Person

When she applied to join the WAAC one of Elsie’s referees said ‘She is discreet for her age, but sometimes prevaricates’ (see Note About Sources, below). Although basically honest folk, she and her family did sometimes stretch or embroider the facts to suit their purpose. That begins with Elsie’s name, which wasn’t Elsie at all, although that is clearly what she was known as from infancy. She appears in later records as Elsie Isabel, but her birth registration (GRO Index, Births, 1900, March Quarter, Easington District) gives her name as Isabella Anderson and she was baptised at Wingate Grange Holy Trinity Church, on 04 January 1900, as Isabel Anderson (DCRO, EP/WGr 1/14, p. 99, no. 785).

Elsie Isabel was the third child and second daughter of Christopher and Elizabeth Anderson. Christopher’s father – Elsie Isabel’s grandfather – was a farmer and Christopher had started out in life working on the farm near Hutton Henry along with his older brothers (1891 Census: TNA, RG12/4111/125, p. 3). He later became an underground stone hewer and worked in various collieries in and around Trimdon to support his wife and their seven children. His daughter seems to have regarded her father’s usual employment as a temporary distraction from his true calling to be a farmer, however.

Elsie Isabel and her family can be found in the 1901 census living at Station Town (TNA, RG13/4687/91, p. 17) and in the 1911 census at Trimdon Colliery (TNA, RG14/29678/171).

Elsie went to school in Trimdon Colliery and would have left in December 1913, shortly after her fourteenth birthday. The records do not give a full account of her employment from then on, but we do know that she spent some time working as a corridor maid in a hospital and in 1917 she was in domestic service as a maid in West Hartlepool.

She volunteered for service in the WAAC in June 1917 and was accepted in September that year. She said she was ‘willing to do anything and go anywhere’, although she eventually enlisted for service ‘at home only’ (meaning not overseas). In her application Elsie said her father was a farmer although he was ‘at present day’ a miner. When she had her medical examination she was 5’ tall and weighed 7 stone, was found to be in good health and was declared fit for employment as a waitress.

Elsie Isabel’s official rank in the WAAC was ‘Housemaid’ and her occupation was ‘Waitress’. After a brief spell at a hostel in London, when she was probably receiving some training, she served as a waitress at the Bordon Military Training Camp in Hampshire from 22 October 1917 to 03 May 1918. While at Bordon she met a young man who was to change her life forever. Stanley Alfred Williams, who was attached to the Royal Field Artillery, was the son of an Ironmonger’s Porter and had been born and brought up at Ryde on the Isle of Wight (1901 & 1911 censuses: TNA, RG13/1024/79, p.16 & RG14/5721/43).

Elsie Isabel and Stanley Alfred were married, by licence, at the Parish Church in Headley, Hampshire, on 08 Apr 1918 (All Saint’s Headley, Marriage Register 1912-1923, p. 68, no. 135: Surrey History Centre, HED/2/2/7, image downloaded via ancestry.co.uk). She was only eighteen and he was just twenty-one, but they said they were both twenty-one so no one would have had to ask her parents for their consent to the marriage. As ever, Elsie also said that her father, Christopher, was a farmer.

Following her marriage, the record of Elsie Isabel’s next of kin was changed from her father to her husband, with his home address given as Devonshire House, Spencer Road, Ryde, Isle of Wight.

She was then posted to Aldershot on 03 May 1918 and was discharged from the WAAC on compassionate grounds on 31 May 1918. Although not certain, it is likely that her discharge was related to her marriage. Married women were encouraged to support their husbands by running the marital home. Furthermore, as her husband was also in the army there would probably be difficulties in providing accommodation for them as a married couple.

Whether or not it was her intention, by marrying a young man she had met three hundred miles from her home Elsie Isabel had apparently secured both her freedom from parental control and freedom from military service. Quite a step for someone who only a few months earlier had travelled barely eight miles from the place of her birth!

Unfortunately her married name of Williams, being anything but unusual, makes it difficult to pin down what became of her later in life. However, she had a son who was born on the Isle of Wight in 1919 (GRO Index, name withheld as it is possible that he is still alive). Her husband served in the Territorial Army in the 1920s and the record of his attestation confirms that he had previously served in the army for more than six years, that he was married to Elsie (neé Anderson), the date of their marriage and the name and date of birth of their son (Royal Artillery Attestation Ledger, 1923, Royal Artillery Museum, Woolwich, London, image downloaded via findmypast.co.uk).

Notes on sources:
All of the above information is taken from Elsie Isabel Anderson’s WAAC service records (TNA, WO/398/4/10, accessed via findmypast.co.uk) unless another source is cited. Images of census records, which are Crown Copyright and held at TNA, can be viewed on microfilm at DCRO or online via ancestry.co.uk or findmypast.co.uk.

Civil Parish: Trimdon

Birth date: 09-Dec-1899

Armed force/civilian: Army

Residence: 31 East View, Station Town, County Durham (1901 Census)
7 Chapel Street, [Wingate], Trimdon Colliery, County Durham (1911 Census)
5 Chapel Street, [Wingate], Trimdon Colliery, County Durham (1917, home address)
52 Clifton Terrace, West Hartlepool, County Durham (1917, work address)
45 Alfred Street, Ryde, Isle of Wight, Hampshire (1923, husband’s TA record)

Education: Durham County School, Trimdon Colliery, to age 14

Religion: Church of England

Organisation membership: Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps [later Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps]

Employment: Corridor Maid at Queen Mary’s Hospital (location illegible) 1916-1917
House Maid in Service in West Hartlepool 1917

Family: Grandfather: Robert Anderson
Grandmother: Georgina Spooner
Father: Christopher Anderson
Mother: Elizabeth Williams
Brothers: Robert, Christopher, John, Willie G
Sisters: Jane Ann, Georgina

Military service:

QMAAC London (17 September 1917 – 21 October 1917);
QMAAC Bordon, Hampshire (22 October 1917 – 02 May 1918)
QMAAC Aldershot, (03 May 1918 – 24 May 1918)
Discharge on Compassionate Grounds (31 May 1918)

Gender: Female

Contributed by Susan Muirhead,