Facebook post #061 (Mar 2021)
Census Day, Spring 1871. The Bakery, St Helier
My gt-gt-grandfather, Moses Le Brun, is 21 and working for the family business. His sister Lydia is 11, and a scholar. There was no college for girls, but Lydia would be lucky – the family would fund her to complete her education at the Sorbonne in Paris. This was partly achieved by her elder sisters taking in ironing. The Sorbonne looks like it may have been quite austere at the time, but Lydia apparently took an interest in the Parisian impressionist painting of the time.
By the next census, in 1881, Lydia was back at home, and a schoolmistress.
Ten years on, the family were at Zelzah House (still standing), where Lydia had founded her own school. Apparently, “she was very strict and not above using corporal punishment, but was interested in bringing the latest methods of education, including exercising with dumbbells.” Several of the family attended the school, including her niece, daughter of Esther (posts 59 and 60) and my gt-gran Elsie.
Elsie was also lucky in being allowed to complete her education – it was more easily afforded by this time. Antoinette recalls that she was “very gifted and went to London University, at the time of the suffragettes. Elsie was my great aunt and recounted that she studied English with one of the WWI poets.” So, UCL was the first British university to admit women on fully equal terms to men (except in Medicine) but it was still relatively unusual for women to be admitted before WWI.
After I’d been digging around for the blog, I happened upon a philosophy textbook of Elsie’s dated October 1908, which confirms that she was there. The best known war poet from UCL was Isaac Rosenberg, who studied at The Slade School of Fine Art, which was known for its acceptance of female students (and for its Francophilia). I found a contemporary picture showing plenty of respectable young ladies! I reckon that it the School probably offered some interdisciplinary study then – as it does now. Including English and Philosophy alongside Fine Arts seems reasonable.
The School also has a history of producing suffragettes, including Mary Lowndes, Ernestine Mills and Georgina Brackenbury. Olive Hockin was there at the same time as Elsie.
The Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) was founded in 1903, the year in which Elsie turned 18. Two years later, they convinced the Liberal MP Bamford Slack to introduce a women’s suffrage bill: the publicity spurred rapid expansion of the group. In June 1908, the WSPU deployed its new purple, white, and green campaigning colours at its 300,000-strong “Women’s Sunday” rally in Hyde Park. Perhaps Elsie was there. Certainly, there were strong women in the family – including her mother with whom she is pictured below in the same year. Certainly the women were cross that they couldn’t be properly educated in Jersey.
Amongst whatever other excitement Elsie may have experienced in London, she somehow met my gt-grandad, Alfred. I don’t think he went to university (he was a clerk in 1901, and a manager in 1911). They married in St Helier on 12 June 1913 (pic).
Isaac Rosenberg was killed on night patrol in France in Spring 1918. Shortly before, he penned:
Through these pale cold days What dark faces burn Out of three thousand years, And their wild eyes yearn, While underneath their brows Like waifs their spirits grope For the pools of Hebron again—For Lebanon’s summer slope. They leave these blond still days In dust behind their tread They see with living eyes How long they have been dead.
Alfred and Elsie settled in Esher, Surrey and named the family home after Rozel in Jersey.
They got to experience the trip of a lifetime together on the RMS Queen Mary (post #058). Alfred died during WWII, but Elsie lived until 1970, and I have a faint memory of meeting her.
Mum tells me that she played at Clare Hill Golf Club at the end of the road. On at least one occasion, she won, and brought home an engraved plate as a trophy. She had a housekeeper for company, whose brother sometimes drove Elsie around in her big, old Wolseley (of the type pictured). She sometimes drove herself, too, and she still had the car when she died, when it would have been thirty years old. So that’s where I get it from…
