My maternal great grandmother Lavinia Brown, nee Seaby, lived a long life much characterised by struggle and loss. Two children died in infancy, her husband Charley Brown died of cancer and her eldest son Walter Charles Brown was killed in action in WW1. Her later life is less well-recorded, but she was clearly loved and respected by her family and friends as a long-standing Sandy resident.

Life through two World Wars

After the death of her son on 17 December 1916, Lavinia – who may have been known as Venny, like my Aunt Lavinia – would have witnessed the loss of other sons of Sandy friends and neighbours in the final years of the War. The Sandy War Memorial includes 109 names of men originally from Sandy who died in the first conflict, and 20 killed in WW2. Lavinia continued to place In Memoriam notices in the local newspaper from the month of his death and on into the 1920s for her son.

In Memoriam notice, Biggleswade Chronicle, 31 Dec 1917

At the time of the 1921 census, she is enumerated at 14 Longfield Road, Sandy, with her two adult sons, my grandfather Horace Brown and his brother George Brown. Her occupation is ‘home duties’, ie housewife. As well as her two sons, both working, there is a Phillis Brown, aged nine years, eight months, in the household on census night. She is described as ‘Visitor’, although she was actually Lavinia’s granddaughter, the illegitimate child of her daughter Emily Brown. She is at the ‘National School’.

In 1923, Lavinia attended my grandparents’ wedding at St Swithun’s Church, Sandy. Unlike the clothes worn by the happy couple and their bridesmaids, those of the mother of the groom are not described. St Swithun’s was also the place of marriage of her eldest daughter, Emily Brown, in 1925. She married my maternal grandmother’s brother Jesse Fage. Her youngest son, George Brown, married Esther Huckle in June 1930; the wedding took place at the parish church in Biggleswade, the bride’s home town. The extended Huckle family had lost several men to WW1.

Apart from these celebrations, I know very little about Lavinia’s life between the 1921 census and her appearance in The 1939 Register at the outbreak of WW2.

Extract from The 1939 Register, FindMyPast

By then she is living on her own at 10 Longfield Road, Sandy. A few doors along, at no 14, her former home, are her daughter-in-law Elizabeth Brown’s parents, William J Fage and his wife, nee Alice Cade. Her grandchildren, Vera J Brown and Dorothy L Brown, my mother’s sisters, are recorded with them, perhaps like our Mum, sent to Sandy for safety. It seems that Lavinia was still proud of her former profession as cook, as she is described as ‘Cook Retired’. By then, she was nearly 80 years old. She lived through almost all of the second conflict, until her death, aged 82, on 29 May 1944.

Extract from GRO death certificate for Lavinia Brown

The death certificate (extract above), shows that the cause of death was Bronchopneumonia, Exhaustion and Glaucoma. She is described not as a Cook, but as the widow of Charles Brown, Railway Platelayer. Her son George Brown of 5 Drove Road, Biggleswade, registered the death.

The notice of her funeral (left) from the Biggleswade Chronicle of 9 June 1944 (FindMyPast) states that the death took place at 11 Longfield Road, and that her home address was no. 10. Although the newspapers states that she “leaves two sons and a daughter”, in fact both her daughters were still alive, but Esther Clara Brown is not reported as attending the funeral. By then she was living in Hendon, and had had three illegitimate children. Was she estranged from the rest of the family, or just unable to travel at the time, given the War?

I have researched the lives of all the surviving children of Charles and Lavinia Brown, their own children and subsequent generations. As many of these are still alive, I will not be publishing their stories, interesting though some of them are.