Ellen May Gilbert was born at 14 Walker Place, Tranmere on 24 June 1883. The Midsummer's Day baby was the first of nine children born to Samuel James Gilbert (1855-1941) and his wife Sarah Ann Jones (1856-1943), who married at St Mary, Birkenhead on 15 May 1882. Walker Place was the "new" name for Chapel Street, often called Mission Street. When Tranmere became part of the Borough of Birkenhead in 1877 names were subject to formal change to avoid confusion with streets in other parts of the borough. Sarah gave birth to her child at the property at which she had been born and where her parents still lived.

Sarah Gilbert registered her daughter's birth on 3 August. Since the institution of civil registration in 1837, it has been the law of England and Wales that a birth must be registered within 42 days. Sarah waited 40 days thus avoiding a fine for failure to meet the legal requirement.

The infant Ellen was named for her father's sister, Ellen Gilbert (1853-74) who had died in the Birkenhead Union Infirmary in Derby Road, Tranmere. Attached to the workhouse, entry to the infirmary was dreaded by the working class people of the locality. Avoidance of the infirmary was itself a health risk. On New Year's Day 1884, Ellen's maternal grandfather, Joseph Jones, died from pneumonia in her immediate domestic environment. Despite young Ellen living to the age of 91 years, her life was determined by the same social insecurity that was not fully relieved by the institution of the welfare state in the aftermath of World War II.

Samuel and Sarah Gilbert took their daughter for baptism at St Mary on 6 April 1884. The infant was baptised with the forenames "Helen May". She preferred this name variation throughout her life, the initials "H. M." appearing on various personal belongings. Within the family, she would be known as "Nelly".

The growing family left Walker Place for neighbouring Walker Street, where stood the Christian mission hall at which Samuel and Sarah worshipped and supported the poorest members of their community. The family would live at No 2 before moving to No 28. Life was precarious.

By the time she reached the age at which she could leave elementary school, Nelly would have realised how closely birth and death were related. A sister, Florence Sophia was born at Christmas 1884 and thrived but she was followed by Bessie, who lived for a month in 1886, Amy Elisabeth (1887-90) and Frederick Charles who survived only four weeks in 1889. Minnie (1890-1962) and, Sam (1892-1969) were two more survivors but the next child, Henry, (1894-95) died aged 11 months. Nelly's youngest sibling was Dorothy (1898-1983) known as "Dolly".

Toward the end of the nineteenth-century, Nelly's family left Walker Street for 12 Greenway Road though they continued to worship at the Walker Street Mission.

Samuel James and Sarah Ann Gilbert worked to give everybody a happy life despite having limited financial resources.

Nelly and her sisters and, in time, her daughter, would always find a doll in their Christmas stockings. There was a stall at Birkenhead market that sold broken dolls. Samuel would buy heads, arms and legs, torsos and piece them together into new "friends" for his little girls.

Every year the children and young adults of the family looked forward to travelling by omnibus to Moreton, a village on the Irish Sea coastline of Wirral, where they would enjoy a whole day's holiday. It was a journey of about six and a half miles from Tranmere but the passage of the cumbersome open-topped vehicle through what was then small villages and open countryside would have felt like a much longer voyage to the seaside, no doubt.

The 1901 census enumerates Nelly with her family at 12 Greenway Road. She was a dark-haired lively young woman aged 17 years, who enjoyed dancing. Yet she was a domestic servant, leaving home daily to cater for the clerical classes of Tranmere and Birkenhead.

In 1906, Nelly gave birth to a baby girl, May, at 12 Cecil Road, New Ferry. The baby was baptised at the parish church of St Mark the Evangelist. A cousin, Rosalind Collins (1883-1965), had become the second wife of John Pointer (1864-1944) at St Paul, Birkenhead the previous year. Rose was eager to "adopt" Nelly's child. (There was no adoption legislation in England and Wales until 1926.) However, May's home was to be 12 Greenway Road. She would remember her life there as part of a loving family, sharing an attic bedroom with an adoring Dolly and revelling in Christmastimes rendered magical with a goose, stocking stuffed with fruits, nuts, tiny silver three pence pieces, and the companionship of an extended family. Auntie Rose, as May called her, had to settle for a series of tiny dogs that looked like rats.

The father of Nelly's child has never been identified by her descendants. May was told only that her father was Australian. Possibly Nelly had met a man who had promised her a new life in a developing county. She shared the same venturesome spirit as three of her father's siblings, including John Harris Gilbert (1867-1928) who had migrated to Australia and, indeed, her own brother and sister, Sam and Dolly who would leave post-World War I Britain for Canada.

