<\/p>
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.\u00a0<\/p>
It\u2019s a cosy picture of 1950s life, and there is little to hint at the struggles Sarah (n\u00e9e Manning) had to overcome from the earliest age. \u201cGran was born on 11 March 1884, in Bermondsey, London,\u201d Victor says. \u201cHer mother was Annie Zilpah Manning. She was aged just 15 at the time and was unmarried.\u201d<\/p>
Annie was just a child herself, but like so many Victorians, she had to grow up quickly. \u201cShe 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!\u201d<\/p>
Three years later, Annie gave birth to Sarah, Victor\u2019s grandmother; unfortunately no father was listed on the birth certificate<\/a>. Some stability came into Annie\u2019s life in 1887, when she married ship\u2019s stoker John Frederick Myers. Later that year the couple had a daughter they named Annie Elizabeth.\u00a0<\/p> 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\u2019s sister, Elizabeth Cannon.<\/p> \u201cMy grandmother Sarah was five when her mother died and Annie Elizabeth was not yet two. I\u2019m not sure if Sarah even knew her mother, because she was living with her maternal grandmother \u201cIt\u2019s my hunch that Sarah was taken in by her grandmother, and raised as her own. She was lucky to escape the baby-farm system.\u201d<\/p> 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\u2019s mum Elsie.<\/p> So what happened to Sarah\u2019s half-sister, Annie Elizabeth, who was left without a mother at the age of one? \u201cNo one in the family spoke of Annie Elizabeth,\u201d Victor explains. \u201cI only found out about her through researching my genealogy.\u201d<\/p> Victor traced her through the census records<\/a> 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 \u2018industrial school\u2019 in Sutton, Surrey.\u00a0<\/p> Life for Annie began to look brighter in 1911 when she got a job at Messrs H Dobb, a large draper\u2019s shop in Paddington. \u201cIt made me think of the world depicted in Mr Selfridge<\/em>, the ITV television drama.\u201d<\/p> Annie was clearly a brave and ambitious woman, for in 1914 she emigrated to Australia<\/a> on her own. On arrival in Melbourne, she worked in service before marrying a German<\/a> migrant, Edward Ehlert. Edward and Annie had four children who lived into adulthood.\u00a0<\/p> \u201cIt has been wonderful to discover I have 22 half-second cousins on Annie\u2019s line. I have met one of them, Kaitlyn, and she is lovely.<\/p> \u201cMy 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 \u2013 she never had a bad word to say about anyone.\u201d<\/p> Victor adds, \u201cAnnie Zilpah and her daughters were all strong women. They overcame a lot in life so some \u2018steel\u2019 must have been passed on. Gran and Mum may have been softies, but they didn\u2019t roll over.\u201d<\/p>