📮Violet Freake & family📮

Meet Violet, another of my buys from eBay back in the summer. As she was named, I couldn’t resist.

Violet Florence Freake was born on 19 June 1903 in Tottenham, Middlesex. Her father was James, and her mother was Louisa. She had three brothers and two sisters.

In 1921, Violet was a needlewoman working for Liberty Ltd, which was known for high-quality, artistic textiles and “Artistic Dressing” that defied mainstream Parisian fashion. She would have primarily been involved in creating custom-made garments and working on intricate textile items.

Violet was on the 1921 census with her widowed mother and siblings.

Needlewomen would have worked in the store’s onsite workrooms, creating bespoke dresses, blouses, and other clothing items for clients. This work would be almost entirely done by hand, involving precise cutting, fitting, and stitching.

Working conditions in department store workrooms like Liberty’s were generally better than “slopwork” or home-based piece work, but wages were still low, and employees often lived at home to make ends meet. The role required a high degree of skill and precision due to the quality of the materials and the artistic value placed on the finished products.

In 1939, Violet was living at 416 Kingsland Road, Hackney, with her brother Albert and his family. Albert ran the Post Office there and was also a Grocer. Violet was still a needlewoman. Violet, with Albert and his family, were still living there on the 1957 electoral roll.

Violet died in February 1996 at the age of 92, in the registration district of Redbridge.

Freake Family History.

Violet’s father, James Frederick Freake, was born in 1868 in Islington, London, and spent his life in the working districts of North London. Sometime in the late 1880s, he met Louisa Anne Bethell, who had been born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1866. Her parents were Benjamin and Ann Sarah (Culver). Benjamin was an engine fitter; I presume he worked abroad for a while in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, as Louisa and two of her seven siblings were born there. The family came back to England before 1872 and lived in West Ham. By the early 1890s, James and Louisa were settled in Stoke Newington, where they began raising their family.

Their first child, Ernest Bethell Freake, was born on 27 November 1891 in Stoke Newington. Two years later, on 5 November 1893, they welcomed a daughter, May Louisa. In July 1895, their third child, Frederick Robert, was born in nearby Hackney, reflecting the family’s movements within North London.

Between the turn of the century and the years just after, the Freakes were living in Tottenham, Middlesex. There, they continued to grow their family. Albert Edward was born on 17 February 1901 in Stoke Newington, followed by Violet Florence, born on 19 June 1903 in Tottenham. Their youngest child, Daisy Ethel, arrived on 27 April 1906, also in Tottenham.

James Frederick Freake, with his family in 1911, was a Head Postman at the Post Office.

The Freake family lived at 40 Bruce Castle Road, Tottenham, London, England, in 1911.

The family remained rooted in Middlesex through the early 20th century. James died in 1920 at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Tottenham, leaving Louisa a widow. She continued to live in Middlesex until her death in 1939.

The couple’s three sons, Ernest, Frederick, and Albert, all married. Ernest to Dorothy May Holroyd, Frederick to Lelia Ferguson, and Albert to Gladys May Scarborough; they all had children. Ernest and Frederick worked for Whitbread Brewery as Clerks.

One of the three girls married, May worked for the Post Office and never married and lived with the youngest, Daisy, who was a Shortland Typist at a Bookkeeper’s Publishers Office until she married Eric J Dearn in 1940; they had one son. Violet remained single.

Here’s the small family tree on Ancestry that I have compiled to go with this blog: Freake Violet Family

Taken together, the records show a family who spent their lives primarily in the neighbourhoods of Stoke Newington, Hackney, Tottenham, and the wider Middlesex area, with roots stretching unexpectedly back to South America through Louisa’s birth in Montevideo. Their dates and places mark out the steady course of an ordinary London family living through the final years of the Victorian era, the upheavals of the early 20th century, and the long reach of the century beyond.