. She then married Frederick Pepper in Ely in 1928, probably in the registry office. However, she returned to London, and a second child, a girl, was born at Wandsworth in south London in the 3rd quarter of 1931. The baby was registered under the surname Midwinter. The father appears to have been one Wilfred Midwinter, and the maiden name of the mother was given as Page, with no mention that Beatrice's legal surname was actually Pepper. In the early 1930s, Frederick Pepper was living in the Round House, Mepal, Cambs. And then, on 11th July 1934, he died in hospital in Chatteris, Cambs. In his will, proved on the 28th August 1935, he left his entire estate to his estranged wife, Beatrice Sophia Pepper, the value being £200. In the fourth quarter of 1935, Beatrice Pepper married Wilfred Midwinter in the Mid Surrey registration district. Does this mean that the news of her legal husband's death had taken some time to reach Beatrice? Or was she waiting for the will to be proved? A third child followed, another girl, in the 4th quarter of 1939 in the Mid Surrey registration district, and the mother's maiden name was now given legitimately as Page. Curiously though, when the fourth child, a third girl, was born in the Mid Surrey district in 1941, Beatrice gave her maiden name as Pepper. Is it possible that the registrar had asked the wrong question, or, intriguingly, that Beatrice wanted to hide her real name at this stage? It is also intriguing that all three of the girls were given the same middle name, Violet, the name of Beatrice's older sister. Was she remembering the terrible time after the death of their father in the Battle of the Somme, and paying tribute to the way that Violet looked after the younger children? When Beatrice died in the Sutton registration district in south London in the 3rd quarter of 1973, her death was registered correctly under the name Beatrice Midwinter. Florence May Page was born in Back Hill, Ely on the 28th May 1907. Known to the family as Florrie. She was baptised on the 9th of June in Holy Trinity parish, probably at St Peter's church, when her father's occupation was shown as a labourer on the Great Eastern Railway. On 24th September 1913, Florrie was run over by a cart in Broad Street, an accident considered so serious that it made the pages of the Cambridge Independent Press (see below). She recovered from the accident, but died in Addenbrookes Hospital Cambridge at the age of 17 in 1924. Percy Page was born in Back Hill, Ely on the 10th May 1909. He was baptised in St Peter's church in Holy Trinity parish on the 31st May. Percy was one of the two witnesses at my grandparents' marriage in August 1932. He married Ada Bell in about the same month. The 1935 and 1936 Electoral Rolls show Percy and Ada Page living at 31 Silver Street, Ely. He died in Silver Street, Ely at the age of 27 in 1937. Dorothy Louisa Page, known to the family as Doll. She was born in Back Hill, Ely, 7th April 1911. She married Kenneth Long in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral on the 8th June 1932. On the 1939 Register they were living at 7 Potters Lane, Ely where Ken was shown as a general farm labourer. Also in the household was another general farm labourer, 41 year old John Cross, who was likely a cousin of Dorothy's. Ken and Dorothy were living in the same house without anyone else on the 1960 Electoral Roll. Phyllis Alice Page,
born in Back Hill Ely on 26th April 1913. Known
to the family as Phyl. My grandmother. See below.
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In October 1913, their father Arthur was a witness at his sister Sarah's marriage to Harry Flack in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral. Soon after, Arthur, Sophia and their family moved to a house on Waterside. But storm clouds were gathering across Europe. Arthur Page was 35 years old when the First World War broke out. He volunteered, signing up as a Serjeant in the 2nd Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment, and his medal record shows that he arrived in France on the 26th January 1915.
The 2nd Battalion spent their first winter and spring bogged down in the trenches of the Vierstraat area of Flanders, before being returned to Billet at Westoutre on 11th April. They spent the latter part of the spring building the network of trenches in the Ypres salient,and then on June 16th they were part of the force which attacked and consolidated its hold in V Wood and Sanctuary Wood to the east of Ypres. It seems that the Battalion came under what were the first prolonged and sustained gas attacks by the Germans on British troops. During July they returned to billet in Ypres again, but spent the rest of the summer consolidating the hold on the splendidly named Spoil Bank and Bellyache Wood, again to the west of Ypres.
