Part Two: A Tale of Two Nellies

Needless to say, I had a pretty dim view of my great grandmother heading into this search. She was a shadowy figure who had long haunted my own fraught relationship with motherhood: an alcoholic, a snuff addict, a woman who had essentially (to my eyes) sold her daughter into indentured servitude to endure a childhood of chronic abuse. I would think of my own infant son; his dimpled little laugh, his bright inquisitive eyes, and imagine telling him he was “the scrapings of the pot”. Imagine swapping him for butter. It was unconscionable to me. My mind would recoil from it.

But as I got to know Nellie, or rather, know her story; as parts of her life emerged from the scraps of information I was able to find in public records, my opinion of her began to change. Of course giving up my beloved son was unconscionable to me. He has a home – with me and my husband - where he is safe, warm, fed. We have the resources to pay for his care so we can both continue with our careers. We have grandparents, aunts, uncles, great grandparents who we can rely on for support.

These were not things Nellie had when she offered my mama for adoption in 1941. For the large part, they were not things she had ever had.

My great great grandparents were Henry Aston, a tin plate worker from Birmingham, and Elizabeth Meek, a tin solderer, also from Birmingham. Nellie was born in 1894 into a family of what would eventually be six children, all of them living in just three rooms. I can only imagine growing up at the turn of the century with two parents working in the tin factories in industrial Birmingham was pretty grim. By 1911 Nellie was also working in the factories, as a nut press hand, and still living in the three-room family lodgings. Henry was dead by then, so my great great grandma Elizabeth, Nellie, and her older sister Elsie all had to work to support the rest of the younger Aston siblings.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. It took me a long time to find Nellie Aston. I kept getting distracted by another Nellie entirely: Nellie Knowles.

My mama’s birth certificate arrived one morning in March. It didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know already really. Amy Rose, a girl, born 8th May 1936 to Nellie Keen, formerly Knowles, a screw worker of 1/9 Floodgate Street, Deritend.

Amy Rose

The (misleading!) 'Knowles' Clue

The long white roofed building is 9 Floodgate Street. Nellie and my mama lived in a one room 'apartment'.

I found the address on Google Maps. It’s a run-down looking warehouse now, flanked by the train tracks on one side, the River Rea flowing to its back. Streetlist tells me it is the only ‘Floodgate Street’ in the whole of Great Britain, so named because of the floodgates folks would use when the River Rea would burst its banks. By the time my mama was born the River Rea had mostly retreated to underground culverts, the flood gates now existing in name only. Facebook suggests my mama’s one room lodging is now part of a rehearsal space for local musicians. I wish I could show it to mama. I think she’d get a kick out of that.

The side of 9 Floodgate Street visible from the street

So, I had a maiden name for Nellie – or so I thought. Knowles. I was excited: finally, I could find mama’s half-siblings! I searched for all children born within 10 miles of Birmingham with the surname ‘Keen’, mother’s maiden name ‘Knowles’. There were two: our Amy Rose, and a Charlotte Louise, born in 1991 – clearly not a sibling.

I was stumped. Where were the twelve other half-brothers and sisters? Why weren’t there records of their births?

I did find a marriage between a Nellie Knowles and a John E Keen in Birmingham in the last quarter of 1919. A post-war wedding for a young bride. I wondered if they were sweethearts. I imagined John returning from the trenches, Nellie welcoming him home into her arms. I needed more information though, and I needed to confirm this was my Nellie, so I bit the bullet and ordered a hardcopy of their wedding certificate.

Meanwhile, I continued to search for my mama’s siblings, and for further traces of Nellie.

I thought I had found her.

Ellen Beatrice Knowles was born in 1894 in Kidderminster to Henry Knowles, a packing case maker and packer, and Mary Ann Elizabeth Breakwell, a housewife. In 1901 the census lists her as a ‘Nellie B’, living at home with her parents, older sister Florence, and younger brother George.

Henry’s birthplace is listed as Deesa in India; his father, John Berry Knowles was a soldier in the 6th Foot stationed out there. His mother, Sophia, was also an army child, born in the East Indies. I wondered at the things Henry would have seen during his childhood, the stories he must have passed on to little Nellie B. While I imagined Henry’s childhood as exotic in comparison to the drab streets of industrial Birmingham, full of sunshine and spices and bright colours, it also made me uncomfortable. The British army weren’t exactly out there winning hearts and minds in 19th Century India and the West Indies. In my opinion, they shouldn’t have been there at all. Reading about my apparent ancestors against the backdrop of the Windrush scandal on my Twitter feed gave me an acute sense of shame. Who were John and Sophia? What had they done? Who had they hurt, and how?

Despite this, I had to admit that this history gave young Nellie B a vague air of glamour. It was hard to reconcile this image of her childhood with the hard times she had fallen on by the time my mama was born.

At 17 in the 1911 census this same Ellen Beatrice Knowles is listed as ‘Beatrice’. No more Nellie B. She was still living in the family home with her parents and siblings, working as a press worker. Florence, Beatrice, and George had been joined by another (much) younger sister, Dorothy, but, digging deeper, I found two boy babies inbetween, neither of who survived beyond a few months.

