Ada Deacon

Ada Louisa Deacon was born on 3^rd June 1880 at 46 Clarence Gardens, Regents Park, London. She was the second daughter of John Rouse Deacon and Annie Deacon. Her father was a window blind maker and they all lived at the house with Ada’s older sister Lillian, Ada’s Grandmother Ann, Ada’s aunts Lillian and Annie and various different tenants who would stay at the house for short periods. Ada was christened at Christ Church on Albany Street, a short distance from the house, on 12^th September 1880.

The family increased in size in the 1880s with the births of Ada’s siblings John (circa 1883), William (6^th September 1884) and Daisy Caroline (21^st March 1889). By the time the 1891 census was taken the family had left Clarence Gardens and were residing at 106 Pancras Square. The likely reason for this move was that Ada’s grandmother wanted to take in more tenants and there was no room for the growing family and its noisy children.

In the decade that followed, the family increased further in size with the births of Marguerite on 1^st October 1891 and Eveline on 1^st July 1894. Ada and her family did not remain at 106 Pancras Square and indeed by the 1901 they’ve moved to 32 Ashdown Street, just off Queens Crescent in Kentish Town. Both Ada and her older sister Lillian were working as packers in a soap factory.

Family tree

Ada’s grandmother passed away in 1902 and following her death the family moved back to 46 Clarence Gardens. Ada had another younger sister, Winnifred,  on 15^th March 1904. By this time, Ada had met a young licensed victualler by the name of Herbert Hewitt. Back in 1901, Bert had been working in a pub called Dreghorn Castle on Queens Crescent, just around the corner from where Ada lived and it seems likely that they met across the bar in that pub.  The young couple married at Christ Church, Albany Street on 17^th April 1904. At the time of the wedding, Herbert was living next door at 48 Clarence Gardens.

Once married, Ada and Bert moved into the Gossett Arms at 111 Gossett Street in Bethnal Green where Bert had recently been granted a license. The following year, on 17^th July 1905, Ada gave birth to a son. They named him Herbert John Hewitt.

Ada and Bert left the Gossett Arms and less than five years later they had a daughter together. Lillian Alice Hewitt was born on 5^th March 1910. At the time of her birth, the family were living above a grocers and beer retailers at 21 Mare Street, Hackney. Her husband Bert is believed to have been working in the shop downstairs.

By the spring of the following year, Ada and Bert had moved again. By now they were living at 5 Sutherland Road, Bow. Bert was working as a barman at a pub on Highgate Hill called Whittington Stone and probably spent a lot of time away from home.

The long pub working hours and the commuting distance probably persuaded Bert and Ada to move closer to the pub. Another factor was that Ada was pregnant again. They moved into 4 Wedmore Gardens, Upper Holloway and Frederick Hewitt was born there on 13^th March 1912.

In August 1914 Britain found herself at war with Germany. Pub opening hours were drastically reduced in a bid to curb drunkenness among the soldiers on leave. This probably meant that Bert was at home a lot more often. Consequently, in the spring of the following year, Ada gave birth to their third son William Hewitt. 

On 10^th March 1917 Ada and Bert moved into The Plough public house on Ilford Lane, Ilford, Essex. By this time Ada was pregnant again and in the autumn she gave birth to their second daughter who they named Winnifred. Towards the end of the following year and with the First World War approaching its conclusion, Ada became pregnant once again. Daisy Eveline Hewitt was born on 25^th May 1919.

Ada and Bert now had 6 children. As Bert had regained his status as a licensed victualler it entitled him to send his youngest daughters to the licensed victualler’s boarding school in Slough. Win would have been sent away first in around 1922 and two years later she was followed by Daisy. The older children were not entitled to attend the school as they had been born before he had regained his licence.

Unfortunately, within months of Daisy being sent away to school, Bert’s health forced him to give up running the pub. He had been suffering from a stomach ulcer. Ada and Bert gave up the license on 8^th November 1924 and moved into a nearby property at 11 Harts Parade on Ilford Lane. Bert’s health deteriorated and poor Bert was rushed to hospital. Sadly Bert died on 20^th March 1925 due to a blood clot that had arisen through complications with his stomach ulcer. Ada was now a widow. 

To make matters worse for Ada she also had to cope with father’s poor health.  He was suffering from heart disease and was gradually deteriorating. He died on 5^th August, less than 5 months after losing her husband. For Ada the year 1925 was a year to forget.

Ada gradually rebuilt her life. She moved into 23 Twyford Road, Ilford with her children Lily, Fred and Bill. Her son Bert had joined the merchant navy and was mostly away at sea. Win and Daisy were still away at boarding school and only returned home outside term time.

Ada’s children grew up. Win and Daisy would have left school at the age of 14 in 1931 and 1933 respectively and on leaving school they returned home to Ilford. Daisy went on to work as a shop assistant at Barkers in Kensington High Street before landing a job at the local telecommunications firm Plessey. On 7^th January 1934 Lily married a butcher named Horace Lewsey. In the summer of 1934 Bert married a welsh lady named Gladys Lewis. In 1935 Ada’s first grandchildren arrived. On 27^th March Bert and Gladys had a son whom they named John Hewitt. A couple of months later, on 8^th July 1935, Valerie Ann Lewsey, daughter of Lily and Horace was born. Bert and Gladys had their second child, Margaret Hewitt, in spring 1938.