In general, the 2nd Suffolks seem to have spent an uneventful 1915 in Flanders, with few casualties, except for one major incident when, on September 8th, the battalion sustained more than a hundred deaths trying to capture a crater in Sanctuary Wood. Shortly after this, Arthur's brother Herbert Page, who had signed up with him but had previously been in the Reserve, was injured, and returned to England. He rejoined the Battalion at the start of 1916, when they were moved south towards St Eloi. Shortly after arriving in the area, Herbert was killed. Newspaper reports suggested that he died on the way to hospital, but in fact it seems his body was never recovered, and he has no known resting place. He is remembered on the Menin Gate memorial in Ypres.
In June 1916, Arthur Page and the 2nd Suffolks were removed completely from the fighting and returned to depot at St Omer for training in open warfare. They did not know it, but the Generals were preparing for the Big Push, designed to distract the Germans from their assault on Verdun. It would be known as the Battle of the Somme. On July 1st, the first day of the battle, the 2nd Suffolks set out from St Omer for the Somme. They arrived at the front on July 8th, and were placed in reserve, and then on July 14th they were moved into the southern end of Caterpillar Wood, to the east of Albert. Not far off, on July 18th, the Germans attacked and, at great cost to them, overran Delville Wood and part of the town of Longueval. Two companies of the 2nd Suffolks were sent to support the counter-attack, and among them was Serjeant Arthur Page.
Shortly before first light on what would be a warm, sunny day, at 3.35am on Thursday 20th July 20th, the Third Division of the British Army attacked Delville Wood. Chris McCarthy, in The Somme Day-by-Day, records that Early in the morning the Division made an attack on Delville Wood and village using 2nd Suffolks and 10th Royal Welsh Fusiliers. At 3.35 am the Suffolks advanced from the west, but the two leading companies were almost entirely wiped out. The Fusiliers went astray, and came under fire from a British machine-gun barrage, losing most of their officers, only to press home a fruitless attack.
The casualties in the 2nd Battalion were heavy, and among those killed in the attack was Arthur Page. He was 37 years old. It seems to have been a spectacularly foolhardy action: the two companies lost no less than ten officers in the attack, one of them, a Major Congreve, later being awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross. Arthur's body was recovered, identified, and buried at Delville Wood cemetery in Longueval.The Ely newspapers reported the Page family's plight. On 28th July the Cambridgeshire Times, which was incorporating the Ely Standard for the duration of the War, reported that Yesterday (Thursday) morning Mrs Page of Waterside, received a letter from the Chaplain to the 2nd Suffolk Regiment, informing her of the death in action of her husband, Sergt A. Page. He leaves a wife and seven children, for whom great sympathy is felt. On the same day, the Cambridge Independent Press reported that Mrs Page, Waterside, Ely, has received news that her husband Sergt A. Page, of the 2nd Suffolks, has been killed in action. The Chaplain of the Regiment has written a letter of sympathy to the widow, who is left with seven children.
It is said that when Sophia opened the letter from the Chaplain telling her of her husband's death, she immediately lost her hearing, and was deaf for the rest of her life. Every street in the Waterside would have had members of the Page and Cross families living in it, and the whole district must have felt a reaction to Arthur's death. Seventy years later, Arthur and Sophia's son Arthur, who had been fifteen at the time, told me it was 'a terrible time, just terrible'. My grandmother, who was three, and who had in any case probably not seen her father for a couple of years, was too young to know what was going on. The oldest girl, thirteen year old Violet, looked after her, and between them there formed a strong bond which lasted for the rest of their lives.
There was more bad news to come. As 1916 became 1917, Sophia's brother Herbert Chapman Cross and the 5th Suffolks were moved north from the Suez Canal to engage in what would become known as the First Battle of Gaza in Palestine. There would be three battles in all, but between the First and Second there was a minor skirmish involving the 5th Suffolks, and on 18th June 1917 Herbert Chapman Cross was killed. He was twenty-seven years old. He was buried in the British War Cemetery in Gaza City, which is today in the Palestinian State. Arthur and Herbert Page and Herbert Cross are all remembered on the City of Ely war memorial, and Arthur and Herbert Page's names were also proudly inscribed on the Holy Trinity parish war memorial now reset in Ely Cathedral.
