Lillie Esther Monument

Born 1880, died 1974
Assistant Nurse at Mitford and Launditch Union Workhouse, 1900
Researched by Dauna Coppin

Lillie Esther Monument was born on 10th October 1880. She was baptised in the Parish of East Dereham on 12th November. Her parents were Eliza Maria (nee Skipper) and Frederick, a Carpenter. The 1881 census shows 6-month-old Lillie was living with her parents at 6 Back Lanes, Hartington Terrace, East Dereham. She had three older siblings, including Edith, who was four years older. Also living in the house was her widowed grandfather, John Skipper, an Ostler.

The 1891 census showed 10-year-old Lillie and her family were still  living in East Dereham, in Nicholas Street. The family had grown with four more children, and Walter, the eldest son, was working as a carpenter, like his father.

Lille was 16 when she began working as a shop assistant for Robert Horne, a draper and clothier in Norwich Road, East Dereham. She was employed from June 1897 until September 1899. Then she went to work for Miss Mary Anne Ricketts, a Ladies Clothier of  Market Place, East Dereham. She worked for Miss Ricketts initially for three months from January to March 1900. She left this job to start working as a nurse in the Workhouse.

The Guardian’s minutes of Mitford and Launditch Union Workhouse on 19th March recorded that “The Visiting Committee had recommended the appointment of Lily Monument as Probationer Nurse at a salary of £8 to commence her duties in about fourteen days”.  It was noted that her sister, Edith, had also worked there as a nurse but had left in 1898. There were various letters of correspondence regarding her appointment over the Summer and Autumn 1900, between the Clerk to the Guardians of the Workhouse and the Local Board. Although they agreed to her appointment, there was some concern that Lillie was only 19 years old, and the Board had recommended that nurses should be at least 21.

Lillie resigned in October, after just working there for a few months. In November, the Board of Guardians decided that they would not provid her with a written testimonial, as she had only worked there for a short time. In December, the Local Board requested a report on Lillie’s conduct and the Guardian’s responded in their minutes of 21st January: “Nurse Monument, in the opinion of the Committee did not do her nursing work well or thoroughly and is not therefore a suitable person for a nurse, but that the Guardians make no definite charge of misconduct against her.”

Lillie also appeared on the staff list as a nurse in the King’s Lynn Workhouse, in November 1900 but had left by February 1901 before her appointment had been confirmed, possibly as a result of the above comments from the Gressenhall Guardians.

After leaving her nursing job, 20-year-old Lillie returned to working for Miss Ricketts. On the census of 1901 she is living and working at 29 Market Place East Dereham as a draper’s shop assistant. Sadly, her mother Eliza, had died at the age of 44 in 1898, but her father was still living in Nicholas Street with most of her siblings.

Five years later, Lillie moved to London where she married Herbert Cooper in 1906. She gave birth to two children, Winifred in 1907 and John in 1909. On the 1911 census, Lillie and Herbert were living at 1 Elsley Road in Battersea, where he worked as a waiter in a club.

In 1921, the family had moved to Leicestershire and Herbert’s occupation was as a Thread Miller Engineer but was at that time out of work. Both he and Lily were aged 39 and they had four children. The two younger children were Vera, born in 1912 and Freda, born in 1920.

n 1939, Lillie was recorded on the register as a married woman aged 59 years old. She lived at 71 Harewood Street. Leicester with her youngest daughter, Freda aged 19 who worked as a shoe manufacturer’s clerk.

Lillie’s husband is believed to have died in 1969 in Braintree, Essex while Lillie died, aged 94 years old, in the June Quarter 1974 in Leicester. She had five grandchildren.