| Name |
Edith May WINDER [1] |
| Birth |
3 Sep 1879 |
Richmond, Wayne, Indiana, USA  [1] |
| Gender |
Female |
| Occupation |
1919 |
Philadelphia, Bucks, Pennsylvania, USA |
| teacher and secretary |
|
| Passport Application |
2 Jun 1919 |
Philadelphia, Bucks, Pennsylvania, USA [1] |
- Delegate to conference of the Society of Friends in England from George School.
|
| Passport Application |
3 Mar 1923 |
Swarthmore, Delaware, Pennsylvania, USA [1] |
- Traveling to England to marry.
|
| article |
Apr 2004 |
| Memoirs of William Einar Miall |
- Found at «a href="http://prism.bham.ac.uk/~miallrc/private/WEM_memoirs.pdf"»http://prism.bham.ac.uk/~miallrc/private/WEM_memoirs.pdf«/a»
I was born on October 10th, 1917 in the home of William Littleboy, an elderly and very worthy Quaker who lived in Selly Oak, Birmingham. My mother had gone there to get away from the air-raids - Zeppelin raids actually - in London. The family home at the time was in Corringham Rd in Hampstead though I have no memories of it. I suppose I was named after William Littleboy. He had befriended Mother when she had been attending some sort of course at Woodbrooke, a college run by the Society of Friends. My middle name is Einar, after Mother's brother who had just been killed in the war; Einar is a fairly common Scandinavian name but I have no idea why that uncle was given a Scandinavian name.
... (after carrying us all the way up to and through his WW II adventures):
I haven't so far mentioned a major development in our family which had occurred before the war, in 1931 I think. William Littleboy - the old boy in whose house I was born - had adopted twins when he was in his mid-seventies. He had done this because he had married a second wife [Edith Winder Shirley] who was years younger than he, and I suppose they thought it would be a sensible move from everyone's point of view. The twins were quite young at the time, only a matter of months. Unfortunately the wife [Edith] died first. She developed some malignancy and committed suicide. W.L. then found a second substitute Mum for them, but again there was a tragedy and that person died young. Shortly afterwards William Littleboy died too, at the age of eighty-five when the twins were ten years old. His will indicated that he hoped they might join our family at his death. I don't know at what extent this had been discussed with my parents. Probably fully because he had made all kinds of provisions for them and for any financial aspects involved and we had been told of the possibility. Al and Min (Alice and Mary, they were) had had a very disturbed childhood. They were really fond of William Littleboy, but three deaths among those who had been caring for them, before the age of eleven, must have been traumatic. And the rather sombre and devout atmosphere of South Hill, Selly Oak wasn't a very natural environment in which to bring up young and active kids. Like many identical twins, I think. They were either as thick as thieves or squabbling like nobody's business! Mother wasn't terribly tolerant of the situation and I think hoped for more affection from them than she was entitled to expect. On the whole it was an arrangement that gave the girls some sort of a family life, but at a cost. It wasn't ideal for them and it certainly produced psychological stress for Mother. Al and Min went off to a co-ed boarding school, St Christopher's, in Letchworth. For some reason it was thought that they would be better at separate schools and Min went off to the Mount at York, where Nan was at that time one of the older girls. Having joined a family that was more or less grown-up and then being sent off to boarding schools meant that the twins were a bit short of local friends when at Tewin. When I returned to England Min was working on a farm somewhere; she was engaged to an American sergeant. Al had started a nursing training but it was interrupted when she got married to a young forestry officer and went with him to Nyasaland where he was drowned within weeks of the birth of their daughter. (The story was told bv Laurens van der Post in "Venture to the Interior" much to AI's chagrin at the time.) Min married Jim, a young farmer who she had met at a training course in St Albans, and they have been living on a small farm in Addingham, near Ilkley, ever since. She has written a rather good account of her childhood. Al unfortunately developed cancer of the ovarv some years later but when she was still quite young. She died in St Mary's when we were living in Jordans. Al had asked me to find out from the consultant who operated on her whether it was a malignant tumour or not and to tell her, honestly. It was and I did, but I don't think I did it very well and she had a rather miserable end.
|
| _UID |
95E2D9EDDC0243769DE1A3697D06CB45F16E |
| Death |
Yes, date unknown |
| Person ID |
I22077 |
WinderWonderland |
| Last Modified |
9 May 2014 |
1879 - Yes, date unknown
