..Eliza Rosetta Fenn nee Prior {My great grandmother-photo c1898}

Eliza was born in Barking, Essex in 1853, the daughter of Matilda Simco and Joseph Prior, a fisherman. Matilda died aged 50 in 1856 when Eliza was only 3. Eliza had an older brother and sister, Henry, born 1844, and Hepzibah born 1846. In 1871, Hepzibah died of smallpox, aged only 25, with Eliza at her bedside. Eliza married George Walter Fenn, of Suffolk, in 1879, shortly after her father Joseph's death aged 80. George and Eliza settled in Canning Town and had 3 children, May 1881, Bertie 1883 and Grace 1885. In 1887 the three children were taken seriously ill with whooping cough, and May died aged 6. Eliza's husband George Fenn died suddenly of a heart attack aged 47, in 1899. Bertie who had married Kate Stannard in 1912 went off to fight in WW1 but like so many others, never returned, and sargent B.F.Fenn was buried at Adanac Military Cemetary aged 36. Eliza was to die in hospital in Romford, Essex , in the flu epidemic of 1929, aged 75.