Effie Hannah Bailey was born in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, England, the daughter of Ann Buck and Alfred Benjamin Bailey. She was one of two children.
When Effie Hannah was a small child in the Infant's School--Beardall St. Girl's School, Hucknall, she remembers attending a party that was given on the occasion of Queen Victoria's Jubilee.
As a child she was quite sickly. The doctor told her parents that she was delicate and probably wouldn't live very long, saying they would adivse them to make her life as happy as possible. Deeply saddened, her parents did their best to follow the doctor's recommendation. When she was about two years of age, her parents, fearing she would not survive to adult-hood, posed for a family portrait with her and her brother Alf. The photo shows her father, Alfred Benjamin, looking tall and very stern, clad in the tailoring of the times. Her mother, smiling, was wearing her Sunday black dress. Her brother Alf, then a boy of four or five years, was dressed in the standard boy's sailor suit of the day. Effie Hannah, herself, was wearing a light colored dress and huge matching tamashanta, and did indeed look extremely delicate with her thin, frail face dominated by unusually large and somewhat tragic eyes. This portrait stood as a mute testimony of the way in which life so often fools the experts. Having initially been made because it was believed she was soon to die, and her family wanted something to remember her by, in actuality the portrait commemorated that she had actually survived them all. One by one, Effie Hannah survived them all. Alf was killed in WWI; Her father died in a tragic auto-pedestrian accident about 1932 at age 77; and her mother several years later at age 69 --having suffered a stroke some ten years prior to her death. Effie Hannah even outlived her husband by 15 years.
Effie Hannah retained no memory of her early physical frailties. Apparently her health improved to the point where--through the first two decades of her life--she was able to live normally and happily.
At the age of thirteen, as was customary at the time, she left school and went to work at the local textile factory. Up to that point, having been reared in a God-fearing Church-going home, she had been very carefully sheltered and had been permitted to play ONLY with children from the types of homes her parents approved of. Working at the factory was an intense "cultural shock". After all the earlier sheltering, she had been suddenly precipitated into the most inhospitable of work environments surrounded by the very roughest of fellow employees. She also had to sit still and perform a boring routine, twelve hours a day, through days that seemed endless.
As a teenager, Effie Hannah was a regular church-goer. She had been reared in the Baptist faith inasmuch as her mother's family, the Bucks, were pillars of the Baptist Church in Hucknall. Her father was baptized a member of the Church of England as an infant, in London, but he felt it was best to worship along with his wife at their family church.
As a teenager, Effie Hannah apparently became friendly with a group of young people who attended the Congretational Church. She started attending this church, although I don't know if she was ever baptized into it. Her father harbored no resentment at this change.
In the group at the Congregational Church there was a girl named Lily Ward. Lily and Effie Hannah were good friends and went around to the same events at the Church and the Y.W.C.A. Her brother, Alf, similarly, was good friends with Lily's brother, Archie Ward. They, too, moved in the same groups and circles. One day my mother was asked by Lily if she would go on a double date. Lily had met a young man named Charles Wilford Orton who was a Mormon. "Wilf" had a cousin named Joe Bettridge who would like to come along if Wilf's girl friend could persuade HER friend to join the group.
The four of them did go out together. Lily married Wilf, and Effie Hannah, (20), married Joe (22), during World War I on June 30th, 1917.
Effie Hannah's father objected strenuously to his daughter marrying Joe. He didn't like Mormons and he had heard some things he didn't like both about the Mormons and about the fact that my father's people lived "on the wrong side of the tracks", so to speak. For a while he opposed the marriage, but when his son was killed in the Battle of Judland, her father felt that he didn't want to alienate himself from his one remaining child, so he gave his consent. Effie Hannah's father was always polite to Joe, but it was obvious that he didn't really care for him. Joe and Effie Hannah and their children attended the Mormon Church, and and her father knew it, but he never mentioned the fact. It was a great sorrow to him.
