153 E Dulwich Grove

[nitnia]

We have found a letter addressed to Miss C Fyer ( poss Tyer,Iyer or something else ) in an old bit of furniture. As it's a local address we were wondering if anyone knew the lady or the family .

Just curious.

photo of envelope attached

[Girl82]

Interesting! People certainly had lovely handwriting in those days.

[handymaneast dulwich]

Is it not miss E Fyer ?

[maxxi]

Is it a letter complaining about the influx of gentlefolk and perambulators blocking the bridleway?

[lane lover]

Its from the future! 23 April 2018 !!!

Great Scott !!

[ianr]

I think it's E.Tyer. (As a reality check: zero Fyer marriage records found in FreeBMD for 1920-1940.)

The first E Tyer marriages found after 1918 are:

Mar 1924 Tyer Amy E = Goodwin Bethnal G.

Mar 1938 Tyer Louise E = Dickenson Gateshead

Jun 1938 Tyer Eugenia E = Edwards Deptford

Sep 1946 Tyer Eugenia = Lytton Dover

To do any serious tracking you'll want her forename.

[Penguin68]

It may be worthwhile looking at death registers for then as well - 1918-19 was a peak time for Spanish flu - which took-out a large number of young adults - my then 21 year old aunt amongst them - curiously more vulnerable than either infants or elderly people to this flu variant. Someone who dies could explain an abandoned letter (so could lots of other reasons as well, of course)

[tfwsoll]

It looks like she is Eliza Tyer, born c1858 in Rotherhithe. She worked as a teacher and lived in Glengarry Road, Melford Road and Lordship Lane between 1908 and 1922 although the 1911 census shows her in Herne Hill. she then moved to Lewisham and it looks like she died in 1949 in Bromely. She never married, although I seem to recall that teachers weren't allowed to marry?

[nitnia]

Thanks for all your replies particularly tfwsoll .

The envelope contained a letter,which unfortunately is now falling apart and has to be put together very carefully. It talked about food stamps and life after the war.

Thee was also a post card which is in better shape which I'm attaching for those who are interested.

Thanks again

[Townleygreen]

Teachers WERE allowed to marry, though they couldn't carry on being a teacher after they were married - but that was true generally at that time.

[tfwsoll]

Hi Townleygreen - that's what I meant but didn't phrase my comment very clearly!

Interestingly, Miss Tyer would have had the right to vote for the first time the same year she received the letter nitnia found.

[Penguin68]

The old Civil Service Rules were that women had to resign on marriage - but could later re-join as a married woman. However if they did that they had a break in service and (effectively) started off again as new - so the additional service as a married person didn't add to the initial unmarried service. This had an impact on things like pensions and incremental awards. I suspect the same would be true of teachers - local government tended to mirror Civil Service rules.

In many cases women did start to have children as soon as they were married (the options for not doing so were then limited) - so many women did marry, resign, bring up a family and then maybe re-join once the family had grown up. The concept of married 'career women' was only very slowly beginning to develop (this rules continued after the second world war) - women who stayed in a career tended to be ones who did not marry (and it must be remembered that post the first war the losses in the trenches and the following flu epidemic meant that there were too few men of marriageable age to go around). Hence there were numbers of spinsters who worked as career women, but not perhaps as their first choice.