I searched further forward in time, hoping to confirm this was my Nellie, and that she had indeed married a John E Keen in 1919. The next occasion Nellie pops up on official records is as ‘Nellie Keen’ on the 1939 register – the log the government took of the population at the start of the Second World War. This Nellie was living at – you guessed it – 1/9 Floodgate Street, with a John E Keen, a William Griffiths (occupation: coal heaver – Coalie!), and a mystery 4th person whose name is redacted. After a brief double take when I thought for a moment my great grandmother was living with both her husband and her lover (neither of whom were the father of her youngest child), I realised this John E Keen, listed as a capstan lathe hand, was not yet twenty years old. The John E Keen Nellie Knowles married would’ve been well into his fifties by the time the 1939 record was taken. This couldn’t be the same man. As far as I could see, there could only be one reason a woman in her 40s would be living with a 20-year-old man going by the same name as her (late?) husband: this John E Keen must be mama’s half-brother! He had to be the son of Nellie and John Keen Snr., still living with his mother, her boyfriend, and his much younger half-sister, Amy Rose. I assumed my mama had to be the mystery 4th person, her name redacted because 100 years hasn’t passed yet since the ’39 record data was collected and the system probably thinks she’s still alive. Along the way Amy Rose Keen became Mary Boycott, who became Mary Baxter, who became Mary Foster. No wonder the GRO doesn’t realise Amy Rose has died.

This one really is my great grandma! The print record lists John and Nellie as 'Keen', so it is clear the redacted person is also a 'Keen' - my mama!

Now with a relatively firm ID for one of mama’s half-brothers, I searched for John E Keen Jnr’s birth record online. There’s scant details on the findmypast birth records, but they do list the mother’s maiden name – and John Jnr’s mum’s maiden name was ‘Aston’. Coincidentally, John Jnr was also born in the Birmingham district of Aston, so I started to wonder if this was some weird clerical error, or a device they used in the 1920s for missing/withheld data, or, possibly, Nellie being a wily little minx and not giving her real name. The way it seemed as though she flitted between identities – Ellen, Ellen Beatrice, Beatrice Ellen, and Nellie – at various points meant another ‘alias’ didn’t surprise me.

Searching for further babies born in Birmingham with surname ‘Keen’ and mother’s maiden name ‘Aston’ proved a lot more fruitful than my dead-ended Keen/Knowles search. As well as John Jnr. (b. 1920), there was Violet (b.1921), Thomas (b.1923), Leslie J (b.1925), George E (b.1927), Joan H (b.1929), and Ann (b.1932). Not quite the 13 children my grandma remembered Nellie having, but I thought it was very possible that the remaining five were sadly stillborn or hadn’t survived babyhood. I felt a real fission of excitement. Seven half brothers and sisters! Surely I would be able to find at least one living relative by trying to trace their trees? [This actually turned out to be a lot more complicated than I thought it would be – more on that later!]

Then, casually plugging names into the findmypast database, I stumbled across Nellie B Knowles once again. In the 1939 register Nellie B – she with the overseas military past – is, confusingly, listed as ‘Beatrice M’. She is still working as a hand press worker, listed as ‘single’, and living with her mother, Mary A Knowles (née Mary Ann Elizabeth Breakwell), now widowed. Clearly the Nellie Knowles I thought I had found a birth certificate for, and tracked through the 1901 and 1911 census, was a completely different person from my great grandmother Nellie. Far from being single and living with her elderly mother, by 1939 my Nellie was widowed (twice over, as it turns out) and living at 1, back of 9 Floodgate Street with her adult son and infant daughter, Amy Rose. So Nellie B Knowles wasn’t my great grandmother after all. She was just another Birmingham Nel, employed in the metalworks like so many women of her age and class.

My real great-grandmother remained somewhat mysterious – why couldn’t I find any records of my Nellie Knowles prior to her becoming Nellie Keen? But at least I knew who she wasn’t. (Of course, knowing that Ellen Beatrice Knowles – Nellie B – was not my great grandmother, and that John Berry Knowles was not my great great great grandfather – doesn’t let me off the hook. We are all very much on the hook for the terrible legacy of colonialism and slavery that we have left around the world. But I do admit that I breathed a sigh of relief nevertheless).

Discovering John was Nellie's 2nd husband

Finally, a copy of Nellie and John Keen’s full marriage certificate arrived in the post. At least I had been right that this Nellie was my Nellie. The certificate details how Nellie Knowles, a widow, 25, married John Edwin Keen, a bachelor, 33, on 25th October 1919. The bride’s father is listed as a Henry Aston (deceased). Finally I knew why my Nellie Knowles was so hard to find – she had barely existed. It turns out my great grandmother was only known as Nellie Knowles from 1912 to 1919 – just 7 short years. After that she was Nellie Keen. And before that, before she had married a man I later learned to be Frederick Knowles, her actual childhood sweetheart*, she was Nellie Aston.

Finally I had a solid handle on my great grandmother. And so I began to track the tragic history of Nellie Aston-Knowles-Keen’s life…

(*I have no way of knowing they were sweethearts or whether it really was a love match, but the way she hung on to the name Knowles, even listing it on my grandmother’s birth certificate as her ‘former’ name in place of her actual maiden name, Aston, makes me think that Frederick continued to hold a special place in her heart long after his death).