When she married, Effie Hannah Bailey was a tall, large-boned and rather awkward girl of twenty one. Although never physically robust, she has always had great resources of moral strength. Her features are characterized by strength rather than beauty, seeming as though they might well have been sculptored form granite. In her youth she had large, beautiful blue-grey eyes and a fair, flawlessly clear complexion. In the mode of the day, she then worked her long, straight aboundant nut-brown hair in a large bun at the back of her head. Her daughter, Effie May, said "There was never any nonsense of any kind about my mother".
Wilf and Lily, and Joe and Effie Hannah remained a very close foursome even after their marriages.
At 21, Effie Hannah was tall, large-boned, and just a trifle awkward. He facial features were noted for strength rather than for beauty. She had beautiful eyes (a Bailey characteristic), fair and clear complexion, and straight, beautiful light brown hair. In those days she wore her hair parted on the side and wound into a large and heavy bun at the back of her head. Though never particularly robust in a physical sense, she had deep reserves of "moral" strength as well as a very dedicated sense of duty. She was particularly gifted in understanding and "handling" her husband and catering to his moods.
She continued to feel remarkably well until the summer of 1918, when her first daughter was born. Her husband, Joe, had been conscripted into the military services, since he was of "fighting age". At the time of the delivery, he was up in Sunderland, England, being trained to go to fight in France with British Army.
After hours of difficult labor through the birthing process her pains quit and she sank back into lethargy. Her doctor then felt it necessary to bring the baby into the world by means of forceps.
Follow the birth, Effie Hannah never fully recovered her health. (In course of time, she would give birth to two more children, Samuel Bettridge on April 26, 1921, and James on August 22, 1945.)
It wasn't until their daughter, Effie May, was a young child that Effie Hannah was baptized into the Mormon Church. It was a very quiet affair, and Effie May learned about it not from her mother, but from another church member.
Effie Hannah suffered from ill health all her life. Perhaps she was just constitutionally frail. Her husband coped uncomplainingly with the inconveniences that resulted from his wifes continuing illness. He himself, had been reared in a home where there was no mother, as his mother died when he was very young.
As weak as she was, Effie Hannah had patience to work with her children, a task that was not enhanced by the fact that two of the children quarrelled continually. For her to have to organize and direct two such obstreperous children into helping out with the housework HAS to constitute proof that she, herself, was incapable of doing the work. Managing the children, directing them, making them work, would have to be much harder work than the work itself. Her mother, Ann Buck, would help her do the weekly wash until Effie May was about ten years old. Then it was Effie May who was assigned to do the washing of the clothes.
Effie Hannah's experiences with ill-health and life-long invalidism were aggravated by the fact that none of the doctors she consulted could pinpoint any reason why she should feel ill. Certain ills she had WERE diagnosed and treated, but non of these procedures helped in alleviating her pervasive problems with debility. This situation gave rise to continuing innuendo and gossip wherein other people speculated as to the REAL nature of her illness or whether she was indeed ill at all; whether she might perpaps be avoiding work by imposing upon those closest to her. Unfortunately for her, the fact that she suffered from an UNdiagnosed illness translated to the fact that she had to endure the illness itself, as well as the sort of gossipy innuendo that attached to her situation. There was no precise label to explain her illness.
When doctors fail to find anything wrong with the patiens who consult them, they assume nothing is wrong; that the patient has an over-active imagination, or has ulterior motives for claiming to be ill, or is psychosomatic. It is possible that a patient (especially in earlier times) might have been troubled by genuine ills that doctors were unable to diagnose. Unfortunately for Effie Hannah, the fact that she suffered from an UNdiagnosed illness translated to the fact that she had to endure the illness iteelf, as well as the sort of gossipy innuendo that attached to her situation relative to that lack of any precise label to explain her illness.
Attaching credible labels to illnesses can be vital to the welfare and peace of mind of patients, even if no particular treatment for the illness is available.
As it was, Effie Hannah's struggle against an unlabeled ill comprised the story of the life.
Effie Hannah and Joe lived in the first house they rented until the mid 1950's when their son Sam and his wife helped them move into an "Old People's Bungalow development.
Effie Hannah, who lived to be 84, died on Easter Sunday, April 19, 1981.
At death, her autopsy report lists three causes of death
1 Haemopericardium,
2 Rupture of thoracic aortic "aucurgren"
3 Atheroma
