Curry, Jane Ellen

Jane Wilson was born in New Seaham, County Durham on 29 November 1880. Her parents were John Wilson, a coalminer and Elizabeth Wilson. All her male relatives were working in the mines and her childhood was spent in the Seaham area. In 1911 the family home was 40 Mount Pleasant, Seaham and Jane was working from home as a dressmaker on her own account. On 1 June 1904 she married Joseph Curry, an agent for the Prudential Insurance Company but also from mining stock. They moved to 6 Percy Terrace, Bellingham after possibly living for a short while in Gosforth. She had four children in quick succession – John Curry (1906), James Curry (1908), Joseph Curry (1910) and Thomas Curry (1911). Help was obviously necessary in the house as in the 1911 Census they employed fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Dargan as a housemaid. The family moved to Darlington where Jane had a daughter, Edith Curry (1921). The family had left home by 1939 and Joseph and Jane Ellen were living in 271 Stanhope Road, South Shields with Joseph now being a ’retired insurance supervisor’. Jane died in South Shields in the first quarter of 1942.