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Note: http://www.thepeerage.com/p37305.htm#i373041
Worked in the WVS (Women's Voluntary Service for Civil Defence) from the second Word War until at least the late sixties (perhaps seventies). WVS started in 1938 "a British women's organisation to recruit women into the Air Raid Precautions (ARP) services to help in the event of War" and continued as "a voluntary organisation concerned with helping people in need throughout England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland". She mentioned that part of the role was riding around London on a bicycle in the blitz, blowing a whistle to get people into air raid shelters when air raid bombing as about to start.
On her eightieth birthday she explained she thought it was time to start helping old people, so she turned her focus to that.
Despite, as she admitted, not knowing how to boil a kettle until WWII started, she became a very good cook (whichb was much appreciated by her grandchildren when they visited her). She always had a dog, including in the many years she lived at 12 Bullingham Mansions, Pitt Street, Kensington, London W8 where she frequently had grandchildren to stay; there she took her dogs for walks every day in Kensington Gardens (sometimes took her grandchildren too). Her aunt and main mentor was Dame Laurentia, Abbess of Stanbrook, who she was very fond of.
In the summer she (and her dog) spent three months staying at the homes of her three sons and their families in Scotland, one month each.
Finally retiring to a nursing home near her daughter, Patsy, in Essex in her 90ies.
Birth certificate shows:
No. 149
When and where born: eleventh January 1983, 10 Southwood Road, Toxteth Park.
Name: Mary Margaret.
Name and surname of father: Bertram Henry Garnett.
Name, surname and maiden surname of mother: Helena Garnett formaly(?) McLachlan.
Occupation of father: Corn Broker.
Signature, description and residence of informant: Bertram Henry Garnett. Father. 10 Southwood Road, Toxteth Park.
When registered: Sixteenth February 1893.
Signature of registrar: Tho. Evans. Registrar
Registration District: TOXTETH PARK
1893 BIRTH in the sub-district of Toxteth Park in the Counties of Liverpool and Lancaster.
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