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March 2008
With Mothering Sunday falling this week, we decided to celebrate women in this issue and we have articles about three very special women.  The girls who went into domestic service would often only see their families on this day of the year so this month's feature article focuses on the life of a domestic servant. In addition we have four very moving stories which describe different experiences of adoption. We are running a seafaring theme for next month's issue, to coincide with the 96th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. If you have any family stories with nautical connections that you wish to contribute then we'll be pleased to hear from you. The pictures of the maid, servant and cook used in this issue are from Wikimedia Commons.
| Domestic Servants |
Occupation: Domestic Servants
When we think of servants and the places they might have worked, we tend to imagine large households employing many servants as seen in popular television serials, such as “Upstairs Downstairs” or in films such as “Gosford Park”.
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| The Matriarch |
The matriarch
Mary Ann Baker is my great x2 grandmother, the mother of my maternal grandmother’s father. She was born in Horsted Keynes, Sussex, in 1835, the second of Abraham & Lydia Baker’s seven children.
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| Madam Dawn |
Madam Dawn
Beryl Stubbs was born in Leeds on 14th January 1938 and was brought up in the area of Middleton. With a stubborn streak and thick, curly auburn hair - you couldn’t miss her.
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| Elizabeth Ann |
Elizabeth Ann
Elizabeth Ann Turrell (sometimes Tyrrell) was born in the Beach Village, Lowestoft on January 19th 1845. Her father, John, was a Beachman.
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| An adoption story |
They adopted a child
My nana was a difficult woman. She fell in and out with those around her, including her two daughters-in-law, so that they never really knew where they stood with her.
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| A mother's story |
I gave in to pressure
Let me start at the beginning. I was born in February 1954 and was the eldest of 2 brothers and a sister. Everything was fine until I hit puberty when I started getting stroppy and angry with the fact that my friends seemed to have much more freedom than me.
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| A daughter's story | It looks like me
One Saturday, in late May 2002, Leonard paid an unexpected visit to his youngest daughter Vicky. As they sat on the sofa chatting and drinking tea, Vicky could sense that her dad had something on his mind, as he was toying with a brown envelope on his lap.
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| A sister's story | We have each other again
I was born in the early 1960s and given up for adoption more or less as soon as I was born. In any case, I never went home with my birth mother. She went back to her parents, where she was living with her two young sons following her divorce.
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