BEDTIME for the four-year-old Felicity Davis was a living nightmare. As the clock ticked round to 7pm, anxiety would build up in the little girl as she prepared for what was to come.

Her mum, Marjorie, would head off to visit her dad – who lived in a council flat in a rough part of Scarborough – and Felicity would be left in the “care” of her grandmother, Elsie.

At night her grandfather, Albert, worked as a doorman at the local Tory club, leaving no one to witness the ritual of abuse Gran inflicted on the tot.

It would start with hitting, then the agony of rags being twisted into her hair to make curls.

“The more I cried, the more often my head hit the wall,” writes Felicity in her new book, Guard A Silver Sixpence, a moving memoir of her childhood and the extraordinary story that left its mark on five generations of her family.

Felicity left home aged 15 – the day after her gran threw a pot of scalding-hot water over her as she prepared to go out with friends for the evening.

Looking back, Felicity, now 52, thinks the motive was jealousy.

“I was getting to be an attractive young girl. I was dressed up to go out to a teenage club. I think to her, she saw in me what she used to be like.”

Felicity adored her granddad, who forever made excuses for his wife’s volatile behaviour.

“He would say: ‘She’s had it hard herself, her mother was hung at a very young age’.”

Felicity didn’t ask any more questions and kept the abuse hidden for years – not even telling her own mother, who she now suspects had been similarly maltreated by Gran.

It was only when Felicity’s mother was diagnosed with cancer three years ago that she decided to dig deeper and find out more about the family’s murky past.

She had another motivation too. Approaching 50, with three grown-up sons, she had two failed marriages behind her, and although she had been with her partner, Michael, for almost 20 years, they didn’t live together.

Despite leaving school at 15 with no qualifications, Felicity had gone to university, trained as a teacher and reached the top of her profession – earning her headship qualification. There was a disparity, she felt, between the achievements in her professional and personal life.

Candidly, she admits: “Personally, I was a bit of a wreck.”

So she took the plunge, beginning by typing in the name of her great grandmother, Emily Swann, – Elsie’s mother – into Google.

“It was a shock,” begins Felicity, now an English teacher in Scarborough.

“The story came up immediately. Emily Swann Wombwell Hanging – with an in-depth report.”

In fact, the story of Emily Swann was a notorious one – reported widely in local and national newspapers back in 1903. Felicity read the original accounts in the archives at Barnsley – often through tears.

“I cried a lot writing the book,” says Felicity, whose sunny voice is in stark contrast to her miserable childhood.

One particularly poignant moment came when she read an account of one of her condemned great grandmother’s last letters.

“Make sure my four-year-old Elsie gets the doll I have bought her for Christmas because I won’t be there.”

Then there was the story that gave rise to the book’s title.

“The family went to see her in jail but my gran couldn’t go inside,” says Felicity.

“They said she was too young, so she had to wait outside and the guard gave her a silver sixpence to look after until the family came back out.”

Felicity continues: “I cried and cried when I was in the archive library, because that was when my gran became a victim to me. She was four years’ old when her mother was hanged and the family split up.

“I understood there was more to this story. I thought, there had to be a reason for my gran’s cruelty. You don’t hurt people without a purpose.”

The book is also dedicated to Emily, who Felicity believes is another victim in the story. She was hanged along with her lover, John Gallagher, for the murder of Emily’s husband, William. It was the last double hanging in the country.

After a drinking session, William beat up Emily and John then attacked him with a poker.

Emily reportedly said: “Give him it; let him have it,” says Felicity, asserting that today she would have been treated as a battered wife.

Within a fortnight of its launch, the book has already reached the Top 20 of The Times’ bestsellers list. Felicity is soaking up the interest in her story, but feels there may be an important loose end to resolve – a pardon for Emily Swann. “I feel indignant about it,” she says forcefully. “It is a wrong that needs putting right.”

Felicity describes writing the book as a “cathartic” experience, that has changed her life.

“I feel I am a different person now; I can start to forgive Gran.” She also feels ready to take the plunge with long-term partner Michael.

“We are getting married next year. I would not have decided to do that, had I not searched out my past.”

Amazingly, her three sons, Ollie, 29; Nicky, 24, and Joe, 22, did not know about her harrowing childhood until she presented them with the book.

“When would you sit down your child and tell them a story like that?” she asks.

“I hope it helps them understand and that they won’t make the same mistakes five generations of our family have made. I’m convinced Emily’s hanging affected my gran Elsie, my mother Marjorie and me. It stops with the boys.”

• Guard A Silver Sixpence, by Felicity Davis, is published by Pan Books, £6.99