In 1924, Phyllis's sister Florence died in Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge. She was just 17 years old. The following year, Phyllis's sister Beatrice gave birth to an illegitimate child in London, where she was presumably in service. She returned to Ely with the child, where she married Frederick Pepper in 1928, who may have been the father. At about this time, the eldest child Arthur left Ely looking for work in Yorkshire. In 1926, he married Ethel Gertrude Elizabeth Payne in Wortley, to the north of Sheffield. Ethel was pregnant at the time, and their son Arthur Percival was born in Peterborough on 24th September 1926. Arthur kept this marriage and child a secret from the rest of the family, and they did not find out about it until many years later.
By the end of the 1920s, Phyllis was living with her mother at 29a Fore Hill, a short distance from the Waterside house. They lived behind a shop called Oxford House, and shared a yard with the Clark family. Sophia and Phyllis both worked as fruit factory hands. Beatrice appears to have left Ely and Frederick Pepper behind, because in 1931 she had a child with Wilfred Midwinter in Wandsworth, London. After her estranged husband's early death, Beatrice married Wilfred Midwinter in 1935. Two more Midwinter children would follow.
In the early 1930s, Phyllis's brother Arthur was still in Yorkshire, working on a road-building scheme. There, he met the Kent-born Joe Knott, and brought him back to Ely where he met Phyllis. Joe went to work for British Sugar at Cantley in east Norfolk, but he married Phyllis at Ely Register Office on 15th August 1932, when he was 24 and she was just 19. The witnesses were Phyllis's brother Percy and her sister Violet. Joe and Phyl went to live at 9, Council Cottages, Cantley, and then in 1933 they moved to Ipswich, Joe firstly living in lodgings in Tacket Street in the town centre, before they both moved into rooms in Cavendish Street, the same street that I would live in almost exactly half a century later. They moved to 20 Fletcher Road on the new Gainsborough Estate in Ipswich, where their first child and only daughter was born.
They returned to Ely in 1935, where they would remain. They lived in Willow Walk off of Waterside, where Phyllis's grandmother Alice Wiseman had been born almost eighty years earlier. My father and his brothers were born in the house at 25 Willow Walk, but it has since been demolished. Some of her siblings were nearby. Violet married Bill Cooper; they lived at Stuntney, where he was a farmhand on Cole Ambrose's farm, and later at Ribes Court in Ely. Violet was the cook at the Bishop's Palace for many years, and Phyllis worked around the corner at the Palace School. Their sister Dorothy married Ken Long, and they also lived nearby, first at Stuntney and then at Nornea. Their elder brother Arthur eventually returned to settle in Ely. Phyllis's brother Percy died at 31 Silver Street, Ely in 1937; this house, almost opposite the Prince Albert public house, has also since been demolished.
In 1937, a great street party was held on Waterside to celebrate the Coronation on George VI. The official photograph of the occasion shows Sophia and Phyllis among the smiling crowd, as well as two of Phyllis's children: her daughter and her eldest son, my father, aged two. And then the Second World War came. It must have been with some trepidation that Phyllis waved goodbye to Joe, who went to serve as a motorcycle dispatch rider in Italy. After he returned at the end of the War, the family moved to a new council house at 37 Chief's Street in 1947. Phyllis and Joe lived in the house for the rest of their lives. Several of their children married in the late 1950s, and their first grandchild, a girl, was born in 1958. And that year Phyllis's mother Sophia died, at the age of seventy.
Phyllis is remembered by my parents' generation for being ahead of her time. Although she came from an extraordinarily poor working-class background, one where few families had aspirations, she was a great believer in education, especially for girls. She ensured that all her own children worked hard at school, all five of them winning scholarships to grammar schools. She was very proud when the first of her grandchildren went to university.
Phyllis Alice Knott née Page died of a heart condition in Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge, in 1990, a few weeks after she had attended my wedding. She was seventy-seven years old.
AT A GLANCE: DETAILS FROM REGISTERS AND CENSUS DATA |
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