Wartime Diary

My great aunt Elsie Selina Burrell worked for Cunard in Bristol during WW2, travelling daily from Eastville into the city. This week I came into possession of some diaries she kept at the time.

The diaries are a mix of personal trivia and wider news, recorded often without much emotion. She mentions the Bristol Blitz several times; at one point her office had lost its roof and she worked under a tarpaulin, everything still soaking from the fire hoses. She spent hours in cupboards and in shelters. Traumatised refugees sought shelter in her local chapel, and she mentions washing the hair of a woman dragged from a bombed building.

I don't think we, in the modern world, can really imagine how life was then. The worst of the blitz was in the middle of winter and the bombing at its worst at night. Elsie records with relief the few quiet and undisturbed nights.

Here's a page from her list of air raids, showing the 24th November 1940, the first Great Blitz.

In 1940, Elsie recorded 643 hours of raids. More pages can be seen here: Elsie's diary 1940

I'm planning on including more extracts from Elsie's diaries in the future

Harriet ANDREWS 1839-?

I'm going to post what I know about Harriet ANDREWS in the hope that someone can fill in some missing information!

Harriet was born in Egham, Surrey and baptised on 9th June 1839. Her parents, Richard and Eleanor (nee BISHOP) had a bakery in the High Street, and had 10 children, Harriet being the youngest daughter. When she was only 5, Harriet's father died, and she moved with her widowed mother to Weybridge.

I am not sure how the family ended up in Nottingham; perhaps this was a result of the marriage of Harriet's sister Mary Ann to William ROSE, a manager for the Daily Mail newspaper, but in 1861 Eleanor is living with her pregnant daughter Mary Ann in the promisingly-named Goldsmith Street in the centre of Nottingham.

Harriet was, in 1861, a Governess with a live-in position in Melton, Suffolk, but in 1863 she married a banker's clerk, James Tomlinson CARTER, who lived in Nottingham. But the marriage took place in Lambeth - did they elope??

James (1838-1875) was the son of James CARTER (1815-1875), a bank manager who set up an auction house about 1860 in Nottingham, by his first wife Mary Ann Jane CARTER (was she a relation, or is the name merely a coincidence?). There were 9 children from this first marriage, and a further 4 from his second marriage to Frances TURVEY. Thus, although there was a considerable family income, their outgoings must have been considerable too!

Harriet and James's marriage seems to have been close, as 8 children were born in 12 years, but James sadly died of consumption aged only 38, leaving Harriet to support the family herself, by working in the lace industry. The 1881 census shows that she kept the eldest two sons (then 16 & 15, and in employment) and the youngest daughter at home, the rest were split between the Battersea Royal Masonic Institution for Girls, and the Wanstead Orphan Asylum. What a difficult time that must have been for all of the family.

Harriet seems to have been made of stern stuff, however, and by 1891 she was teaching, and her children were beginning to make their own way. Charles Andrews CARTER (1865-1922), my ancestor, was working as a clerk in Essex with a wife and small child. Daughter Maud became an Inspector of Midwives, Ada a nurse, Eleanor a teacher, and Ethel a teacher of the deaf.

I have not been able to trace what happened to eldest son Edward James, born 1864, after 1881 when he was a clerk in Nottingham, I wonder if he emigrated.

In 1901 Harriet was living in 1901, retired, and caring for 10 year old grandson Charles Thomas CARTER. This lad was the son of Charles Andrews CARTER, and his mother Sarah Elinda THOMPSON died soon after his birth. This is the only sighting of the young Charles that I have found to date; although Harriet is still alive in 1911, and living in Wolverhampton, there is no sign of Charles, who would have been 20yrs old by 1911.

Still looking:
Death details for
Harriet CARTER, born 1839, died after 1911 (last seen in Wolverhampton)
Maud CARTER, born 1870, died after 1911 (last seen in Wolverhampton)
Ada CARTER, born 1867, died after 1911 (last seen in Wolverhampton)
Edward James CARTER, born 1864, died after 1881 (last seen in Nottingham)

Any sightings of
Charles Thomas CARTER, born 1891 (last seen in Headcorn, Kent, in 1901)

I would be very pleased to hear from anyone else who is researching this family!