Lost in the past. Stories of people and places.
The Palacio in the centre of Estoi was built in the 19th century and after being restored has been opened as a Pousada where you can stay. It is 10 kilometres north of Faro.
You can also visit the gardens freely. The gardens are on three levels connected by staircases.
At one time we would receive several postcards each summer from family and friends, but these days people prefer to post photos on social media and it can sometimes be difficult to find cards to buy. Fortunately, there are many people still collecting postcards and displaying old cards online. I am one of those enthusiasts, luckily inheriting two albums of Edwardian cards from my grandmother and wartime cards from my mother. I have added to the collection by buying old views of places that are special to me.
Recently a fellow collector sent me an exciting box of 116 postcards dated from 1912 -1920. They are from one family united by the marriage of Nellie Bennett to Albert Grimmette in Camden Town, London in 1915. There are cards from their sisters, brothers, cousins and aunt mainly delightful birthday postcards but also Christmas greetings and holiday cards from the seaside. Some place the stamps at a jaunty angle which conveyed messages such as, “Forget me not.”
The census
records show the Bennett men all worked at nearby St Pancras station as porters
and guards as did Albert Grimmette’s father. Nellie and her sister Kate worked
as needlewomen for Bastin, Merryfield & Cracknell, a well-known supplier of
quality garments to shops in Oxford Street and the girls were provide with
lodgings in Great Portland Street.
Perhaps the
most interesting occupation was that of Albert’s grandfather, George Grimmette,
as a London City Missionary. The London City Mission in Kentish town was one of
several evangelistic organisations helping the poor and needy in London in the
late 19th century.
If you think you might be descended from this family please have a look at the tree on Ancestry
and contact me.
Miss Louisa Watson Tulloh, Matron of Guildford War Hospital during World War One, is, as far as I am aware, the only nurse to have been decorated with the Royal Red Cross Award, twice! Born in Scotland, Louisa started her nursing career at Crumpsall Workhouse but she was pleased when she was accepted into Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service in 1887 at Netley Hospital until she was posted to Egypt the following year. The work was tough with no clean water and high temperatures:
The hospital was a stable diverted from its proper use for the time being, and the Sisters’ quarters were a mud cabin and they hung up a blanket at the entrance for a door. The temperature was then 100 to 120°, so the heat may be imagined. The only water for the use of the patients was Nile water, which, as the river was rising, was very muddy. It as filtered, and necessarily so, for the Sisters had to undergo the unpleasant experience of seeing dead camels and donkeys floating down this, there only supply of drinking water. A live camel is an unwholesome looking object enough, but a dead one, in one’s drinking water, must be a sight calculated to make one extremely moderate as to the amount one consumes. In additional to the heat, and the dead camels and donkeys, there were mosquitoes and sand flies to reckon with, so that the trials of the time were very real.
Nursing Record & Hospital World, 7th Oct 1899
In recognition for her services – tending to the sick and
wounded in Egypt – Louisa Watson Tulloh received her first Royal Red Cross
Award in June 1896. Leaving Egypt in 1900 she travelled to South Africa to care
for the wounded soldiers in the Anglo-Boer War. She was mentioned in despatches
by Lord Roberts and received her second Red Cross Award in September 1901 for
services in the Boer War. As highlighted at the time, being honoured with two
Royal Red Crosses must have been a unique occurrence!
From 1909 until 1912 Miss Tulloh worked in Hong Kong and was
Matron of the first unit of QAIMNS to nurse troops in China.
Tulloh moved to Guildford to become Matron of the Guildford
War Hospital during The Great War. Again, she was awarded for her services with
a Bar to the Royal Red Cross for war services (March 1919). At this point she
retired to Bournemouth after 31 years nursing service.
In 1951 Louisa was interviewed for Queen Alexandra’s Nursing Corps Association Gazette. She described an exciting meeting with Florence Nightingale.
She also described meeting Queen Victoria in 1897
Louisa’s scrapbook and medals can be found at the Army
Medical Services museum in Keogh Barracks
References:
Nursing Record & Hospital World 1889 7th October, 290-291
The Edinburgh Gazette 1897 22nd June, 1897
The Edinburgh Gazette 1901 1st October, 1094
The London Gazette 1919 14th March, 3583.