Extract from 1939 National Register

At the end of the 1930s, international tensions were once again increasing with the rise of Nazi Germany. With war looking like an increasingly likely prospect, a national register was taken in 1939. Although similar to a census, its main purpose was to provide data to enable the implementation of things like conscription and rationing. The extract from the register above shows how the household looked in 1939. Ada spent her time doing all the cooking and cleaning. Meanwhile her eldest son, Bert, is listed as a steward on The Britannic which was a transatlantic liner run by the White Star line. Fred is a wireless maker (at the Plessey factory in Vicarage Lane, Ilford), and Bill is a grocer’s shop assistant (like Granville in “Open All Hours” but hopefully without that vicious till). Win and Daisy’s names have been redacted.

Britain declared war on Germany on 3^rd September 1939 following Hitler’s invasion of Poland. All young men of a certain age were required to register for national service. Ada’s sons Fred and Bill were affected by this new law and were soon conscripted into military service. Fred joined the RAF and Bill joined the Royal Army Ordnance Corps. With many young men facing the prospect of travelling overseas to fight the enemy, there were a lot of weddings in the early years of the war. Win married Thomas Anderson on 21^st September 1940. Bill married Ada Downey a month later on 20^th October 1940. Ada’s youngest daughter Daisy married her sweetheart, Alan Melton, on 26^th April 1941. Within days of getting married the men were required to leave their loved ones behind to fight the enemy.

Back row (left to right): Lillian Lewsey (nee Hewitt), Daisy Melton (nee Hewitt) and Ada Hewitt (nee Downey)
Front row: Valerie Lewsey and Ada Hewitt (nee Deacon)

As the 1940s passed, Ada had more grandchildren. Win and Tom’s son, Craig Anderson, was born on 20^th September 1943.  Following the end of the war in 1945 Lily and Horace’s second child, a boy named Howard Lewsey, was born. In the following year there were two more births: Keith Alan Melton (son of Daisy and Alan) on 14^th June and Barbara Hewitt (daughter of Bill and Ada) on 25^th July. Ada’s youngest grandchild Barry Melton (son of Daisy and Alan) was born on 8^th July 1947. They were a close family anyway and with many of Ada’s grandchildren being of a similar age they often met up either for family gatherings or summer holidays to places like the Isle of Wight. Ada often came with them and it must have given her a great sense of satisfaction in those post-war years to see her children with families of their own.

It was only Ada’s son Fred who remained a bachelor. On leaving the RAF at the end of the war Fred decided to follow in the footsteps of his father and became a licensed victualler. On gaining his qualifications he became the landlord of the Flower Pot Hotel in the small Berkshire village of Aston close to Henley on Thames. Fred was to remain the landlord there for more than 40 years and The Flower Pot provided the ideal place for the other members of the family to escape to from time to time.

The Flower Pot Hotel, Aston

In time, Ada’s grandchildren grew up and her eldest grandson, John Hewitt, married Asuncion Visiedo Garcia in the autumn of 1959. Chon, as she liked to be known, was a nurse from Madrid in Spain. Within two years of the wedding Ada became a great-grandmother with the birth of their son John Hewitt in the spring of 1961. By this time Ada was becoming frail and had to give up her house in Twyford Road. She moved in with her eldest son and his wife. Bert and Gladys lived a couple of miles away at 5 Vernon Road, Seven Kings and the house backed onto the main railway line into London’s Liverpool Street station.

Ada became seriously ill with heart problems and passed away at Vernon Road on 12^th January 1962. Ada was 81 and had lived a long life during which she had witnessed many changes. She had been born during the reign of Queen Victoria and had lived through two world wars. Although she must have been immensely proud of her family she is bound to have felt a great sadness that she had lost her husband at the relatively young age of 44. She never married again.

Bert The Publican

Herbert Arthur Hewitt was born on 20^th May 1872 at 26 Townsend Cottages, St John‘s Wood, London. His father was an organ builder and Bert’s older brothers; Charles, Thomas junior and Frederick were all involved in their father’s business. Bert was the youngest in the family. He was baptised on 1st November 1874 at St Stephens the Martyr, Avenue Road in St John's Wood.

Bert's birth certificate

Bert spent his childhood growing up at 26 Townsend Cottages and according to the census in 1881, was attending school. His older brothers, Thomas junior (24) and Frederick (22), helped their father build and repair pipe organs. His sister Emma (20) was a dressmaker and his other sister Mary (13), was at home with their mother. Bert’s eldest brother, Charles, had left home.

As Bert grew up he must have been surrounded by the tools of his father’s trade and their home probably had its own workshop. Despite this, there is no evidence that Bert ever took an interest in the family business. By 1891, at the age of 18, he had already left the family home to start his own life. Unfortunately Bert does not appear in the 1891 census, so it is impossible to determine what his life was like at this time, but he may have worked behind a bar.

