Burrell, Isabella Cook
Isabella was a resident of 6 Percy Terrace at the 1921 Census and 1939 Register. She was born Isabella Cook Livingstone in Dunfermline on 1 November 1866. She was one of nine children of David Livingstone and Isabella Livingstone. When Isabella jnr. was born her father was a shoemaker but between 1871 and 1881, he became a church officer (minister) in the Free Church of Scotland and the family moved to Paisley. As early as 1881 Isabella, like two of her older sisters, was working as a thread mill worker. Her mother died before 1891 and then Isabella was acting as housekeeper for her father at 3 John Street, Paisley – in spite of the fact that her older sister, Cecelia was still working in the thread mill. Isabella was in the same role ten years later but in 1902 she married James Burrell. No documentation for the marriage has been found but James was from the Isle of Bute and it is likely that they were married by her father in Paisley. Shortly after marriage – their first-born son was born in 1904/5 – they moved to Hexham where James was an assistant in a draper’s shop and they were living at 1 St. Nicholas Road, Haining Croft. Her husband died in in 6 Percy Terrace, Bellingham on 26 April 1918. Isabella was left with an estate worth £216 0s 10d. In 1921, in Number Six besides Isabella there was her son, James Dewar Burrell, aged seventeen and working for Walter Collier as a shop assistant in Brewery Lane, Bellingham, and fifteen-year-old Isabella Cook Burrell Jnr. who was still at school. Isabella snr. described herself as a private housekeeper and took in lodgers. Walter Percy Collier was her most eminent lodger, being a commercial photographer, whilst there also was eighteen-year-old Edmund Peel, a bank clerk. The entry for 6 Percy Terrace in the 1939 Register is curious since the head is Sydney Clough but the rest of the household is made up of Isbella – a housewife – and her adult children. In the second quarter of 1940 Isabella’s death was registered.