The London Gazette 1919 May 20th
The London Gazette 1919 20th May
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In 1938 when the Woman’s Voluntary Services were
established, Helen Lloyd, a 39 year old resident of Albury, Surrey, where she lived
with her parents, volunteered to take charge of the reception of evacuees in
the Guildford Rural District. We are
able to discover a great deal about her ever widening responsibilities for the
WVS through the diaries she wrote for the Mass Observation Archive.
From 1939 till 1940, 1100 evacuees arrived in the Guildford
Rural District, many in 1940 having been moved from the south coast where they
had first been housed. Apart from the
logistics of finding homes for the children, Helen commented in her Narrative Reports
to the WVS headquarters that Enuresis (bed-wetting) was a severe problem for
families taking care of the children.
Many solutions were suggested throughout the country, such as not
allowing children to pick dandelions, but Helen believed, “All that is needed
is a legion of old-fashioned nannies who love the children dearly but who stand
no nonsense from their charges.” She may
have followed this herself for she remarked in her diary that she had happily
replaced a bath and a drink before dinner with a session reading a story to the
four boys residing with her family.
The WVS centre for Guildford Borough was organised by Mrs Eileen Leach, but Helen’s base was also in Guildford and she had regular meetings with Mrs Leach. Though not specifically connected with Warren Road Hospital, Helen often went there in her role as WVS district organiser. Her diary entry for
June 15th 1940
“Took a car full of teapots and cruets to Warren Road Hospital. Mrs Thomas objected to appeals being made for
the hospital as it made public the fact that it was badly equipped – which of
course was the case.”
October 26th 1940
“To Warren Road
Hospital to give blood. Had to wait
40 minutes but enlivened the time by gossiping with Mrs Cooper who was taking
records. The operation was extremely
simple and I felt ashamed of having a fluttering head. The doctor was charming and I admired and
wished to emulate his bedside manner.”
Helen was concerned that the London boroughs made no attempt
to forward the children’s medical records or spectacle prescriptions, but the
main medical concerns were obvious.
December 30th 1940
“Had to take two of Mrs Strachey’s children to Warren Road Hospital with impetigo and nits!”
January 31st 1941
“Eight cases of scabies and nowhere to put them; 3 measles
contacts and no billets; an expectant mother imminently expecting; a child
admitted to Warren Road for impetigo
has measles there and no-one is told; a second child of Mrs Strachey’s has
scarlet fever though the school doctor pronounced it to be nothing.”
The highlight of June 1940 was the arrival at Guildford
station of men evacuated from Dunkirk.
Mrs Leach was in Helen’s office organising food for the trains when
there was a message for them to go to the station as soon as possible. There they found chaos as train after train
of hungry and thirsty English, French and Belgian soldiers stopped en route
from the south coast. “The waiting rooms
on the platform were transformed into larders and pantries and were filled with
people cutting sandwiches. Churns of hot
tea ladled into tins, jam jars, anything that would serve as a cup.” For four days the WVS continued to serve the
soldiers with the, “enthusiastic support of Guildford tradesmen willing to be
knocked up at all hours to give goods at a discount of sixty per cent.”
After Dunkirk, the Guildford scheme was instigated, “Whereby
we shall keep a list of lodgings, free or otherwise, for the wives and
relations of wounded (servicemen) on the danger list. These people are, if necessary to be met at
the station and taken to the hospital or
billets.”
Meanwhile the rural WVS were to supply ashtrays,
handkerchiefs, drinking beakers, books and games for the injured soldiers at Warren Road Hospital.
On one occasion Helen recorded that a family had been sent
from Bristol because the husband was dying of cancer at Warren Road Hospital. His
wife and six children were sent to Ockham Park which made it impossible for
them to visit the hospital so she persuaded the Billeting Officer to find them
a council cottage in Shackleford.
Later in 1941 Helen Lloyd reported that 3 bombs had dropped
near to Warren Road Hospital killing
2 people, injuring 9 and making 200 homeless.
