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The young Watling sisters with aunty Alice |
Sisters, such devoted sisters... for a century
THESE are the four ages of Islington’s celebrated Watling sisters, believed to be the borough’s oldest siblings.
The photographs show Elsie, who was 100 last week, and Lily, now 101, as children in their Sunday best with aunty Alice; as teenagers about to meet friends to “promenade” along Highbury Fields with their late brother Ernest; in middle age; and as they were seen in the Tribune last week celebrating Elsie’s century with her children.
This week, Elsie, from Newington Green, and Lily, who lives at the Angel, recalled their childhood in Islington in the early years of the last century.
Elsie, who received a card from the Queen last week, said: “I remember at the end of the First World War my father came marching home. We never thought we’d ever see him again. So many thousands of men died. We had a big party for him.”
The Second World War brought the fear of being bombed in their home. “Every time the siren went we’d have to race to the shelters,” she said. “They were scary times but we got by.”
Elsie remembers that her father, who worked as a waiter in a fashionable restaurant in Holborn, was very strict.
“We would meet our friends at Highbury Fields but would always be home by 10pm,” she said.
She attended Laycock School but left at 14 to become a machinist. Her husband Ernest, a painter and decorator, died, aged 65, some 38 years ago.
The sisters’ parents died in their 80s and they had two aunts who lived to 103 and 105 respectively. |
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