Maud Jane Wetherall (1881-1958).
My great-grand aunt.
Maud was born on 15 June 1881 in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, and baptised in the town’s St Nicholas’ Church on 29 November that year. She grew up with her parents Benjamin Thomas Wetherall and Sarah Ann Elizabeth Green and siblings in Admiralty Road.
By the 1901 census she was living and working as a draper’s assistant at 27 High Street, Bromley, in what is now south-east London. Why and how she ended up there is something of a mystery but Bromley must have been where she met her husband, the grandly named Augustus Charles Towell. He’d been born in the town in 1882, the son of electrical engineer Charles Towell and his wife Elizabeth, and worked as a solicitor’s clerk (1901 census) and as a clerk with the London Savings Bank before marrying Maud in 1906.
Their subsequent children were born in various parts of London but the family were with Augustus’s parents in Park Road, Bromley, at the time of the 1911 census. By then Augustus was a civil servant with the Inland Revenue. The 1921 census placed him and two of his oldest children in Venner Road, Sydenham, South London, while Maud was in Harrow, Middlesex, visiting family with the two youngest. The 1939 Register listed them living at 131 Long Lane, Uxbridge, Middlesex, and the electoral roll shows they were still there in the 1950s.
Augustus was elected to the local council as a Conservative – the Uxbridge & West Drayton Gazette of 20 May 1949 reported his thanks to his supporters in the Hillingdon Central ward and his interventions on local issues were regularly reported afterwards. The edition of 29 June 1956 reported on the couple’s golden wedding, and noted that when they moved to the area their house was only the third to be built on their road. Augustus was noted for his service on Uxbridge Council and his chairmanship of the Civil Defence Committee. The paper reported that he was a keen gardener, had been the first president of the Hillingdon Court Horticultural Society and been a founder member of the Hillingdon Court Residents’ Association. Five of their seven grandchildren were present at their anniversary party, the two others were living with their father Eric in Australia. Their daughter Joan worked in the Foreign Office, according to the report.
Maud died in Middleton-on-Sea in Sussex on 12 March 1958 (reported in the West Sussex Gazette of 20 March 1958) and I’m assuming they had moved or were in the process of moving there to retire because Augustus died in Middleton on 30 October 1962, leaving effects worth about £4,300.
The couple’s children were:
- Kenneth Hubert Towell (1908-1959). Kenneth was born in West Norwood, now in South London and married Dorothy Nellie Williams in 1931 in Uxbridge. The family were living in Brambledown Road, Wallington, in 1939, Kenneth working as an advertisement manager. He was living in Hillingdon at the time of his death in 1959. His wife remarried.
- Margaret Helen Towell (1910-1993), who was born in Teddington, Middlesex, and married Charles McAllister in Uxbridge in 1934. He’ h’ad been brought up in India. Charles was working as a chartered accountant and living with his wife in Exeter, Devon, at the time of the 1939 Register. Later they lived in Epsom, Surrey, where Charles died in 1982 and Margaret in 1993.
- Joan Maud Towell (1917-1987). Born in Bromley, Kent, Joan was living with her parents at the 1939 Register and remained unmarried. She worked as a civil servant, including at the Foreign Office. She died at Musbury, near Axminster, Devon, in 1987.
- Eric Augustus Towell (1921-????). Born in Bromley, Kent, Eric married Joan Ethel Harvey in Uxbridge in 1942. They moved with their family to Australia in 1952 and settled in New South Wales, where he worked as an architect. I believe Joan died back in London in 2006 but Eric’s fate is still unknown to me.
Sources. All data has been gathered from family memories, Ancestry.co.uk, FindMyPast.co.uk, the British Newspaper Archive (titles in text) and Norfolk Family History Society.