Reader appeal

2:12pm Wednesday 9th May 2001

A Heritage reader is appealing for help to trace the relatives of her Croydon mother.

Ellen Beatrice Terry would have been 99 years old on April 27 and her daughter, Shirley Harmer, is looking for relatives on her mother's side who, she believes, are still living in the Croydon area.

Shirley told the Guardian: “Terry was my mother's maiden name she had four brothers and one sister. She spent all of her early life in the Croydon area and she talked a lot about Thornton Heath.

“My mother was born in 1902 and lost her father when she was very young.

Around the 1920s she married a man called King and had three children; Frank, Joyce and Terry. Her husband subsequently died at the old Nethern Hospital in Coulsdon and this is where she met her second husband.

Robert Etherington was visiting his first wife when he met my mother.

She eventually moved, with her children, to Langley Vale on Epsom Downs, where her second husband came from and she had three more children, one of which was me.

My mother, who has passed away now, lost touch with her family when her mother died about 50 years ago. I was only young at the time.

I live in Sutton now and often feel that I might have relatives living quite near to me and I would love to meet them.

My mum was a very special lady and I am sure she would approve and be pleased that I am trying to trace her relatives.

SHIRLEY HARMER

Dibdin Close,

Sutton

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