Florence Minnie Palmer: 20 Nov 1895-13 February 1978

An aspect of my family history I have found intriguing is one theme running through it- the strength of the women. This blog post celebrates one of these women- my paternal Grandmother, Florence Minnie Palmer. 

Nanny (or Florrie, as she was also known, but obviously not by me) was born in Ramsgate, Kent, in 1895. Her father was Ramsgate mariner Walter Palmer and her mother was Eliza (known in the family as Lala) Horne, seventh child of Ag Lab- made-good- tenant- farmer George Horn; Lala was born in Garlinge, Margate. Upon marriage the couple lived in Ramsgate, where Walter Palmer continued his mariner exploits- Nan was the only child (that I know of) and adored her parents, who in turn appear to have been kindly and loving- my grandfather was also very fond of them. By 1901 the family had moved to Bermondsey, where Walter had a job in the London docks. By the 1911 census the family had taken up residence in Tooley Street, and a 15 year old Nan was an apprentice dressmaker; if the clothes she made for me when I was a child were any indication, she would have been a very good one. I remember fondly the matching pinnies she made for us, to be worn when I stayed with them; and she kept me supplied with a series of dresses, usually from the same pattern (she cut her own, a skill she never got round to teaching me) but in different materials and designs for different occasions (party frocks, or everyday dresses). 

At some point she became friendly with the oldest son of her father's best friend, and when he headed off to fight in the Great War, she kept him entertained with a succession of letters and photos, now in my possession. The photos were all taken professionally by a studio photographer in the Old Kent Road; 'Florrie aged 17' is written on the back of one, and others include Florrie dressed as a cowgirl, and later, as a nurse. In return, the young man sent a succession of lace postcards - we see the correspondence progressing from teasing friends to something more serious. In September 1918, with victory close at hand, the young couple married in St John's Bermondsey, known locally as the Lousy Church, due to the peculiar design of the weathervane on the steeple. 

Married life was not to prove smooth sailing. In the absence of  a Land Fit For Heroes, the couple remained at the same address as the family had lived in 1911, in the first floor of  a warehouse within spitting distance of London Bridge, but handy for Grandad to make the walk along to the queue of eager workers at the quayside each day, looking for daily employment. Children followed: a daughter within a year, twin boy (my father) and girl a year after that, another set of twins who died in infancy three years later. After the final births Nan was very ill herself and close to death; the doctor advised no more children, although I think they would have loved more. Life was hard; the oldest daughter was sent to Ramsgate to live with Nan's parents, following their retreat to Kent; the other children travelled up and down regularly and spent much time there with their grandparents. One cannot help but surmise this was designed to relieve the burden on the young couple. Eventually things started to look up; allocated a brand new L.C.C. house in the suburb of Morden, Nanny took to homemaking with a vengeance. She loved her new house, her neighbours and her new community; the death of her mother ensured that her father came to live with them, where he stayed until his death in the house in 1951. On the edge of suburbia, the children attended school, and spent the holidays roaming the countryside, obtaining seasonal employment with the milkman and any other deliveryman who would pay a few pennies; Nanny attended to her garden, fed and clothed her children and was content with her life. A piano in the living room proved a magnet for a good neighbourhood knees up. 

When World War 2 was declared, she found herself facing yet more challenges- her son had joined the Navy the year before, her daughters both joined up, and her husband was recalled to active service. She remained at home with her father, writing letters, compiling family photo albums, collecting newspaper cuttings, and opening her home to friends of her children who came home on leave. Cards and letters attest to the hospitality extended to these servicemen as they recalled the respite they had enjoyed at 'Number 12- Sailor's Rest', as one called it. One young sailor, a shipmate of my father, enjoyed his stay so much he married the youngest daughter of the household! Sadly too, the photo album shows pictures of those who were never to return- I remember when Nan would bring out the album as a special treat, and the commentary ran along the lines of: 'he was a nice boy- was lost at Dunkirk' or 'he played the piano so well- he died on the Royal Oak/Prince of Wales/ (insert name of lost ship). I don't think Nan ever forgot any of them. 

