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Brentford Families - Gladys Mitchell

Brenda Bostock wrote in February 2012: ' just had a look on the BHS site to see if you had any reference to the above ... She lived in our road (Hamilton) but I can't remember her. She is an author and has written the Mrs Bradley series on BBC4 at the moment. She retired from Brentford Secondary the year before I started!

This is the internet address of her tribute page with all the info: http://www.gladysmitchell.com.

Notes from FreeBMD/Ancestry/Findmypast

The website link above includes her birth and death dates (1901 - 1983) and describes in detail her teaching career in Brentford and area. Could I add to this in an hours research? Yes, a little ... Repeating the exercise twelve years later found more about both Gladys and her friend Winifred.

FreeBMD includes a birth registration of Gladys Maude W Mitchell in Headington Registration District, Oxfordshire in April-June 1901.

The 1911 census (findymypast) shows the Mitchell family at 137 Windmill Road, Brentford:
James Mitchell, head, 37, mar, collector from automatic gas meters, Brentford Gas Co, Oxford
Annie Mitchell, wife, 33, mar, Oxford
Gladys Mitchell, dau, 10, school (added in a different hand), Oxford
Reginald Mitchell, son, 8, Oxford
Charles Mitchell, son, 4, Oxford
Ivy Mitchell, dau, 2, Oxford
Harry Kettle, bro-in-law, 50, automatic collectors assistant, Brentford Gas Co, Oxford
James and Annie had been married 14 years and all four of their children had survived, their home was larger than average with seven rooms.

The 1911 census list shows their neighbours were the WEEKS family at 135 Windmill Road (head: William Henry Weeks, furniture salesman), on the other side at 139 was a shop run by Albert VICCARS, a dairyman, and then the HICKS family (13 of them, headed by George Frederick Hicks, a woodwork instructor), at Oxford House, Windmill Road.

Findmypast has Teachers' Registration Council Registers 1914-1948 and I hoped there would be some information for Gladys here: but a quick check showed no matches, nor under her second name, Maude.

Electoral registers on Ancestry:
1928, 20 South Ealing Road: Winnie Blazey and Gladys Mitchell
1933, 18 Swyncombe Avenue, Ealing: Clara Winfred Blazey and Gladys Maude Winifred Mitchell
1936, as above

Middlesex County Times, 2 September 1939 has a profile of Gladys Mitchell and Winifred Blazey, excerpts follow about their teaching careers. The main revelation otherwise: both ladies were authors!
Miss Mitchell began her teaching career at St Paul's School, Brentford, where she first met Miss Blazey; she went to St Ann's School in 1926. One of her straight novels is dedicated to Miss D R Haines, the headmistress of St Ann's senior girls' school (Hanwell).
After her teachers' training course at Goldsmiths' College, she took a history diploma at University College, London.
Miss Blazey, who was trained at Furzedown, left St Paul's School for the Rothschild School, in Brentford, and then went to the Brentford Senior School, where she is now.

When interviewed for the above news article, Gladys amd Winifred were living at 18 Swyncombe Avenue, Ealing, but she and Winifred must have moved shortly afterwards as the 1939 Register shows them at 'Gourock', Lowndes Avenue, Chesham, Buckinghamshire:

• Winifred Blazey, born 21 Dec 1891, School Mistress
• Gladys M W Mitchell, 19 Apr 1901, School Mistress (intriguingly her birth date is recorded as both 19 and 21 April 1901 in wikipedia; her death registration notes her date of birth as 21 April 1901)
• Alice E Stamp, 18 Nov 1894, School Mistress

Further checks of the Teachers' Registration records found a record card for Alice Emily Stamp, the third school mistress in the 1939 Register above. Her date of registration was 1st April 1927 and she was an Assistant Mistress at Brentford Senior Girls' School from 1915 (formerly known as The Rothschild Girls School).

As to Winifred's earlier years, the 1911 census shows Clara Winifred Blazey in Fulham, a student with London County Council. She had two sisters and her father William Blazey was an "art iron work repairer" working for a museum. Did Clara Winifred marry? I was not able to find a marriage and there is a death registration of a Clara W Blazey, age 72, in Ealing Registration District in 1964.

Winifred was not as prolific an author as Gladys, who wrote 66 novels and a further eleven under other names, not to mention a short story collection.

Gladys Mitchell died in Dorset in 1983. (FreeBMD, Poole Reg Dist).

Links

If your interest is piqued:

A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection website
Wikipedia
Jason Half's blog about Winifred Blazey

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Page published April 2012; last updated August 2024