Bert next appears in 1901. By then he was 28 years old and the joint manager of a pub called The Dreghorn Castle. The pub was situated at 157 Queen’s Crescent, Kentish Town, London. He ran the pub with a woman named Elizabeth Chillystone. Together they were in charge of three barmen (Ernest Smith, John Tomkin and Frederick Bouchien) and a cook named Louisa Butson.

Running a pub was hard work. Bert and his staff would have typically worked 12-13 hour shifts on weekdays and 9-10 hours on a Sunday. At the time, the majority of pubs opened at 7:30-8:00am and did not shut until 12:30am, although some pubs (those near markets) opened at 5am and shut earlier at around 10:30pm. An hour to an hour and a half was allowed for meals and occasional time off was granted at the discretion of the manager.

Just three years later, on 17^th April 1904, Bert married Ada Louisa Deacon at Christ Church on Albany Street, London.  The church was close to Regents Park and at the time of the wedding, both the bride and the groom were living at nearby Clarence Gardens. Ada at no.46 and Bert at no.48. There were numerous pubs in the area including two on Clarence Gardens itself and it is likely that Bert was working at one of the local pubs when he met Ada.

Soon after they were married, Bert and Ada moved into The Gosset Arms at 111 Gosset Road, Bethnal Green. Given his newly married status, Bert may have been the licencee rather than just the pub manager. Not long after they had moved in, Ada became pregnant. Ada gave birth to a son on 17^th July 1905 and they named him Herbert John Hewitt.

Excerpt from Electoral Roll for 1909

He next appears in the Electoral Roll in 1909. He's living at 73 White Lion Street in Pentonville which according to local directories from the period,  was the address for the Three Johns public house. The following year, Bert and Ada had moved back to the East End and were living at 21 Mare Street, Hackney. Bert was no longer a licensed victualler and was instead working as a grocer/beer retailer in the ground floor shop below their living quarters. Why had they left the pub and why had he ceased to be a publican? We will probably never know. One scenario is that there was some incident which resulted in him losing his license. He wasn’t to become a license holder again for several years. 

Lilly's birth certificate

On 5^th March 1910, Bert and Ada had a daughter whom they named Lillian Alice Hewitt. Within a year of her birth, they moved to 5 Sutherland Road, Bow. According to the 1911 census Bert’s parents, brother Frederick and sister Alice were also living at the address. By this time Bert was working behind the bar at a pub called Whittington Stone on Highgate Hill in North London.

Whittington Stone in 1911 (now demolished)

Highgate Hill is quite a distance from Bow, especially for someone who worked long hours behind the bar. The long commute probably spurred Bert and Ada to move closer to his place of employment and by the time their third child, Frederick Henry Hewitt, was born on 13^th March 1912, they were living at 4 Wedmore Gardens in Upper Holloway. Their new address was just a 10 minute walk from the Whittington Stone and this would have made life a lot easier. It seems that Bert and Ada remained at the same address for several years and their third son, William Arthur Hewitt was born on 10th April 1915.

War broke out in August 1914. At 42 years old, Bert would have been too old to join the army and he probably continued working at the same pub. The outbreak of war had a profound affect on pubs in the UK. The government, concerned about troops getting drunk when on leave, decided to drastically reduce the number of hours a pub was allowed to open. Under the new legislation, pubs opened between midday and 2:30pm and then between 6:30pm and 9:30pm. These opening hours remained unchanged for many decades after the war had ended.

Bert’s next big break arrived on 10^th March 1917 when he became the joint license holder of The Plough in Ilford Lane, Ilford, Essex. The pub was huge and Bert would have needed to employ a team of staff to help run it. Later that year, on 18th October, Bert and Ada had another daughter, Winnifred Hewitt and on 25^th May 1919, Daisy Eveline Hewitt was born. Both daughters were born at the pub.

Bert continued to run The Plough until 8^th November 1924 when ill health forced him to give up the license. At this stage he had been suffering from a stomach ulcer for over a year and his condition had worsened to the extent that he was unable to continue. By this stage, Bert (junior) had left home to join the merchant navy and Bill, Win and Daisy were all boarding at the licensed victualler’s school in Slough. Bert, Ada, Lily and Fred moved to a nearby flat at 10 Harts Parade on Ilford Lane.

The Plough, Ilford Lane (now demolished)

Bert’s health took a serious turn for the worse on 17th March 1925 and he was rushed to hospital. He died three days later on 20^th March of a perforated stomach ulcer. He was just 52 years old. The cause of his death suggests he may have been a heavy drinker, which isn't surprising given his chosen profession. Sadly, I don't have any photos of Bert and I don't know what he looked like.

Bert wouldn't recognise Ilford Lane now. The Plough was demolished in 2007 to make way for a health centre. According to Ben Judah's new book This Is London, the surrounding area has just a 10% white British population and Ilford Lane itself has become a red light district.