Florence Dorothy Wickes (Mills) 1896-1979 - my maternal grandmother

My maternal grandmother, Florence Dorothy Wickes (nee Mills), was always known as Dolly or Nana to her grandchildren. As a war bride after World War One, she left Nottingham to make a new life in New Zealand, but England would always be 'home'.

For many years she lived near to our family so I knew her well, though I regret not asking her more about her life in Nottingham.

She often referred to 'home' and 'the old country' and when I was planning a trip to England, though she loved the place, she said, "the March winds will rip right through you."




Dolly was born in 1896, the youngest of five daughters of James and Susannah Mills.  She also had two older and two younger brothers. Along with other family members, she worked in the lace industry.

Nottingham was the centre of the lace industry for 100 years and at its height in the 1890s, the industry employed almost 25,000, mostly female workers. At the age of 15 Dolly was a joiner and finisher working on fancy lace. Her older sisters also worked in the lace factories as lace makers doing embroidery work and her brother was a warper. It was hard gruelling work for little pay.

                             Women Lace Joiners - Lace finishers about 1904, Image RefNTGM010136, Nottingham City Council

Her life changed in 1918 when she met and married New Zealand soldier, Edmund Arthur Laurie Wickes (Arthur) just before the end of the war in October. However, they had to wait until August the following year until they could travel to New Zealand. It took some time to get all servicemen home to New Zealand and there was an outcry about soldiers’ wives getting a passage ahead of servicemen.On their arrival Dolly and Arthur were greeted by a crowd at Greymouth railway station along with a band, which Dolly mistakenly thought was for her, when it was actually for all the returned servicemen on the train.

Life was not easy for Dolly. There was some resentment of war brides in New Zealand from the women who had been waiting for men to come home. Many young single men had been killed during the war so marriageable men were in short supply. Dolly had one ally in her husband’s great aunt, Daisy Stratford Henniker (Wickes). Daisy asked New Zealand women to make life pleasant and as easy as possible for soldiers’ brides as they had endured the hardships of the war that New Zealand women had largely avoided.

"If any New Zealand women would try and think of what these women have suffered they would not be so hasty in their judgement. What matter if they laugh loudly and shout, they must relieve the tension."[i]

It must have been a shock for Dolly to come from the highly industrialised city of Nottingham to the isolated, rugged West Coast of the South Island. She and Arthur had four children, Edmund, Norman (Alex), Laurie and Joy, my mother. One child, Elizabeth died when just a few months old.

Dolly never worked in New Zealand, but devoted her life to raising her family often under difficult circumstances settling in Kumara Junction. She was a good basic cook and I have fond memories of her making scones, a roast meal, plum jam and marmalade. Living through hard times of the Depression, she always said “if you have an egg in the house, you had a meal.” She was an excellent knitter and together with my mother taught me. She liked to go to dances and enjoyed trips to Christchurch for the horse races.

                                                      Dolly and Arthur at Auckland races.             Joan Wickes (Whysall), Dolly and her                                                                                                                                      sister Maud Mills in Nottingham 
                                                         
The pull of “home” was great for Dolly and in 1948 she made the long trip back to see her family in Nottingham. She was supposed to be away for six months giving Arthur enough time to save for the cost for her return ticket. However, she was unhappy in Nottingham, not fitting in with the pub scene which was then typical of English life. Arthur had never settled to regular work after the war, but in order to make the money for her rushed return trip he went to work in the coal mines. 


Dolly caught the liner, Rangitata, from Auckland to Southampton via the Panama Canal with 248 other passengers, but caught the primarily cargo ship Port Phillip home from London to Wellington with only 22 other passengers.




https://www.shipsnostalgia.com/media/port-phillip-iv-1942.64870/full                                                                                   
                                                   
While she was in England Dolly caught up with her son Norman Alexander (Alex) and his wife. Alex had flown in the RAF during World War Two earning the Distinguished Flying Cross of which Dolly was extremely proud. Like his father, Alex married a Nottingham girl, Joan Whysall, in 1947, who he met while visiting his mother's family during the war.

Dolly and Arthur moved from the South Island to Auckland in the North Island in 1952 living in Parnell, Birkenhead and finally Manurewa. She thought the world of her three sons, but it fell to her  daughter Joy to look after her in her final years. She passed away in 1979 at the age of 83 from a heart attack while I was in England having visited her home town of Nottingham. She is buried in Mangere Lawn Cemetery together with  her husband Arthur who had died nine years earlier.

 [i] Jane Tolerton, Make her praises heard afar: New Zealand women overseas in World War One, Booklovers Books, 2017, p.347.

 

 

 





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