In October 1941 a British Restaurant was opened in Charlotteville. This was a communal feeding centre, a café
where a full hot meal could be purchased for one shilling, served and washed up
by the WVS. At the same time WVS members
were knitting scarves, helmets, socks, sweaters and gloves. By 1941 almost 3,000 children had been
evacuated to the 22 parishes in Helen’s Rural District. In January 1942 when there was thick snow on
the ground, Helen skied into Guildford from her home in Albury.
In June 1942 there were 542 WVS members in Guildford Rural
District and 1,005 in the borough of Guildford.
An editorial in the Surrey Times of 29th October 1943
expressed the opinion that, “While the grey uniforms of the members of the WVS
are seen mingling among the crowds in our streets, few of the public are
conscious of the valuable work they undertake.”
For more interesting details:
“Warriors at Home 1940-1942” edited by Patricia and Robert
Malcomson
“Women at the Ready: The remarkable story of the Women’s
Voluntary Services”by Robert and
Patricia Malcolmson
I was intrigued by the words on the back of this postcard
from Kate in Lewisham. She told her friend Connie that this famous star had been the pianist they remembered from dancing class when they were younger. With a little research I was able to confirm that Clara
Evelyn was born Clara Evelyn Smith. While living with her parents in
Rotherhithe and then New Cross she was given a scholarship to study the piano
at the Royal College of Music and three years later another scholarship for
singing. She also played the piano for her mother’s dancing classes.
Clara was born in 1882 in Camberwell. Her father was an ironmonger and she had 2 brothers and a sister, Ida. In the Edwardian era she starred in several musicals on the London stage including The Merry Widow, and then in The Dollar Princess at Daly’s theatre where she replaced Lily Elsie. In the press she was praised for her excellent singing, though criticised for a slight stoop.
While touring with George Edward’s Merry Widow company she received many excellent reviews and still found time to sing or play at charity concerts. She had further success in the West End in “Girl in the Train” and “Princess Caprice” and she was still performing in concerts in the 1930s.
I wonder if my Grandma, Connie, saw Clara when she came to Bournemouth.
Clara married Julian Day, a merchant banker who also owned more than 50 companies. He died in Switzerland in 1947 but Clara continued living in Chelsea until her death in 1980.
Gertie Millar was probably the best known musical comedy actress in the country, especially after she appeared at the Gaiety Theatre in "Our Miss Gibbs". The music for this and most of the other musicals in which she sang was written by her husband former lawyer Lionel Monckton. In 1903 she had appeared in "The Orchid" in front of King Edward VI and Queen Alexandra.
The Inquest into the death of Baron Holzhauzen was reported in detail in newspapers throughout the country. The parlourmaid described finding broken glass from the window at 7.30 am but it was only at at ten to nine that she spotted the baron's foot as he hid behind the piano. As she ran upstairs to fetch Mr Monckton a shot rang out. The court was told that The Baron "entertained a boyish infatuation" for the actress. It was assumed that intending to commit suicide he decided to spend his last night in the same house as Mrs Monckton.
Lionel
Monckton was very unhappy about these events which caused problems in their
marriage but he continued to write musicals for her. In 1910 Gertie Millar
performed in "The Quaker Girl" which was particularly popular but she
was also noticed in society being entertained by the Duke of Westminster.
In an
interview with American journalist Alan Dale, she said,
"Mr. Monckton studies me, of course," she said, "and he can usually gauge my qualities. I never took singing lessons in my life, and I never studied dancing. I can't understand why I am considered a dancer, because I really do nothing. I just jig to the rhythm of the music. I don't consider that there is any art in it. I love dancing, and adore watching it, but I don't admire my own at all."
In the First World War the public changed their theatrical tastes, Lionel Monckton suffered from ill health and her director George Edwardes died in 1915. Gertie retired from the theatre in 1918. Only two months after Lionel Monckton died in 1924, Gertie Millar married William Ward, the Earl of Dudley. He died in 1932 and Gertie died 20 years later in Chiddingfold aged 73.
