EMMA EDGAR 1910-20
EMMA LOUISA EDGAR and CHARLES WILLIAM EDGAR
Thank you Ian Edgar
These photographs were taken by Ian Edgar's great-aunt, Emma Louisa Edgar.
A great amount of work has gone into Ian listing, naming and numbering these photographs.
Emma was a child in the Cottage Homes and then returned to work there.
I wonder if that was the reason she took so many photographs -
to have a memory of her time there and for the children in her care.
We are indebted to both Emma and Ian for these views of life in the Cottage Homes.
Click here for an album containing Emma's photographs
Ian has included details for each for, it appears at the end of the album.
Emma Louisa Edgar and brother Charles William Edgar
Born: Bethnal Green, 1903
Date in Homes: From 1911/12
After being in the Homes as a child Emma returned there as a Nurse: 1918-1924
Emma was born in 1903 in Bethnal Green the youngest of six children, four boys & two girls.
Her father was a cabinet maker & had a shop in or off the Kingsland Road until he died in 1911.
The eldest boy & Ems mum kept the business going after his death but sadly they both died in 1912 leaving the children orphaned & destitute.
From here things get a bit hazy but we think that Emma & Harry then went to the Cottage Homes but they may have gone to relatives for a while before as the extended family were all in the area.
Charles (my grandfather/her brother) would have been fifteen so probably working,Warley the youngest boy was in the Industrial Colony at Darenth in Kent as he had severely injured himself falling on railings & he died there in 1917. Mary the elder sister (born 1890) may have cared for them for some time but she died in 1915.
I think Harold Sumpter, from Nelson Cottage was her beau (possible fiancee),family rumours tell that he was arrested for bike theft (allegedly).
