Emmeline Louisa Wetherall (1872-1932) and Albert Robert Woods (1872-1917).
My great-grand aunt and uncle.
Emmeline was born on 2 June 1872 in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, and baptised in the town on 14 July at St Nicholas’ Church. Her parents were Benjamin Thomas Wetherall and Sarah Ann Elizabeth Green.
Emmeline (pictured top with her children Leslie and Winifred) was brought up in the homes of her shipwright father and his wife in Ordnance Road and Admiralty Road, Great Yarmouth. The 1891 Census listed her as a tailor. She married Albert Edward Woods in St Nicholas’s on 11 April 1895. The son of sailor Robert Woods and his wife Charlotte, Albert was born on 7 January 1872 in Yarmouth and worked as a foreman for a local miller. In 1901 Emmeline and Albert were recorded living at Winifred Road but 10 years later were in Station Road, South Town, Great Yarmouth.
Albert was mentioned in a court case reported in the Eastern Daily Press of 6 December 1909. Two youths had cut the mooring ropes of a wherry in Great Yarmouth owned by Albert’s employer Press Bros. It had been moored by the quay but ended up broadsided against a nearby bridge. Albert pressed the court to punish the “delinquents”, who admitted they did it for a laugh, as an example to others.
Albert began working for the company when they owned the High Mill (or Press’s Mill) in South Town. It was one of the tallest windmills in Britain but was demolished in 1904 and a new mill built on the quay near the Haven Bridge. Albert died after an horrific accident at work on 10 December 1917 that resulted in him being caught in the machinery and badly injured. He lived on for a week but died finally on 17 December from his injuries. The inquest, reported in the Eastern Daily Press of 20 December, heard that Albert was on the second floor of the mill and had gone to the assistance of another worker on the top floor, where a belt had come off a pulley. He climbed a ladder to put the belt back on but almost immediately his clothes became entangled and he got pulled into the moving shafting.
He was rescued by his colleague, William Gotts, who risked his own life by throwing off the main belt to stop the machinery. He then called a doctor and Albert was taken to hospital. There it was found that Albert had a dislocated shoulder and several broken ribs. The house surgeon told the coroner that Albert had got on well for a couple of days and seemed likely to recover but then developed pneumonia caused by fractured ribs penetrating his lungs. His heart had also been displaced when he got caught in the shafting.
He was described as a much respected, capable and reliable man by the company, who said Albert was responsible for supervising machinery and everything else connected with the running of the mill. A verdict of accidental death was returned and the jury and coroner expressed their sympathy with his family. Albert was buried on 22 December and in a notice in the Yarmouth Independent on the 29th the family thanked Dr H Wyllys, the sisters and staff at Yarmouth Hospital for the kindness they’d shown Albert in his last days. His net estate was valued at £675.
Emmeline lived until 1932, dying of breast cancer in Leiston, Suffolk. She was buried on 12 July back in Great Yarmouth.
Emmeline and Albert had three children – Albert, Winifred and Leslie. Leslie recorded his memories of the family and his life in 1999, which his descendants were generous enough to share with me.
- Albert Reginald Woods (1896-1970). Albert was born in Great Yarmouth. His brother Leslie said Albert, also known as Reg, was regarded as the black sheep of the family and that some unknown misdemeanour had resulted in the family sending him to Canada. Shipping records showed him arriving in Quebec on 7 October 1914, described as a clerk but heading to a farm in Saskatchewan. The 1916 Census listed him lodging as a farm labourer with the Wigg family in the town of Battleford, while the 1921 Census had an Albert R Woods in Prince Albert City in Saskatchewan, working as a salesman. Leslie believed he married in Canada, had a child called John and divorced before returning to England, and a Canada / USA Border Crossing document from 1926 did mention a wife called Ella. After his father’s death, Leslie recalled that Albert persuaded his mother to sell the family home in Great Yarmouth and take the White Horse Hotel in Leiston, Suffolk – although I’ve yet to find proof of this. Leslie said Emmeline and Winifred followed him but he believed the business wasn’t a success. The 1939 Register showed an Albert Woods working as a hotel manager in Monmouthshire and his death was registered in the county in 1970. The death certificate noted his wife was called Mary Elizabeth Woods.
- Winifred Dorothy Woods (1904-2001) sounds like a colourful if sometimes difficult character. For a time she held down an office job but, according to family legend, ended up having an affair with the solicitor who employed her. She then worked for the estate manager at the extravagantly grand Euston Hall near Thetford in Norfolk. The 1939 Register showed her living at West End Villas in Thetford with her brother Leslie and his wife, working as a land agent’s secretary and providing clerical support for the ARP. After the war she met widower John (Jack) Ridgeway and they married in Surrey in 1951. Jack was a wireless engineer by trade but was also a director for companies that eventually became EMI. In 1946, listed as Manager of the Radio Division, Edison Swan Electric Company, he was awarded an OBE. The couple set up home in a country house called Leith Vale in Ockley, Surrey. My dad recalls it being full of televisions, which was obviously a rarity at the time and doubtless something to do with his work. Sadly, Leith Vale has since been demolished. Jack and Winifred later moved to Hayford Hall near Buckfastleigh in Devon and then to a house called Ibeare near Taunton, Somerset. A fan of shopping in the capital, Winnie wasn’t particularly happy with being stranded in the West Country but relatives remembered that she would call on their chauffeur to ferry her there. Family suggested that Winnie’s difficult character meant the couple didn’t get on too well. Jack also lost his sight later in life, and died on 13 February 1977. Jack’s estate was valued at £145,511. Winnie moved back to live out the rest of her life in Norfolk, where she died on 1 June 2001. Her address was given as 9 St Andrew’s Close, Copper Lane, Hingham, and her net estate was valued at an impressive £828,301. Most of the money went to charity, with large bequests of £30,000 each given to Guide Dogs for the Blind, the RNLI, Cancer Research, the Priscilla Bacon Lodge at Colman Hospital in Norwich and the Quidenham Children’s Hospice. The local church, other charities and friends received the balance.
- Leslie Woods (1907-2003) was born on 1 December 1907 and as a boy remembers cattle being driven down his street to market and the shelling of Yarmouth from Zeppelins and enemy warships during the First World War. Leslie married Edith Kathleen Capps in Blofield, Norfolk, in 1934. He worked for the cider makers Gaymers and lived into his 90s, dying in 2003. Edith died in 1991.
Sources. Birth, marriage, death, burial, census, military and other records including civil registrations from the General Register Office at Ancestry.co.uk, Findmypast.co.uk and Norfolk Family History Society.
British Newspaper Archive (titles in text).
Leslie Woods interview on YouTube and other family memories.
Norfolk Windmills website.
The will of Winifred Dorothy Woods from the Probate Service.