This may be the first in a rather long series of Poor Ediths, Poor Agneses, Poor Amys, and others.
Edith Agnes Elizabeth Piper was my first cousin twice removed; the daughter of Arthur Henry Piper and his wife Agnes (née Draper). Arthur was the brother of my great-grandmother, Mary Piper.
Edith was born in Oxford in September 1888, the eldest of three siblings; she was around a year younger than her cousin Evie Smith, my grandmother. The two were very close, and kept up a correspondence. I had never seen a picture of her, until I found these images in my collection of family papers and photographs. They show a very beautiful young woman, with striking almond-shaped eyes.
In 1915 she married Joe Venables, a printer’s machinist, and private in the 1st Battalion of the Rifle Brigade. On May 4th 1918, the couple had a son, Eddie (seen in the final image below, with his cousin May Dolling – whom I remember meeting in the early 1970s).
Sadly, Edith died on May 27th 1918, around 3 weeks after Eddie was born, from post-partum meningitis; she is buried in the same plot as her grandparents, William and Elizabeth Piper, in Rose Hill Cemetery, Oxford.
