Tag: Gladys Joan Swift

1921

My mum, Gladys Joan Swift as a child
Mum heading for the hills in the 1940s.

Where was my mum, Gladys Joan Swift, one hundred years ago today on Monday 25th April 1921?

Thanks to the 1921 Census records now available on Find My Past, I’ve been able to track her down. She was just three years old at the time, living at 77 Nether Edge Road, Sheffield.

Census record

Maurice Swift

Swift census record
Maurice Swift signature
Maurice Swift

Her father Maurice describes himself as a Cabinet Manufacturer and Undertaker, the employer at his firm Swift and Goodison Ltd.

His signature seems to fit with what I know of his character, bold with a bit of a flourish.

Childhood drawing by Maurice Swift senior.

Maurice Junior

But there was another Maurice Swift, Maurice T. Swift, cabinet maker at number 77. This was my uncle, then aged 16 who was employed as a Cabinet Case Apprentice at Maurice Senior’s workshop on Headford Street.

Giving your son your own Christian name and training him up in your business isn’t without its risks and after a falling out with his father, Maurice junior set up his own funeral business, resulting in confusion when people turned up to pay their bills. Maurice senior had to resort to placing a notice in the local paper pointing out there was no connection between the two businesses.

Sarah Ann

Sarah Ann

I checked out 79 Nether Edge Road because I knew that my great grandma, Maurice’s mum, Sarah Ann Swift (nee Truelove) was living there at the time of Sheffield Blitz but she hadn’t yet moved in a hundred years ago today.

33 Cemetery Road, Sheffield, August 2020, copyright Google 2022.

A search of the census shows that, aged 70 and a widow, she was supporting herself as a boarding house keeper at 33 Cemetery Road.

1921 Census record, 33 Cemetery Road, Sheffield
1921 Census record, 33 Cemetery Road, Sheffield.

Her boarders were a Singer Sewing Machine Salesman, James Pemberton, aged 50, and Mantle Shop Manager, John Robert Preston, aged 46.

Sarah Ann Swift signature

She was born in 1851 so her signature is Victorian copperplate. I’m intrigued that she ran the Sarah and Ann together, signing herself as Sarahann Swift.

Remembering VE Day

Bill Ellis
Barbara’s dad, William Ellis in 1940.

On this day, 7th May, in 1995, we invited my mum, Gladys Joan Bell, and Barbara’s mum and dad, Bill and Betty Ellis, to reminisce about VE Day for the 50th anniversary. My mum was a primary school teacher in Sheffield who, in the early stages of the war, took evacuees to stay in rural Derbyshire to escape the bombing. In the Sheffield Blitz my grandad’s house was bombed but my mum, grandma and grandad were safe in the Anderson Shelter in the back garden. My great grandma next door wasn’t so lucky. She didn’t like the shelter, so she hunkered down in the cellar but the Luftwaffe scored a direct hit and demolished her house. Luckily great grandma and her pet bird in a cage were rescued via the coal shoot.

What the three of them reminisced about 25 years ago, I can’t tell you as we no longer have a cassette player in the house. My mum celebrated in Sheffield, Barbara’s mum was in Horbury but I’ve forgotten now whether Bill and my dad, Douglas, were on leave at the time.

When the lockdown is over, I’ll get the cassette transferred to digital.

My mum, Gladys Joan Swift, as she was before her marriage at the end of the war, somewhere in the Peak District, c.1946.

Beatson; Girl with a Book

Gladys Joan Bell, 1924My mum, Gladys Joan Swift (as she was then), looks about six in this portrait, so it must have been painted around 1924.

signaturecanvasIt was painted in Sheffield by Charles Beatson (1864 – 1949). He painted historical subjects including a Portrait of a Cavalier. In those subjects, I can see the influence by of Dutch painters and I think there are hints of that in this portrait, that’s if you can get past mum’s 1920s party dress!

The canvas is 3ft x 2ft 6 inches. There’s no makers name on the back.

book

mumbook2I’d love to identify the book that my mum is holding. It might be there to add a splash of colour but, even so, it looks like a particular title. It’s possible that my mum had brought a book with her to the sitting but I think that it’s more likely to be a prop, something Beatson was able to put his hands on in the studio.

When I invert and stretch it in Photoshop, the illustration on the back cover looks like a woman reading from an open book to a boy.

Gladys Joan Swift, oil painting by Charles Beatson.One of my mum’s favourite books was Alice in Wonderland. In her final illness, in January this year, when she was confined to bed in a nursing home, she asked me to look out her childhood copy of Alice and to bring it in and read it to her, describing to me just where I’d find it on the bookshelf. I’m sorry that I didn’t get around to doing that before she passed away but between the two of us we managed to remember a few of the lines from the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.