Ada Reeve 1874-1966 “One of the Gayest of the Gaiety Girls"

 

Ada Reeve who first went on stage in 1878 at the age of 4 was still acting in her early 80s. Here she is on a tinted postcard at the height of her career.

The eldest daughter of an actor and a dancer, she appeared in many pantomimes as a child and she went on to perform in Edwardian musical comedies and Variety shows.  She toured Britain but also appeared in Australia and was very popular in America.

At the age of 21 she married Gilbert Joseph Hazlewood, an actor of the same age. In 1894 she starred in the title role of The Shop Girl at the Gaiety Theatre, opposite Seymour Hicks, but her advancing pregnancy meant the she was replaced by Ellaline Terriss. The couple had two daughters but within a few years it was an unhappy marriage. In 1900, Ada petitioned for a divorce citing her husband for cruelty and adultery with Mildred Cobb, Dolly Daintree “and various other women." She was given custody of her daughters.

Later that year while appearing as Cleopatra at The Comedy Theatre in London she slipped out during the first act, catching a “hansome to the Palace Theatre of Varieties” where she put on a turn before completing the next act back at the Comedy Theatre!

In 1902 Ada remarried, this time to Wilfred Cotton, an actor and manager, and he moved into her apartment in Buckingham Gate.  Soon Ada and Wilfred bought a property on the Isle of Wight and Ada subsequently toured South Africa in 1906, returning in 1909 due to her popularity. 

                                   

In 1908 she appeared in the musical comedy Butterflies at the Apollo theatre in London.

In 1917 Ada appealed to the courts in Australia to remove her husband Wilfred as her Manager. This was only one of many court cases involving disputes between Ada and other agents in England and Australia.

Ada continued touring South Africa and Australia until 1929. She then remained in Australia, where both her daughters had settled, until 1935.

Back in England she acted on stage and in films throughout the 1940s and 50s. In 1957 she appeared on TV in a production of Nicholas Nickleby.

Ada Reeves died in 1967 at the age of 92 and in the following year Judi Dench unveiled a memorial plaque at St Paul's Covent Garden, The Actors Church.

Details of birth, marriages and divorce from Ancestry.com

Newspaper reports from FindMyPast.co.uk

Postcards from my Grandmother's collection

Palacio de Estoi Almost #WordlessWednesday

 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.

Nellie Grimmette's postcard collection

 

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.”

Using Ancestry.co.uk and Find My Past and the fact that many cards are for “my sister,” or “my brother,” I have built up a family tree showing they each had 6 siblings and many nieces and nephews plus two children of their own. Nellie was baptised as Ellen and her sister Kate was really Catherine Bennett.

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 19^th century.

If you think you might be descended from this family please have a look at the tree on Ancestry

and contact me.

Louisa Watson Tulloh of Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service 1960-1952

 

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

Church of Saint John the Baptist in Tomar #WordlessWednesday

 

The church of St John the Baptist can be found in the Praça da República in the centre of the old town of Tomar in central Portugal. To see more photos of the city of the Knight Templars see here

To read about The Convent of Christ in Tomar.

Helen Lloyd energetic WVS volunteer #WW2 #evacuees #MondayBlogs

 

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 15^th 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 26^th 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 30^th 1940

“Had to take two of Mrs Strachey’s children to Warren Road Hospital with impetigo and nits!”

January 31^st 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 29^th 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

Clara Evelyn, concert pianist, singer and actress

 

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.

An amazing obituary of Clara Evelyn the last Gaiety Girl written by Hughie Green on https://summertime76.wordpress.com/ a fascinating Blog about Gabrielle Ray.