Nurse. Voluntary Aid Detachment, St. John Ambulance Brigade
Early life:
Lily Wildman was born on 17th June 1873 in Bingley, the sixth of eight children to Walter and Elizabeth Wildman. Walter was a wool comber.
In 1881 seven year old Lily lived at 2 Crescent Place, Bingley with her parents and all of her siblings Hannah (25), William (22), Tamar (18), John (16), Henry (10), Mary (5) and James (3). The older children were also employed in the mills as wool combers, twisters and doffers.
By 1891 the family had moved to 8 Mill Lane, Oakworth in Keighley. Lily is now 17 and working as a worsted twister.
Lily married John Edward Anderton, a mason’s labourer, in the first quarter of 1895 in Keighley, and in 1901 she and her husband are living at 21 Coppy Row, Oakworth. They have two children, Clifford (5) and Doris, (3).
By 1911 they have moved to West Morton and have three more children – Ernest (9), Frank (6) and Alice (4).
War service:
During the first World War, Lily worked part time as a nurse at Morton Banks Hospital (1917- May 1919). The family had moved to 27 Unity Street, Riddlesden, by this time, and would remain there until around 1927.
They lived at various addresses around Keighley until the 1939 Register places Lily and John at 40 Hospital Road, Riddlesden with their son Frank, daughter Alice, a bakeress (who would later become Alice Southam) and Lily’s widowed brother James. Lily is now described as a housewife, John is a woollen weaver.
Lily died during the first quarter of 1960, at the age of 86, 13 years after her husband died.
Information sources:
Birth, Marriage and Death records.
1881 Census.
1891 Census.
1901 Census.
1911 Census.
1939 Register.
Red Cross VAD card.