Following May's birth, Nelly took a live-in job as a general servant at 58 Greenbank Road. Her employers were George Brinson (1862-1931), a commercial traveller, and his wife, Jeanie (1864-1939). The couple had three children: Harold Neilson (b. 1892), Jessie Bryden (1895-1979), and George Eric (1902-75). Their home was a tall semi-detached Victorian villa with an attic floor and a cellar. Nelly was the Brinsons' only employee, cooking and cleaning for the family of five. Nelly's daughter May would often relate how as a child she, accompanied by Minnie or Dolly, would take an evening walk from Greenway Road to Greenbank and wait outside the back door of No 58. Nelly would appear with a basket of the Brinsons' leftover food for them to take home.

Perhaps Nelly felt some pain when her life-long friend, Hannah May Jones (1883-1975), married Henry Thomas Pierce at St Catherine, Tranmere in 1907. Yet she loved her friend's children and, indeed, grandchildren.

Nelly's younger sister, Minnie, married Charles James Medcalf (1891-1960), an Argentine-born plumber, at St Catherine, Tranmere on 24 February 1915. It was one of the Medcalf children that first corrupted "Ellen" or "Helen" so that Nelly became "Aunty Nan" to younger generations.

Between the censuses of 1911 and 1921, Nelly was employed as a cook in the household of William Madden (1852-1925), his second wife, Annie Johnson Curran, and the children of the family at 3 Chetwynd Road, Oxton. Bill Madden was a prosperous Liverpool-born barrister of Irish parentage. A staunch Roman Catholic, he lectured on popular saints, such as Joan of Arc. His eldest daughter, Cecilia, had entered the Carmelite Monastery at Knotty Ash, Liverpool in 1912.

The 1921 census enumerated Nelly at the Gilbert family home at 12 Greenway Road, Tranmere. Also present were her parents and daughter, her brother, Sam, sister and brother-in-law, Richard and Florence Isherwood, and her youngest sister, the lively Dolly. The household schedule cited Nelly as a cook but "out of work". Of the eight persons recorded in the household schedule only Dick Isherwood was in paid work. The unemployment rate in May 1921 was 23.4 %.

The previous year had seen the passing of The Unemployment Insurance Act 1920. Funded in part by weekly contributions from both employers and employed, it provided weekly payments of 15 shillings for unemployed men and 12 shillings for unemployed women for up to 15 weeks duration. As the situation worsened, The Unemployment Insurance Act 1921, made provision for the payment of benefit for 16 weeks in the period between 3 March and 2 November, 1921. The official precedent followed was that an applicant should be able to show that he or she had been in insurable employment for 20 weeks during 1921. The earliest date at which the rights to benefit could have been exhausted was 22 June.

It is difficult to discern why Nelly had left the Madden household to become one of the 23.4 % unemployed. Domestic servants were harder to secure than before the war and William Madden's 1921 household schedule did not include a cook or any staff, despite his rising in the legal profession. He would "take silk" as a King's Counsel in 1922.

What is known is that in the early nineteen-twenties Nelly developed vitamin B12 deficiency anaemia. The treatment was the regular consumption of raw liver sandwiches. Had Nelly developed the condition earlier the treatment would have been "Fowler's Solution": arsenic trioxide in potassium bicarbonate. In 1928 a liver extract that was 50-100 times more potent than liver itself was developed. This new treatment could be delivered by subcutaneous injection.

Nelly was later employed as cook to David McLaren (1871-1943), a wealthy corn-broker, and his wife, Alice Brocklebank (1877-1962). Mrs McLaren hailed from Tranmere, being a daughter of a merchant, Grice Brocklebank (1846-1915) and his wife, Rebecca Lightbound (1845-1924) who had married at the parish church of St Catherine in 1871. Mr and Mrs McLaren had married at Holy Trinity, Hoylake in 1910. An only son, also named David, had been born in 1916. They lived at "Ramleh", a spacious property on Penrhos Road that overlooked the East Hoyle Bank of the Dee estuary.

By the time Nelly had worked in domestic service for more than thirty years her knees were severely affected by osteoarthritis. So that she could carry on earning a living she underwent major knee surgery involving removal of the patella. Her left leg was henceforth inflexible. She lived with extreme pain from arthritis. She never gave up, though. For the rest of her life, Nelly rubbed her knees with olive oil. It is unlikely that it had any positive orthopaedic effect but it did leave her skin soft and amazingly shiny.

World War II brought heartbreak to the household at Hoylake. On 13 December 1941, Pilot Officer David McLaren, aged 25 years, was killed on active service. David flew Hampden Bomber AD921 with 144 Squadron based at North Luffenham, Rutland. Four such planes took off in the early afternoon of Saturday 13 December for Brest, a port city in Brittany. Their target was the sea area known as "Jellyfish" which covered the approaches to Brest harbour. Each Hampden followed the familiar course along the south coast to the Lizard, then turning out to sea. Due to weather conditions, a course change was made for the island of Ushant on the most westerly tip of Brittany. The weather again proved a problem; there was limited cloud cover. David's Hampden AD921 failed to return from the mission. The loss of AD921 and her crew could be attributed to the German fighter pilot Lieutenant Horst Walbeck who recorded an attack at 17.46 hours.

Nelly had left Hoylake when, two years later, the older David McLaren died.

