In 1861 a little girl was born in the village of Mere in Wiltshire. Her birth was not recorded in the local church records since her family were part of the Plymouth Brethren – a fairly radical sect of nonconformism which was popular in the south-west of England.
Elizabeth Cowley was born into a family of agricultural labourers and silk winders; silk-winding was shortly to become extinct in this particular area of the world, mostly due to cheaper wages elsewhere. During this time the village was also visited by recruiters from the USA, specifically Colorado – they were seeking skilled labourers who wished to find a new life in the New World.
So little Elizabeth grew up knowing that she would certainly have to move away to make her way in the world. In the late 1870s she upped sticks and moved, not to the New World but to Brighton in Sussex, where she may – or may not – have been responsible for Cowley’s Bath Buns arriving at the Poole Valley bakery. At the age of only nineteen she became the cook for the Reilly family in Brunswick Square. Her strange religion, which had so often set her apart, was now set to put romance in her way. One of the footmen, Seth Gathercol Hales, was Plymouth Brethren too, and he had a younger brother, Arthur Edward Hales, who also worked as a footman – possibly in Hanningtons department store.
After Arthur had managed to complete his training as an electrician, he went on to marry Elizabeth. They had five children, including my grandma, Winifred (known to her family as Winnie). Arthur moved his family up and down the railway line, between Brighton and Battersea, when he – according to Winnie – was solely responsible for phase one of the electrification of the Brighton line in 1909.
At the beginning of World War 2, Elizabeth (widowed in 1932) moved from her home in London to be with her daughter, Winnie, and her family. They lived in Croydon, which was thought to be safer than inner London. My mum, Eunice, says she remembers the family – including Grandma Elizabeth – sheltering underneath the stairs during an air raid. Unfortunately, the top of a bombshell had come loose and went through the roof, bouncing down the stairs over the heads of the family below. Mum says she remembers Grandma Elizabeth (who would’ve been in her late seventies), laughing maniacally at the terrified faces of her family. Eunice, unsurprisingly, found her grandma quite scary. Apparently, Grandma Elizabeth used to wear Victorian-style clothing, all in black, of course. She had a country accent and liked to have her ‘erbs’ – which she took as a medicinal tincture. However – if I can take what my mother told me as gospel truth – with the heavy bombing of Croydon happening in August 1940 and Elizabeth Hales’ death in December 1940, I can only conclude that sheltering under the stairs, whilst the Germans are trying to kill you, was probably rather too much excitement for such an elderly woman.
My mother and her siblings all left their childhood home in the mid to late 1940s and our family eventually settled in Crawley in Sussex. In the early 1970s I remember our frequent visits up the London Road, and latterly the motorway, to see our grandparents. How old-fashioned they seemed to me, my grandad wore braces and probably wore sock suspenders too. My lovely little grandma wore a housecoat over her everyday clothes to protect them whilst she was cooking and doing her housework. She never in her life wore trousers and when she went to church, or occasionally to the local shop, she would wear a large purple velveteen hat (much like the late Queen Elizabeth used to wear).
In 1976 Grandma Winnie became a widow when her husband, Harry Horsey, died. She lived independently for a few years, until the early 1980s when her care became divided between her two daughters. I’ll always remember my grandma’s pink knee-length nylon bloomers hanging out on our washing line whenever she came to stay, how funny they seemed to me. After all Winnie had been born in 1892; during her lifetime two world wars had been fought, and women had won the right to vote – not that my grandma ever did vote. She was, after all, still a member of the Plymouth Brethren, hardly known for their forward thinking inthe treatment of women. And so the baton of caring for one’s mother was passed to Joyce and Eunice. Then – in 1983 after a hospital stay – Winnie passed away in a care home on the Purley Way in Croydon at the age of 91.
It was not until recently when (in 2020) my own mother, Eunice, died of Covid in a care home, that I came to reflect on the long line of care by daughters for their mothers. Prior to my mother’s death, she had lived independently for some considerable time, following my father’s fairly early demise at the age of 76. Only in 2015 would she even entertain the idea of sheltered care and also giving up her car. However, a few near-misses soon helped her make the right decision and the car was sold. Eventually she moved into an over 55s apartment a short drive away from me, the youngest daughter. My sisters had moved to nearby Brighton some years beforehand. It was a labour of love to try and help my elderly mother grow old safely and gracefully. The twice weekly visits very quickly extended
to include doctors’ and hospital visits. One soon became acquainted with the cleaner and then, over the years, the home helps and then, sadly, the personal carers – in her last home, a care home. With much regret, my sisters and I could not say farewell to our mother in the last seven weeks of her life, since the country was in the grip of the Covid lockdown. I simply received two phone calls, one to let me know she had a chest infection and was going into hospital, and another to let me know she had died of Covid at 5.55 am on the 1st of May 2020.
As I sit and reflect on this, I note that I am the only sister to have a daughter. All three of us ‘girls’ are now in our late fifties, or early to mid sixties. Who will inherit the baton of our care and, more importantly, would I truly wish that on anyone? Because who knows if I will be the scary grandma who cackles and frightens the grandchildren or the tiny grandma with purple velveteen hats and laughter-inducing underwear? Actually, did someone say purple
velveteen? That’s definitely me to a tee.
*bombing of inner London – It was almost a death sentence living in inner London at that time. However, in August 1940 Croydon also suffered intensive bombing.
*bloomers – baggy underwear/knickers