Great Granny's diary

Are you enjoying ‘Gentleman Jack’ the story of Anne Lister a nineteenth century woman who dared to be different?

The BBC1 Sunday evening drama written by Sally Wainwright and starring Suranne Jones is based on the diaries of Anne Lister, an extraordinary Yorkshire woman born in 1791.

Anne Lister left an account of her life in a journal numbering more than twenty volumes and some four million words, most of it written in code. For more than thirty years Helena Whitbread has been decoding, researching and writing about the woman who took control of her life and broke social conventions, sometimes at threat to her personal safety.

Finding the diary of one of the Swindon women I have researched is the stuff of my dreams, but unfortunately ordinary, nineteenth century, working class women didn't tend to leave an account of their life.

The closest I have come to such a find is a collection of letters held at the Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre in Chippenham, written by Ellen St John.  Ellen was the only surviving child born to Ellen Medex and Henry Mildmay St John, 5th Viscount Bolingbroke, during a clandestine relationship which lasted more than 30 years. 

During the 1930s Ellen wrote frequently to Harold Dale, the solicitor acting on behalf of the widowed Lady Bolingbroke, pleading for financial assistance. Poor Ellen could not understand nor appreciate that the beleaguered Lady Bolingbroke was also on her uppers, the Lydiard Park estate mortgaged and the mansion house in a state of dereliction.

Ellen died in 1942 in the Mayday Hospital, Croydon owing £14 14s rent on the two rooms where she had lived at 58 Derby Road, Croydon. She was laid to rest,

not in the St John family vault at St Mary's Church, Lydiard Park but in grave number 20642 plot F.5 in Croydon Cemetery, Mitcham Road. It seems unlikely anyone other than the funeral director attended her burial.

My thanks to the Radnor Street Cemetery followers and Swindon history enthusiasts who turned out in force yesterday for our regular guided walk and the launch of my book Struggle and Suffrage in Swindon. I will be at the Library Shop, Swindon Central Library on Saturday June 29 between 11 and 1 to sign copies of my book. Please come along and have a chat – and if you happen to have the odd diary and/or letters written by your great granny, oh please bring them too!!!

What every author wants to see - people reading their book!

Photographs courtesy of Royston Cartwright.