Samuel James and Sarah Ann Gilbert had left 12 Greenway Road following May's marriage in 1932, moving to 18 Church Terrace, Tranmere. Samuel died here on 2 February 1941. Nelly returned to the area and she and Sarah moved into 521 Borough Road, Birkenhead. Sarah died at the property on 3 March 1943 from a cerebral haemorrhage followed by acute bronchitis. She was aged 86 years. May's daughter, Beryl (1938-2023), recalled seeing "Grannie" shortly before she died: a white-haired old lady with a serene expression.

Nelly registered her mother's death the following day.

Nelly stayed on at No 521. In June 1943 she would have received a state pension, the age at which women became eligible having been cut from 65 years to 60 years in 1940. May's daughter remembers catching the bus to Borough Road where Nelly would treat her to jewellery-making bits and pieces from a local shop. She had an account at Binney's, a Birkenhead department store, where she would spend her small income on generous gifts for her family.

Nelly spent a day with May every week and was always welcome at Christmas. However, much to Nelly's chagrin, the festive table was shared with two guests from Charles Thompson's Mission in central Birkenhead.

At some point in the nineteen-fifties, Nelly left 521 Borough Road to lodge with Lois Jones (1884-1964), a childless widow, at 95 Maybank Road, Birkenhead. Nelly's granddaughter recalled that despite it being Mrs Jones' house, Nelly took over. May had a quiet word with Mrs Jones, advising her not to let Nelly dictate to her. However, Mrs Jones being a quiet and rather timid lady, her council went unheeded.

Nelly had always enjoyed a cigarette and would flitch a smoke from her granddaughter, Beryl, when she took to the habit in the late fifties, using a long holder à la Princess Margaret. Nelly, however, was an unpractised smoker who never mastered the "art". She would cough violently, spluttering out nicotine fumes.

Nelly was a guest of honour when Beryl married in 1962. She had a seat at the top table as befitted her relationship to the bride. She looked most displeased when the bridal bouquet was given to her sister, Minnie, to be placed on the grave of her late husband, Charlie Medcalf.

When Lois Jones died in 1964 , Nelly moved from 95 Maybank Road to a room on the top floor of a Victorian villa on tree-lined Shrewsbury Road, Birkenhead. In the early nineteen-sixties Birkenhead Housing Committee purchased three four-storey houses in Shrewsbury Road to accommodate single elderly women. Each property was divided into eight bed-sitting rooms into which she could bring her own furniture. There was a shared kitchen and bathroom. The "Liverpool Echo" of 30 October 1962 stated that, "Each occupant will, have a key to her room and one to the front door so that she will be able to go and come as she pleases and whilst the emphasis is on privacy the elderly women will have the advantage of the companionship and good neighbourliness of each other." "One of the units will be let to a warden, herself a single elderly, woman who will act in a supervisory capacity and help any of the residents who might temporality be indisposed."

Nelly had always lived within walking distance of friends and shops so the move to Shrewsbury Road led to dependence on May's family and, no doubt, a degree of loneliness.

Nelly's bed-sitting room was one of two spacious units on her floor. However, she disliked sharing facilities and was never known to invite other residents into her home. Nelly enjoyed company... but company of her own choosing. Despite her humble background, she could come across as snooty. She had a tendency to dictate to the resident of the neighbouring room regarding the kitchen. The warden was a very pleasant woman, liked by Nelly's family who visited frequently. May made casseroles or pies and wrapped them in several tea towels in the hope that the food would still be hot by the time Doug had delivered it by bus. When Beryl learned to drive she often drove the food from Bebington to Birkenhead in her scarlet Mini Cooper or baby-blue Ford Anglia with her small children on-board.

Beryl being able to drive enabled Nelly to enjoy various family jaunts including trips to Parkgate for ice-cream. Christmases were now spent in Upton amongst a growing family that included May's two grandchildren. These small rituals continued when Nelly left Shrewsbury Road for the Grove Nursing Home on Woodchurch Road.

Although Nelly regretted the loss of independence that entry to the Grove involved the change enabled her to enjoy the home's wooded gardens and short walks on a Zimmer-frame to Silverdale Plant Nursery. At the Grove, Nelly would roll tangerines for Beryl's infant son to kick. Decimal coinage, introduced on 15 February 1971, was skimmed across the floor. She took part in residents' raffles and, once, determined to win a doll, made obvious her extreme displeasure when the prize went to another ticket-holder.

Nelly was admitted to St Catherine's Hospital, Tranmere on Monday 25 November 1974, following a stroke possibly caused by a blood clot that obstructed blood flow to the cerebellum. She died at in the late afternoon of the 26th.

May registered Nelly's death on the 28th of the month and arranged for her to be buried with her parents at Bebington Cemetery. A simple funeral took place at 2 pm on Monday 2 December.

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NB: This is the grave plot in which Tracy Martin, whose name is inscribed on the headstone, wishes her cremated remains to be interred.