My 2xgreat grandparents suffered the loss of two baby daughters before Ellen, their 11th child, was born. She grew up in Redbourn, and worked as a machinist in a waterproof clothing factory in nearby St Albans, Hertfordshire. War seems to have been a backdrop to much of her family life. WW1 saw her marry and have her only son while her husband was serving overseas. Between the wars, they moved to Essex, returning to Luton after WW2. Their grandson served for over 25 years in the RAF, in peacetime.

Life before WW1: Sewing waterproofs

Ellen, known as Nell or Nellie, was born on 3 June 1889 in St Albans and makes her first census appearance in 1891, at High Street Redbourn, with her parents Jesse and Harriet Ephgrave and four older siblings. She would have been six years old when the youngest in the family, Bertie Ephgrave, died aged 18 months in 1895. He was the last of her parents’ 13 children, although only nine survived. She grew up with some of her older siblings in Redbourn, where their father worked as a baker. I haven’t found any school records for her, although some newspaper articles show that her father, Jesse Ephgrave, was fined several times for his children’s non-attendance.

Her mother, born Harriet Scrivener, grew up in Luton and worked plaiting straw to be made into straw hats, a lucrative craft that she continued after marriage. By the early 1900s, however, the trade was beginning to decline, which may be why Nellie followed a different path to earn money. In the 1911 census, she and her younger sister Rose are both working as machinists in a waterproof clothing factory. Their six year old nephew, Frederick Charles Ephgrave, the illegitimate son of their older sister Alice, is in the household on census night while his mother worked as a servant in nearby Harpenden.

The sisters probably worked at Nicholson’s raincoat factory in the Fleetville area of St Albans, a couple of miles from Redbourn, where coats were tailored and proofed with a patented ‘perramus’ process. The photo below is from Fleetville Memories (PDF, viewable online and a fascinating read for anyone interested in garment making in Manchester, St Albans and Swindon in the 1900s-1960s).

Photo taken c. 1911 of the Beaumont Works belonging to Messrs Nicholson (source: link above)

Perhaps Nellie and Rose are even amongst those pictured. The site has quotes from one of the girls who worked at the factory from the age of 14 in the early 1900s: she recounts the different types of work she did until, after eight years, she was allowed to be a machinist. Nicholson’s raincoats were deemed to be of very high quality and much sought after, so Nellie and Rose may have felt some pride in their work, and had perhaps honed their skills, working up to machinists, since leaving school.

A year after the census was taken, Nellie’s older sister Alice Ephgrave emigrated to Detroit, Michigan, to work as a servant and cook. She left her young son Fred behind, perhaps still living with her parents and younger sisters on the High Street until he was old enough to follow her. In 1914, Alice married a stableman who was originally from Redbourn and who had emigrated a few years earlier. The Ephgraves may have known his family and perhaps heard news from overseas via them. I wonder whether Alice wrote to Nellie and Rose, and if any of those letters home survived.

Life between the wars: Luton, Essex and back

WW1 was already underway when Nellie married George James Pratt in the first quarter of 1915, a year after her sister married in Detroit. At the time of the 1911 census, he was also living on High Street, Redbourn, where his father was working as a bricklayer’s labourer. George was an auxiliary postman, and post office pension records show that he had four years’ qualifying service at Watford’s sorting office, which brought him a pension of £70 per year in later life. There are medal roll cards for a George J Pratt, Sapper and Driver no. 25334 in the Royal Engineers, who served for the duration of the war and was entitled to the full complement of medals for that conflict, so they would have married while he was on leave.

By the end of 1916, Nellie has moved to Luton, over the border in Bedfordshire, where she gave birth to their only child, Dennis George Pratt, on 21 December 1916. An early Christmas present. Her husband returned from the war and from 1918, electoral registers show George and Nellie at 50 Maple Road, Luton, where they are still living at the time of the 1921 census. Google Street View shows the road lined on one side with narrow, two storey terraced houses, for the most part still brick-fronted and with interesting carved floral detail still visible on some of them. No.50 looks in a fairly dilapidated state.

In 1921, George is working at Vauxhall Motors, like Nell’s older brother and brother-in-law. He is a brush hand in the paint department. They stay at Maple Road until at least 1929. Ten years later, as WWII breaks out, by then in their late 40s, they have moved to Wanstead in Essex, to 70 Chigwell Road. George is now a greengrocer and general shopkeeper. Did they move to what they thought might be a safer place during the war, or for some other reason?

Their son Dennis had married (in Woodford, in 1938, to Gladys Mayne) and they are living at Devonshire Road, Hornchurch in Essex at the time of The 1939 Register, where he is a roundsman for milk and groceries. They have a son, Dennis George junior, who was just a few months old. Perhaps his parents moved to be a bit closer to their son. Whatever the reason, they returned to live in Luton after WW2.

Nellie died in Luton in 1969. In 2008 I had an email from a daughter-in-law of her son, Dennis George Pratt. She adds that her mother-in-law:

(now aged 92) remembers Ellen – known to the family as Nell – with great fondness. She has a large box of Ellen’s photographs and ‘paperwork’ that was passed to her when George died in the early 80s – if there is anything relating to her brother or father I’ll let you know.

Unfortunately, I didn’t hear any further from her. Perhaps the ‘paperwork’ included letters home from her sister Alice in the US and/or from her husband while at the front in WW1. It would have been good to see if they gave any insights into my great grandfather’s life, or those of his parents.

After Nell’s death, George seems to have moved to Poole in Dorset, where he died in 1973 at the age of 83 (not quite the ‘early 80s’ that Wendy recalled). Their son Dennis George Pratt and his wife Gladys had also moved to Dorset by the 1970s, which may have prompted George to retire there. Dennis and Gladys had at least two sons; the eldest joined the RAF and served for over 25 years, as Warrant Officer, Personnel Officer and family services officer at RAF Stafford, according to various articles in local newspapers at FindMyPast. He may have died in 2023, possibly leaving two children. I haven’t been able to find out anything much about their younger son apart from the email from his wife, and a possible obituary in 2012.