My relatives 1 :: Mum's mum and her sisters

Sisters : Mamie, Nell (Grandma), Janey, Edith

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When we moved to Birmingham I began to know some of my relatives a whole lot better, as many of them still lived in that city, in which both sides of my family was rooted. In addition to my grandfather there was an aunt, (my mother's sister); three great aunts, (my maternal grandmother's sisters); and a first cousin of my mother's. There were occasional visits too from a second cousin of mine. My father's mother lived not far away at Tanworth-in-Arden, and there I would sometimes meet with my father's sister and her two tdaughters. But apart from my immediate family, the most important of all these people throughout my life has been my mother's younger sister Fay, but I am going to write about her later, and give her a post to herself.

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I shall begin with my my mother's mother and the three great aunts, whose picture is at the head of this blog, and again, many years older, at the foot. The eldest was Mary Maude, known as Mamie. She married a well-to-do manufacturer of rules, spirit levels etc, and lived in considerable comfort in a large house with extensive gardens called Elmwood. I remember a lady's maid or companion and a chauffeur. There must have been house and kitchen staff as well, and gardeners. She was already a widow when I knew her, and had also lost her only son during the First World War. She was a rather stern faced and daunting person, understandably perhaps, though in fact she had the kindest of hearts. I know now that in her youth my Aunt Fay looked to her for the love and comfort which she did not apparently receive from her own parents, who by her account were very difficult to live with.

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I have never forgotten the occasion when Auntie Mamie received a telephone call while I was visiting her. She asked me to write down a telephone number she was given on the self-erasing pad with which I was playing. Do you remember these things? I still have one in my desk. You 'wrote' on a clear plastic top layer with a pointed 'pencil' without a lead. The pressure of this caused a second light-coloured layer to record the information on a carbon layer beneath. The pad could be cleared by pulling it part way out of its frame, causing something to separate the two under sheets. Well of course, that is exactly what I did, out of curiosity rather than mischief, I am sure, and the information was lost while my aunt was still talking. Her stern face became positively formidable, and I was left in no doubt as to how much inconvenience I had caused!

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My grandmother Ellen Dora, known as Nell, was the second oldest of the four. She is only just a remembered presence in my life, as I was only six when she died at the age of 66. She became known to us as Cuckoo, because of her habit of peeping round doors and calling out 'Cuckoo' to her granddaughter. But I remember her in the beautiful pieces of jewellery my grandfather made for her, which have come down to me through my mother and my aunt. Not so happily I believe I have inherited certain neurotic tendencies which I have observed in both my mother and her sister, and which my aunt describes in her journal. Fortunately there are better resources for coping with such things these days.

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The third sister, Janey, remained unmarried and became a school teacher. She was an intelligent woman and became a Senior Mistress if not a Headmistress. I rarely saw her, presumably because the was a working woman, unlike the other great aunts.

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The fourth sister, Edith, eventually became known as Aunty Dith. I have two clear recollections of her: the first, when I was staying with her and she was teaching me how to knit. We were sitting knitting together in the evening, when she said to me that I should be going to bed. I immediately bundled up my knitting and got to my feet. My aunt tutted, and told me to sit down again and finish my row, and never to leave a piece of work in the middle - a lesson I have felt it was worth having learned.

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On the second occasion, she was visiting us in our flat in London just before the war when I was 11. I stood beside her at the table to show her something, and she put her arm around my knees in a cuddly way. Suddenly, to my intense surprise, her hand crept under my skirt and up my thigh. I was wearing knickers with the elasticated legs pushed up as high as they would go - I hated any form of physical constraint - and my aunt was firmly pulling down the leg again to just above the knee. I was outraged, and made good my escape as soon as I could! How dare she?!

The four sisters