I don’t remember meeting Aunty Suzanne, but I do remember getting birthday presents of pretty – fancy – dresses from her, the sorts of clothes I didn’t normally have. Ethel Suzanne Poulson was actually a great aunt, the youngest of my grandfather’s (Gamps) five sisters.

I haven’t yet done a blog post on wife v2.0 for John Walden Poulson – the Wastrel – but Ethel Suzanne was born March 9, 1905, in Knottingley, Yorkshire, and her Mum was Emily, the Wastrel’s second wife. Just after her fifth birthday, her Dad took off for Canada and she spent a large chunk of her childhood with her maternal grandfather, John Henry Shepherd in Ferrybridge – he had variously been an inn keeper, horse dealer and farmer over the years.

Ethel’s Mum, Emily, died of tuberculosis in 1917 when Ethel was 12 – her older sister, Millicent Mary, who later became a registered nurse, was the one “in attendance” who reported Emily’s death. She was 15. Ethel Suzanne Poulson turned 21 in 1926, the height of the 20s boom years, but I have no idea where she was or who she celebrated with. But I do know about the summer of 1924.

In 1924, when Ethel Suzanne was 19, my grandparents – newlyweds on a trip back to Yorkshire for Nanny – Lilian Melita (née Williams) – to meet Gamps’ family. Before that Billie (as Nanny was known) had only met one older sister, Goggie, who was a nurse in Portsmouth. Gamps was working for Barclays Bank (thanks to a referral from Edwin, his grandfather) since returning from WWI and he and Nanny were married in Portsea on April 22, 1923.

Ethel Suzanne would have been 19 when the picture in the car was taken. My father wasn’t sure if the car belonged to Gamps but he thought it looked similar to one he remembered seeing as a small boy – I’m guessing it looks too expensive for a newly-minted Barclays employee to afford. When Gamps and Nanny were married, their address was given as Bank House, Willis Road, Landport – accommodations above the bank – so I doubt there was money for a large car. It probably wasn’t Ethel’s either, but possibly Aunty Flo, a widow by then (she was one of the Shepherd girls, younger than Mary Ann – Gamps’ Mum – and Emily – Ethel’s Mum, who married a glass bottle manufacturer, Isaac Burdin, who had died in 1917).

In 1926, when Ethel turned 21, her Dad was remarried and by then dodging the authorities. Her Grandfather Edwin had died the previous year, July 1925, and her Grandfather John Henry long before in 1919. Her oldest sister Emily Muriel was a teacher at the Chelmsford High School for Girls; the next sister (Nellie Gwendolyn) was married and living in Australia. I believe she and her sister Millicent Mary, by then a registered nurse, were living together in Bella Vista in on Westfield Park in Wakefield.

The nursing register above is from 1927, showing two of my great aunts who had become registered nurses. Millicent May was newly entered, and even though she qualified in London, she shows the Wakefield address every year until she moves to Malaysia in 1932. The snippet from a passenger manifest for Ethel is from 1937 when she went on a long  trip to and from Singapore (left in October 1937 and returned in February 1938) – but the Wakefield address is the same. I believe the trip was to visit her sister in Malaysia (Mrs. Mumford, as Millicent Mary was then, returned to England with her children in August 1938).

By the 1939 register (done in September 1939 after the start of WWII) Ethel was living n Leeds on Woodsley Road with her step-grandmother Ada (Upstanding Edwin’s housekeeper and third wife).

There’s a gap in my knowledge of Ethel’s story until September 1935 when an article – advertorial for the store she worked for, M.C. Hitchen & Sons in all but name – shows a picture of their millinery buyer, Miss Poulson.

She apparently worked there for many years and when she started her own hat business in early 1952 – Florence & Clare – it was because Hitchens had closed its doors.  Rather sadly, when the owner died, the sons couldn’t come up with the necessary estate taxes to keep the business open and it became an example case of how small businesses were harmed by hefty inheritance taxes.

The Yorkshire Evening Post ran ads for the new hat shop and there were also a number of benefits for local charities  that Florence & Clare ran or supported.

For those not familiar with pre-decimal money in England, 58/11 is 58 shillings and 11 pence – there were 20 shillings in one pound and 12 pennies in a shilling. So the hat cost £2 18s 11d, or about £71 in today’s money.

So far, I haven’t been able to find out how long this business survived. Burton’s Arcade is long gone – it was modernized once in the 1970s and demolished again for the Trinity Center – a world away from Ethel Suzanne’s hat shop! I have come upon photos of one of Florence & Clare’s hat boxes, courtesy of a collector of vintage items who found this blog via Google when he sought information about the shop it came from.

So about the dresses…I don’t know who took the pictures of Mum and me in one of these birthday present dresses, but I’m guessing this is October 1960 (given my size and that it’s before Mum’s paralysis – May 1961). The lighting and technical quality is too good for it to have been my Dad, so possibly it was my Uncle Sven?

Suzanne never had children – she did marry later in life – in December 1967 – to a widower, Walter Crossman. They retired to Portsmouth, which is where Walter’s family was from. I’m assuming that she considered herself retired at that point as I haven’t found anything suggesting a millinery in Portsmouth.