Victor Nutt remembers visiting his gran, Sarah Wilmot, in New Eltham, South-East London, and watching her cooking up mash for the chickens. He can also see his dad and grandad playing cribbage at the dining-room table.
It’s a cosy picture of 1950s life, and there is little to hint at the struggles Sarah (née Manning) had to overcome from the earliest age. “Gran was born on 11 March 1884, in Bermondsey, London,” Victor says. “Her mother was Annie Zilpah Manning. She was aged just 15 at the time and was unmarried.”
Annie was just a child herself, but like so many Victorians, she had to grow up quickly. “She was born in 1868 in Bermondsey to a carpenter Joseph Manning and his wife Sarah Rogers. At the age of 12, Annie worked as a nursemaid for the Badcock family in Rotherhithe. The children she cared for were aged eight, three, one and six weeks!”
Three years later, Annie gave birth to Sarah, Victor’s grandmother; unfortunately no father was listed on the birth certificate. Some stability came into Annie’s life in 1887, when she married ship’s stoker John Frederick Myers. Later that year the couple had a daughter they named Annie Elizabeth.
Sadly the family was hit by heart-breaking tragedy only two years later when Annie Zilpah died of acute rheumatism, cardiac disease and thrombosis. She was just 20 years old. John was presumably at sea because the informant on the death certificate was Annie’s sister, Elizabeth Cannon.
“My grandmother Sarah was five when her mother died and Annie Elizabeth was not yet two. I’m not sure if Sarah even knew her mother, because she was living with her maternal grandmother
in the 1891 and 1901 censuses. In the latter, they’re listed as mother and daughter.
“It’s my hunch that Sarah was taken in by her grandmother, and raised as her own. She was lucky to escape the baby-farm system.”
Sarah worked as a buttonhole sewer before marrying John Johnson Wilmot on Christmas Day in 1905. The couple went on to have seven children, including Victor’s mum Elsie.
So what happened to Sarah’s half-sister, Annie Elizabeth, who was left without a mother at the age of one? “No one in the family spoke of Annie Elizabeth,” Victor explains. “I only found out about her through researching my genealogy.”
Victor traced her through the census records and found her living with a paternal aunt and uncle in London in 1891. By 1901, she was one of 1,500 children attending an ‘industrial school’ in Sutton, Surrey.
Life for Annie began to look brighter in 1911 when she got a job at Messrs H Dobb, a large draper’s shop in Paddington. “It made me think of the world depicted in Mr Selfridge, the ITV television drama.”
Annie was clearly a brave and ambitious woman, for in 1914 she emigrated to Australia on her own. On arrival in Melbourne, she worked in service before marrying a German migrant, Edward Ehlert. Edward and Annie had four children who lived into adulthood.
“It has been wonderful to discover I have 22 half-second cousins on Annie’s line. I have met one of them, Kaitlyn, and she is lovely.
“My gran Sarah died in 1957 when I was aged 10. I wish I could step back in time and ask her if she knew about her half-sister in Australia. Gran was a wonderful woman and my mum took after her – she never had a bad word to say about anyone.”
Victor adds, “Annie Zilpah and her daughters were all strong women. They overcame a lot in life so some ‘steel’ must have been passed on. Gran and Mum may have been softies, but they didn’t roll over.”
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