Kathleen Ellis
Kathleen Ellis was very keen on sports, playing hockey for the school team and active on Athletics Day. The Sports Day programme for 1915 lists her as a member of the organising committee and participant.
She was born in 1900, the only daughter of Harry George Ellis and Martha, his second wife. Kathleen’s three older step-sisters were not able to attend the Grammar School, as girls were not admitted until 1906, so they may have been educated at a local ‘dame-school’. HG, as he was known, was a poultry and game dealer, selling from his front room shop in the High Street, and then he took over his father’s basket-making business and moved the family to larger premises next door. Eventually there were thirteen children from the two families, so Kathleen acquired the experience that was useful when she later became a teacher.
Girls hockey team c.1915
Athletics Sports Day 1915, programme cover
Kathleen Ellis with daughter Gloria
The family participated in town activities, and the Evesham Journal reported on the involvement of Kathleen and her brothers in the fetes and entertainments. In 1917 Kathleen was awarded 3rd class Honours in the Oxford Local Examinations and gained a place at teacher training college. She left school and became a student teacher at the Girls Junior School, where she taught for a year before going for formal training. She married but was then divorced, and remained a teacher all her life, ending as Head Teacher of a primary school in Surrey.
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