Emma was the seventh of the eight children of Thomas Thompson and Annie Ethel Watkinson. Emma was born on 3 December 1919 at 12 Glen View, Ynysddu in South Wales. Sadly just thirteen months earlier Thomas and Annie’s sixth child, Sheila, had died after just five weeks probably making the birth of Emma such a joy for the family. Emma was born at such a dangerous time for the world. Although it was a year after the First World War it was in the middle of the world influenza pandemic. More people died as a result of that pandemic than in the whole of the preceding war.

This is the earliest photograph I have have of Emma, she is on the right hand side of the picture, at the front. She is pictured with her brothers and sisters, her parents and her grandfather. The family had moved from South Yorkshire to South Wales a few years before Emma was born and her grandfather still lived there. As Emma had three older sisters she had lots of clothes that were ‘handed down’. There was one particular time Emma remembered her grandfather’s visit because she travelled back to South Yorkshire with him. Whilst in Barnsley he bought her a new coat, the only new coat she ever remembered receiving.

Emma married Gwyn Lowry on 5 July 1941 at Lyttleton Road Methodist Church in Birmingham. Although the family had been living in South Wales, they moved in Stechford in Birmingham in 1937. I am not sure whether Gwyn and Emma met while both working for the war effort. Gwyn was an Aircraft Parts Assembler and Emma was an Aircraft Parts Inspector. I think it more likely that they had already meet in South Wales as Gwyn was born at Nantyglo in Gwent which was only fourteen miles from Ynysddu.

Emma ran her own business for a number of years and here she is pictured in her haberdashery shop. Whatever your needs in that line Emma was ready to supply them. I always remember Emma having her own knitting machine, many years before anyone else had thought about such a thing.

Emma and Gwyn did not have any of their own children but Emma loved being around other children in the family. Here is a picture of Emma with her sister Ann and three of Ann’s grandchildren, I am not sure where the fourth child has come from. This picture is taken in the late 1960s.

Gwyn was a keen photographer and the photograph below is an example of one he took of Emma. He processed his own photographs and developed his own prints. Sadly Gwyn died in March 1985 when they had been married forty three years.

After Gwyn’s death Emma continued to live at the house they had shared for many years, 12 Redhill Road in West Heath. A few years before she died Emma suffered from Dementia and had to move to Sycamore House Care Home in Tyseley. Emma died a week after she had been eighty on 10 December 1999.