An Englishwoman Alone Among the Bolsheviks

 

Here's a photo of Mabel Mellor, with her pupil Bronislawa Zarckynska. Taken after their escape from Ukraine, into Warsaw in 1921

.Note from David Colyer.

I came across these papers, when I’d just returned from school, in 1959, to our home in Hill Crescent, Totteridge, North London. Our garden backed on to another house, called ‘Oakfield’, in Totteridge Lane, where my grandfather and grandmother were living, as gardener and housekeeper to the owner, a Miss Florence Swaine, known to us as Miss Freda Stanley, which had been her stage name while working as an actress on the music halls. Her family had come from Derbyshire and her father worked as steward at Chatsworth House, but she’d been disowned from the family when she joined the music halls, during the Victorian era. She was also my mum’s godmother, which was how we came to be connected.

She had died recently, at the age of 86 and when I went over to visit my grandfather, he was in the process of burning the contents of two large chests, containing 80 years’ worth of papers and letters, all kept in pink ribbon, belonging to Miss Stanley.

I was quite upset by this, as I was curious to see what the papers were about and saw several envelopes with Russian stamps I wanted to add to my collection, so I managed to retrieve some items from the bonfire.

Most of the documents turned out to be diaries, written in copper plate, by a Miss Mabel Mellor, a family friend of Miss Stanleys’, from their days in Derbyshire. Miss Stanley’s sister, Gertrude*, had been head post mistress at Bakewell and Miss Mellor had lived in Bakewell. According to the 1901 census, Gertrude lived as a boarder, with the Mellor family, at the age of 29. She died in 1971 at the age of 99, while living at Oakfield, Totteridge.