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A
SHORT AND DIFFICULT LIFE:
CRISS REACH
(née Cox) 1888 - 1918
The following story, which illustrates the hardship of life in the past,
was submitted by Mike Cox. [to return to your
stories click
here]
My paternal grandmother Criss Cox had a short but particularly difficult
life. She was the third of fourteen children born in May 1888 to John
and Harriet Cox in Bristol. Harriet was a tailoress and her husband
a mason’s labourer (and reputed to be quite a drinker). In
the Census of 1901 Criss, aged 11, was listed as “daughter” but
this was crossed out and amended to “son”. This was presumably
altered by the supervising enumerator who thought that “Criss” was
a boy’s name.
By the time she was 20 Criss had moved to London
and was working as a domestic servant in the house of a man who later
became deputy Controller of the London Post Office. She became pregnant
and her son Edward Arthur (my father) was born in July 1910 whilst
she was living at her employer’s
house in Cricklewood. By the time the birth was registered two weeks
later she and her baby were living at the Hampstead Workhouse.
She returned
to Bristol and a year later she married a man named Isaac Reach by
whom she had another three children, all daughters, over a period of
4 years. In 1915 Isaac joined the Army but was killed in the Battle
of the Somme in 1916, leaving Criss with four children, the oldest
of whom was only 5 years old.
Although the tragedy of the Great War was
ending, it was followed by the great flu epidemic and Criss was one of
many thousands who died in 1918. The four children, Edward, Lily,
Criss and Rose were taken in by their grandparents John and Harriet.
©in the text Mike Cox
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