The Life of Maggie Victoria
Using official documents, snatched conversations, photographs, objects and letters left behind, here is what we have been able to piece together about the life of my great-grandmother, Maggie Victoria Sellers, nee Williams.
Coming Into View
The little girl born to the Williams family in Liverpool, England in February 1887 wasn’t supposed to be called Maggie Victoria.
But family legend has it that this was what her inebriated father called out at her christening, when the minister asked “What do you name this child?” So for the sake of appearances, the baby who was supposed to be named Margaret Alice became Maggie Victoria from that point on.
She and her brother, William Joshua Williams, almost three years her junior, had a difficult upbringing - what he later called “ups and downs” - with an alcoholic father who struggled to keep work as a carpenter and their mother trying to make ends meet.
Not surprising, then, that Maggie Victoria championed temperance as an upstanding Wesleyan Methodist. A tailoress by profession, she was first engaged to “WF” – so says her engagement ring - but all trails on him are cold. We can sadly assume the worst in the conflict-ridden early 20th century.
So it was that in 1915, she got engaged to Frank Sellers, himself a widower who spent his life first working in, and then owning, cotton mills in Lancashire. Short in stature, Frank was a vibrant personality, a champion gymnast and locally renowned for saving people from drowning.
Maggie Victoria and Frank were married at the Trinity Wesleyan Church in Chorley in October 1915, and would set up home in the town at Devonshire Road.
The Early Years
The cast of a play, Maggie Victoria in the centre of the top row
Trinity Methodist choir, Maggie Victoria bottom row, fourth from left
A day out with Frank with another couple and their children. Was this Maggie Victoria and Frank's honeymoon? She looks unimpressed.
A House By The Park
Maggie Victoria gave birth to three children at Devonshire Road. Gladys in 1918, my grandmother Doris in 1921, and finally Brian in 1924.
Her growing family would take up all of her efforts (although they were sometimes taken on camping holidays by Frank.)
Having become a manager at the local cotton mill, Frank went on to design and build a new home for his family next to Astley Park in Chorley – a house where the Sellers would live for decades.
The bungalow featured a meandering garden that he and Maggie Victoria tended from the start, a pond overflowing with water lilies, a vegetable garden offering up an important bounty. A space for the children to play in and explore.
Children In The Garden
Queen's Grove garden, complete with tent.
Great-aunt Gladys, with the park in the distance.
Grandmother Doris in the reeds.
Great-uncle Brian, fishing.
Waterlilies.
The garden, backing on to Astley Park.
Busy Hands
As the children grew up, Maggie Victoria occupied herself with their futures, and with the upkeep of the house at Queen’s Grove.
Sewing, knitting, laundry, cleaning, tending the garden. A proud and capable woman, she was never still.
Both daughters having received a full secondary education, Gladys would go on to leave home and be employed as a “woman chemist”, while Doris would train to become a pharmacist, where she met her future husband, Jim. Brian worked at the mill before buying a grocer’s shop.
All of them were set up to make their way in the world and receive the start in life Maggie Victoria had not.
She still doted on the children when they had left home, reminding Gladys to bring her laundry, and listing interesting radio programmes for the next few days in her frequent letters.
“The Dr. says I ought to be in bed. My heart muscle is very wobbly and beating fast. I've been in bed all afternoon and am going now 8 p.m. Don't be alarmed. They'll let you know if I get worse.”
— Maggie Victoria to daughter Gladys, May 5th, 1943
Don’t Be Alarmed
Ill health came for Maggie Victoria in her fifties. A spell in hospital in 1941 was serious enough to prompt her to write her will.
Then, in the midst of a stormy spring in 1943, the end would quickly arrive. We know from letters she wrote to her eldest child, Gladys, that she tried to keep going in the face of influenza which took its toll on her lungs and ultimately her heart.
On April 17th, 1943, she is still talking about gardening, and spring cleaning, and having a vegetable growing rivalry with Frank. But she complains of her slow speed.
In the days that follow, she’s treating her ailments with liver extract acquired from the pharmacy. May 1st would be the last day she leaves the house because the trip to the doctor had made her so tired. Frank, by this time the owner of the mill which he has had to give over to the war effort, is out feeding the animals there, and staying up all night on fire watch.
Around May 5th, she says she’s not so well, her heart is beating fast, but Gladys shouldn’t be alarmed. Gladys’s sister Doris finishes off the letter, saying she has managed to prevail upon her to go to bed – her bed in fact. Meanwhile Maggie Victoria is worried about taking up Doris’s time when she should be revising for exams.
Three days later she is on “most annoying” bed rest. She’s taking various medicines and fortifying foods. The doctor says her heart is stronger but still too fast. Doris adds that she makes a point of listening to her heart every day and it sounds stronger, but her mother needs to eat and is thin as a rake.
Frank says she has finally given in to pressure to have the doctor come. He writes: “I don’t know what she thinks she’s capable of standing but for a capable woman she has very little idea of giving up her household work, she wants to order + plan + thinks nobody else can do it just right as if it matters one iota. I really was getting alarmed about her condition. She seems to think she can throw off anything + stand anything.”
Still Doris says there’s no cause for alarm as her heart is getting stronger.
“When I told mother you’d rung up & I’d asked you to come next Saturday, she was pleased and happy.
“Love for now, Doris”
— Doris to her sister Gladys, May 16th, 1943
Final Days
Maggie Victoria was buried in Chorley Cemetery in the same grave as Frank’s first wife, and ultimately Frank himself. The grave is crammed in among other larger ones.
Images courtesy of Tony Nixon.
May 12th is the last time we hear from Maggie Victoria directly and the news is not good. A visit from Aunt Laura has left her worn out and she’s very tired. Frank is concerned. He tells Gladys: “Mother is really not fit to have visitors only for a minute or two at most. She had gained a little strength + it is all undone + a little worse.”
Again the doctor has visited and he has evaded a reply about her condition, saying instead that she might have died on her feet the previous week. Tragically, Frank tells Gladys not to “come lorrying home and make matters worse again. Time enough when/if we send for you.”
The next correspondent on May 15th is Nurse Chrissie Arthur who has heard that mother is unwell, and has come to tend to her while other family members go about their chores.
“Just at present she is feeling rather weary for it seems Doctor has put her on sulphonilamide tablets + probably you know that they appear to be affecting mother + nausea alone even if there is no vomiting can be very trying. But I know some very wonderful results are being obtained from this form of treatment + I am sure they will your mother.”
“As I sit with your mother there is a delightful perfume coming from two beautiful vases of lilies of the valley.
“I am glad that at last we’ve got this spell of weather as it should help your mother after she gets over the effects of the tablets.”
The last letter is written to Gladys between May 15th and 16th. Frank and his daughter Doris have had a bad time with Maggie Victoria who is suffering as a result of the tablets, which the doctor wants her to persist with. As usual the doctor offers little in the way of a prognosis.
Doris is watching her sleep as Sunday progresses, although there is noise from a band in the park next door. She finishes her letter: “If there’s any necessity I’ll ring you up. When I told mother you’d rung up and I’d asked if you could come next Saturday she was pleased and happy.”
Maggie Victoria died the next day.
Her primary cause of death was listed as “myocarditis”, followed by “pleurisy” and “influenza”.
She was buried on May 20th, 1943 in Chorley Cemetery, in the same grave as Frank’s first wife Bertha, and ultimately Frank himself.