Immigrants from England The Shill-Bartholomew Family
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Life in England
My father,
John Shill
, was born in Clerkenwell, London, England. He was a tailor to start with and he finished up being a male nurse. He went around to houses and helped people being a male nurse. The last thing he did before we came over to Canada, he and my sister, Cara, who was a nurse at that time, they took a house down at Ipswich, Felixstowe, which is a seaside place, and they had patients at home. – Nell Shill
Money was always short as you perhaps know and mother did midwife work bringing babies into the world and usually when this happened, May came home to look after us.
When we were young, mother did everything to get a little money and got us all to help her - I remember going gleaning with her and picking up acorns and other things also. I know the wheat was taken to the miller and he thrashed it and gave the flour back to us, am not sure whether the acorns were sold or given to our pigs. From a letter by Anne Shill to her cousin, Alfred Bartholomew (a Home Child)
– Written July 18, 1965
The photo above is the family of John Shill and Ellen Mary
taken in Woodbridge, Suffolk, apparently around 1903. Ellen Mary is on the left, beside her husband. On the right,
Marion is standing with her father's arm around her waist. Annie is in front of her mother. Grace is in front of Annie and Nell, the youngest, is in the middle. On the right, Bert is in front and Jack is behind him.
The Family
My mother and father had 9 children but two died when they were young and 7 of us grew up.
The first child, Hannah Ellenor, died very young, about a few days old and the fourth child, Violet Elizabeth, she had a fall and then died of something. My two brothers, Jack (John) and Bert (Herbert) were killed in the 1914 war, and that left 5 girls. My eldest sister, Cara, was a Maternity Nurse too. She stayed in England. She didn't come over here, when we came over. Bert was the youngest brother. – Nell Shill