My great aunt Hilda Heywood was born in October 1909 in Bolton to Ellen Eliza Hindley and Ernest Heywood. She was their eldest child.
In April 1911, at the time of the Census, she was living with her parents in Burnley, but by the time she was five, at the birth of her brother George Ernest Heywood (my grandfather) in 1914, she was living in Liverpool.
Over the coming few years, she had three brothers, Harold, William, and Leslie, and a sister Emily, all die in their infancy. Another sister, Gladys, was born in 1924, and lived until 1997, and another brother Alfred, born in 1928, survived until 1977.
At the age of 21, in 1930, Hilda married Joseph Devine, a hotel worker. They had two children, both of whom died young, and a third child, Muriel in 1931.
In February 1938, Muriel had dressed in an old dancing dress and a paper head dress to show off as Mae West to her grandmother (probably Ellen but possibly Joseph's mother). She then sat down to write a letter to her mother. Newspaper reports from the time state that after writing "I love you" she dropped her pencil, and when she went to pick it up off the floor, her headdress caught the open fire, and soon her whole outfit was alight. Hilda wrapped her in a rug, injuring her leg. Sadly Muriel died of her injuries and shock on Saturday 19 February 1938, aged just seven years old.