After the war, things settled down. The children married, she became the proud grandmother of 3, and although elderly when we were all born, spoiled us rotten. After Grandad retired, they fell into a comfortable daily routine; when I stayed, we would go out shopping on a daily basis (no fridge, just a larder which had cool marble shelves) for fresh food, come home and make dinner, clean up; then I would read whilst she had a little rest, and then she would either take me into the garden and try (in vain) to educate me about her beloved flowers, or she would teach me (somewhat more successfully) to sew. Once a week we would go to the afternoon pictures in the cinema at the end of the road; otherwise we would sit in the garden. I don't know that she ever left Morden, but then she had no need to; everything she needed was there, and anything that wasn't (such as the members of her family) always came to her. She sat on a horsehair chair at the dining table, which gave her a birds eye view of everything that happened in the street; visitors knew she would be there in the afternoon, and I lost count of the times I was frightened out of my wits when, seated on her chair for some reason whilst Nan  was trundling away on her pride and joy, her treadle Singer sewing machine, someone knocked on the window next to her chair and grinned though the window pane, as a signal she should open the front door for them. 

I hold Nanny fully responsible for my interest in family history. Her precious photo albums, her enjoyment and love of regaling me with family stories, her insistence on hanging onto various family artefacts despite the lack of money or space in her home, stuck with me. On her wall hung a barometer, awarded to her father by the RNLI for saving life at sea; in her kitchen was stored a 'rabbit pie', a piece of 19th century pottery; in her wardrobe were stored original newspapers covering events of national significance from 1930 onwards. She kept every letter and photograph her grandchildren ever sent her; and although very uneducated herself, as I re-read her letters with their grammatical and spelling mistakes, her love of family shines through. 

She died in early 1978, as a result of complications following surgery on her shoulder after a fall. Nan and Grandad were six months away from celebrating their diamond wedding anniversary. After her death we found the amount of documentation she had kept regarding her family over the years; goodness knows where she kept it all. Aged 17 at the time, I refused to attend the funeral, but went to school instead, not mentioning the subject. If I didn't talk about it, it wouldn't be real. I got through the day until the early evening when my parents returned from the wake, and in a brief non accusatory sentence, my father let me know in no uncertain terms that my absence had been noticed by the extended family. I marched upstairs a la truculent teenager, climbed into bed, buried myself under the eiderdown, and cried myself to sleep.

Wilfred George Gambrell 3 May 1895- 8 Dec 1989

Born on this day in 1895, my grandfather Wilfred George Gambrell (known to everyone as 'George') was a product of two well known Kent seafaring communities- the Gambrill and Cooper families. His father George Henry had moved to Ramsgate from Whitstable upon marrying Rose Cooper. The Coopers were a single handed seafaring industry in the small town of Ramsgate; not only  mariners going back to times as yet unresearched by myself, they were also heavily involved in the Ramsgate Lifeboat and were participants in many of the more famous rescues that lifeboat was involved in. 

Grandad was not particularly close to his parents, but adored his Cooper grandparents, Alexander Jordan Cooper and Ellen Strevens- he kept photos of each by his bedside until his death. They told him stories of the high seas (aka Kent coast) and of lifeboat rescues long past. He would wander down to the Harbour and watch the ships and day trippers, being taken along for a ride more often than not. 

After leaving school he wished to see the world and joined a merchant shipping company. So much did he take to this life that upon returning from one extensive trip, he was summoned to the company's London office and told to write to his mother, who apparently had been inundating the office with enquiries as to her son's whereabouts and good health. 

Somewhere along the line he met the daughter of his father's best friend, Walter Palmer. A Ramsgate boy, Walter had deserted the country for the East End of London, where he found gainful daily employment in the docks. Grandad found Florence Minnie (shortened, thankfully, to 'Florrie') an ardent correspndent when he headed off to war, and they married in St Olave's Bermondsey in September 1918. Children followed: eldest daughter Winnie the next year, twins Walter and Doris (shortened in the family to "Wally and Dolly") two years after marriage, and then, tragically, another set of twins in 1923. Living above a warehouse in Tooley Street (exactly opposite the London Dungeon, use this link and scroll round to the memorial to a fireman on the wall at first floor level-of the junction of Tooley Street and Cotton Lane- that's where they lived) the twins led short and sad lives- weak from premature birth, and probably at a distinct disadvantage due to their living conditions, both died within three weeks. Grandad once described to me, 60 years after the event, how the little girl died in his arms, and his struggle to revive her under the gas jets. Unable to afford birth or marriage certificates, or the cost of funerals, the bodies of the children were taken to the local undertaker who was well versed in secreting the corpses of children in adult coffins. The twins were laid to rest in Nunhead Cemetery. 

