The details in the following paragraph were told me by my Grandmother, Rene, Nell's daughter, about 20 years ago.

"My Great Grandmother was supposedly Ellen Elizabeth Tuck, born 4th January 1889 in New Southgate, London. Her brothers and sisters were William, Dorothy, Louisa, Walter, Kate and Jessica. (I have a few more details - their marriage partners and children - but not much else.) Nell and her brothers and sisters were brought up in Ballspond Road, Stoke Newington."

Fortunately, I wrote the above down at the time because Rene died soon after. Since then, I've spend quite a lot of time searching for Ellen Elizabeth Tuck's birth certificate with no success. In the year 2001, when I told my Grandfather, Horie Pickett (who was Ellen's son in law), that I couldn't find a birth certificate, he said that he had a feeling that William Tuck wasn't her father at all, but her stepfather, and Ellen had never known her real father! So we searched for Ellen's birth under the name Pritchard, which is what we were told was her mother's maiden name, but with no luck there either. I should say, that we looked for several years either side of the presumed birth date. It would seem, however, that soon after Nell (Ellen) was born, her mother did marry William Tuck, and all the other children were born within that marriage. But we've not been able to prove any of this. Nell Tuck, when she got married in 1908 (in Finsbury Park, London), indicated that Wiliam Tuck was her father and not stepfather. Who knows if this is true.

Before she was married, Nell worked with Nell Grummitt in the Mayfield Laundry. They were collar ironers for the old fashioned stiff collars. Later on, the Mayfield Laundry opened a smaller laundry called the Gift Day, at Gillespie Road, near the Arsenal (football club), and Nell was in charge of that.