Cairns, Lydia
Lydia Cairns lived in 7 Percy Terrace, Bellingham in 1939 with her headmaster husband, William John Cairns. She was born Lydia Longstaff in Sunderland on 30 March 1905. In 1911 Lydia was living with the rest of her family at 6 Brunton Terrace Sunderland. Her father, John George was an outside general foreman for a water company. John and her mother, Henrietta had been married seventeen years and had had eight children of whom seven were surviving on census night. In the household in 1911 were not only the parents but seven children and Henritta’s parents and a brother. By 1921, John had become the general secretary of The Amalgamated Managers and Foreman’s Association. This job is significant because the sixteen-year-old Lydia was a junior clerk in the union. (One of her brothers was employed as a cost clerk.) The union address was the same as their residence, 12 Lorne Terrace, Darlington. Lydia and her future husband, William John Cairns may have met through the shared union activities of their respective fathers. Lydia married William John Cairns in Tynemouth in the second quarter of 1927. After William died in in May 1966, leaving her an estate worth £2,899, Lydia married Sydney Clough, who had been a next-door neighbour in Percy Terrace, in the second quarter of 1967. Sydney and Lydia moved away from Bellingham, almost certainly to Tyneside as Sydney died on 16 October 1987 when his address was given as 8 Garner Close, Chapel Park, Newcastle. Lydia died, aged ninety-two in October 1997 with her death being registered in Newcastle.