By 1931 things were looking up for the family as they were allocated a new home in the L.C.C.'s slum clearance scheme. They accepted a home in Morden, Surrey, and as the town was still being built, Grandad was sent along to the local post office to choose his house from plan. He picked the smallest house because it had the biggest garden, and the family moved in, recalling oldest daughter from her Ramsgate grandparents where she had been living to help reduce the financial strain on the family. The choice of the smallest house backfired almost immediately- as the couple were hanging curtains in the front room, having been in the house less than a week, a policeman arrived  at the front door to say they had received a message that Nan's mother had been taken seriously ill in Ramsgate, and they should go immediately. Grandad walked to Wimbledon where he found a taxi driver about to finish his shift; convinced the taxi driver to go home and get a flask of hot drink, then drive to Morden and collect the family and take them to Ramsgate. This the obliging taxi driver did,and drove heroically through the night, but unfortunately they arrived just as my great grandmother was being laid out on the settee in the parlour ( an experience my father never forgot, as he was told he had to kiss her goodbye). When the family returned home, Nan's dad came too, and stayed until his death in the house some 23 years later. 

Until the arrival of the Northern Line Underground Extension in Morden, Grandad walked to Wimbledon every day whence he caught a working man's train to London Bridge, a docker like his father in law. Around this time he was very active, politically; a photo of the Tooley Street TGWU at the time of the General Strike shows him holding one side of the banner, his brother the other, and his father and young children standing underneath. Encouraged to stand as a local councillor, he told me that he hadn’t done so as he had a family to support. 

By 1939 Grandad led a happy if humble existence, working and gardening, going to the pub, with an occasional visit to Epsom for the fair and the races. When war was declared, Nan found herself in the position of having all her children and her husband in the armed forces. Grandad, although a married man in his 40's, was sent to Kent to camoflage real RAF bases and build fake bases in the hope the Nazis would bomb those instead. Sitting at home, Florrie maintained a detailed photo album and collected letters, welcomed the friends and comrades of her children into her home as they visited on leave, collected newspaper cuttings of relevance, and helped her daughters prepare for their weddings under wartime conditions. A dressmaker before her marriage, she was in a good position to make wedding dresses from scarce rationed material. Grandad had taken wartime precautions, and in the traditions of his smuggling ancestors, had secreted supplies of gin and whisky in flaggons under the vegetables in the back garden. When a V2 hit the front hedge of the house towards the end of the war (my father, home on leave at the time, stood sheltering under a doorway further up the road, and watched the whole raid in horror) the general reaction amongst the family was 'thank goodness it didn't land in the back garden- the whole street would have gone up!'

After demob, Grandad worked as a hospital porter until retirement. My earliest memories are of staying with my grandparents, helping Grandad dig the veggies for lunch (which of course they called dinner) and then helping Nanny to prepare them. In the afternoons he would  work in his garden whilst Nanny taught me to sew. 

Florence died in 1978, six months before what would have been their 60th wedding anniversary. He never got over it; daily he wanted to be with her. My parents moved back in with him, and as his hearing deteriorated he became increasingly isolated, but always grateful for visits. At the age of 90 he had a pacemaker fitted, and was horrified when the doctor informed him it would have to be replaced in 10 years' time: "Oi 'ope Oi'm not 'ere theeeen", he replied in his "Raaaaaamsgate" accent, which he had never lost. 

He took great pleasure in hearing about all I uncovered in connection with his family history, although it was hard to share it all with him as his deafness made discreet conversation impossible, and my mother (strongly disapproving of the activity), would make her displeasure known whenever I visited and tried to tell him some more. One afternoon I took along a book I had found in a local library called 'Victorian and Edwardian Ramsgate In Pictures'- he seized it hurriedly, took it to his room, and emerged an hour later, triumphantly able to identify every single man in the photos. His memory jogged, he told me stories relating to each of them, although, as he said 'but of course, they were silly old men when I knew them'- he would have been 90 himself at that time! 

Grandad died in his 95th year. Knowing how upset I would be, my parents rang my husband to ask him to break the news to me rather than tell me themselves (he forgot). I miss him still to this day. I remember with fondness the hours spent 'helping' him in the garden, when he must really have wished I would let him  get on in peace, or the pretend 'rows' he and Nan had (I never once heard them argue, but am sure they must have)- one day, Nanny was so annoyed about something he had forgotten to do, she declared she would "knock 'is block orf" when he got home....whilst she was hanging out the washing I saw him coming up the garden path, so I met him in some agitation and whispered his impending fate to him. I thought he would turn tail and run, but he just winked at me and said 'oh is she now?', picked me up and hid behind my four year old self! If ever a man met his challenges and still provided for his family whilst never expecting any reward, or even betterment in life, Grandad was that man. He had his faults, of those I have been told; but he was and will always be one of my greatest friends, and for that I shall always be indescribably grateful.