Obituary: Lorna Beatrice Lloyd (1914-1942)

Lorna Beatrice Lloyd was an unpublished writer and World War II diarist, amateur artist, and school mistress.

Lorna was born in Filton, Bristol on 7th January 1914, the only daughter of Albert (Bertie) and Alice (Topsie) Lloyd. Lorna’s brother Theodore (Theo) born in 1912 was eighteen months her senior. Over the course of their childhood, Lorna and Theo lived with their parents in Bristol[1] , Stirling, Ilford, and Sheffield.

Lorna’s parents were from families that benefited socially and economically in the Victorian and Edwardian periods. Her maternal grandfather Peter Featherstone Witty began his career as a railway clerk in Yorkshire; he ended it as a banker and stockbroker in Bristol, and a friend of King Peter I of Serbia[2]. Lorna’s paternal grandfather’s first job was as an errand boy for his journeyman fishmonger father; by the time of Lorna’s birth, Gabriel Lloyd ran a chain of fishmongers across five locations in Bristol[3]. The Lloyd and Featherstone Witty families of this generation had large families[4], lived in big houses with servants[5], had enough leisure time to take holidays, and - at least outwardly[6] - lived as committed Christians.

In the 1911 census, Lorna’s father was described as a man of ‘private means’ and, like married women of her class at the time, Lorna’s mother did not undertake paid work. Lorna was lucky to have been born into a family that was relatively wealthy at the start of the twentieth century, and continued to be so throughout her short life.

Nannies helped care for Lorna and Theo in their early years, and the brother and sister almost certainly started their education at home under the watchful eye of governess(es)[7]. Lorna undertook her secondary schooling first at Ilford Hall High School, then completed it at Sheffield High School for Girls  in the city where her father was an iron and steel merchant between 1925 and 1935[8].

Lorna’s privileged middle class childhood afforded leisure time and resources to develop various talents. She played the piano; she wrote short stories, plays and poetry; she drew and painted[9]; she designed costumes for theatrical performances; and she wrote - and presumably read and spoke - reasonable French[10]. Lorna’s childhood passions were books, dogs and boats, all of which she enjoyed on family holidays in Looe, Cornwall [11] with her parents and brother, and the Lloyd grandparents, uncles and cousins.

Academically-gifted, Lorna left home in 1933 to study at Girton College, Cambridge supported by a prestigious State Scholarship. She read for a BA in English in 1936. However, she did not graduate: the University of Cambridge did not award degrees to women in the 1930s. In the Girton College archives it is noted that Lorna was an active member of the Dramatic Society as a producer, designer and actor, and a member of the Debating Society, while an undergraduate.

Lorna's first job was part-time English mistress at the County High School, Stourbridge (1936-37), and her second assistant English mistress at the Royal School, Bath (c1937-39). However, her teaching career was cut short due to illness. By the start of the Second World War in September 1939, the 25 year old was once again living with her parents, now resident in Worcestershire. They had moved from Sheffield to Malvern following the sale of her father’s business[12] in 1935. From the base in Malvern, Lorna was able to attend Gloucester Infirmary for medical treatment. It was in this period that Lorna wrote the diary entries that formed the core of this blipfoto journal.

Sadly Lorna’s medical treatment was unsuccessful. Her condition worsened from mid-1940 onwards and she died at her parents’ house in Malvern on 2nd February 1942 within a month of her 28th birthday. The cause of death was certified as ‘acute cardiac dilatation, paroxysmal tachycardia and intrathoracic neoplasm’ - in short, cancer and heart failure.

Lorna was survived by both her parents (until 1959) and her brother Theo (until 1981). Without children of her own, Lorna’s memory has been kept alive by Theo’s descendants: his daughter Gillian and son Jonathan, and his six grandchildren (Gillian’s son and three daughters, and Jonathan’s two daughters). It is anticipated that the next generation - Theo’s great-granddaughters (3) and great-grandsons (4) - will also take an interest in Lorna, especially now that much of her writing and artwork has been archived here.

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This is the last entry in the blipfoto journal - at least for the time being. Team Lorna is currently exploring options for extending the reach of Lorna’s story and her outputs. If you would like to be informed of any developments, please say so in a comment below and we will be in touch when there is news. If you have any suggestions that could help us extend this project further, please email hazelh (the blipper behind this journal ). There is a link to hazelh’s contact details from her blipfoto profile page https://www.blipfoto.com/hazelh.

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[1] In Lorna’s earliest years her father was absent while serving in World War I.

[2]  King Peter I appointed him an Honorary Royal Consul, and visited him on occasion in Bristol. The portrait of Featherstone Witty blipped on 4th April 2020 shows him in his Royal Serbian Consular uniform. All paper related to his connection with the Kingdom of Serbia were lost in the German air raids on Bristol in 1940.

[3] The family retail business passed down the generations and is still in existence today with one exception: in the 1970s Lorna’s first cousin David introduced some greengrocery, and by 1984 the business no longer dealt in fish. Lloyds greengrocer is located at 81 Henleaze Road, Henleaze, Bristol BS9 4JP.

[4] Gabriel Lloyd fathered 9 children, and Peter Featherstone Witty 12.

[5] See the text of the blip of 12th April 2020 for a description of the Lloyd house ‘Craigmore’. The blip of 7th December comprises two photographs of the Featherstone Witty house ‘The Cromlech’ in 1916, and there is also a link to a recent sales brochure for the property in the text of this entry.

[6] Peter Featherstone Witty had a secret mistress who bore him two sons.

[7] Like their cousin Maurice.

[8] Lorna’s father also had an extensive military career across three wars: Boer; World War I; and World War II.

[9] This is possibly a talent inherited from her great uncle. Her grandfather Gabriel Lloyd’s brother John Henry Lloyd was an artist. Some of his work is held by the Victoria and Albert Museum.

[10] Her interest in the French language was perhaps prompted during a trip to the World War I battlefields of France when she was six.

[11] The descendants of Lorna’s grandparents Gabriel and Emily Lloyd continue to hold reunions each January in Looe. The last occasion was in 2020. Normally the reunion would have taken place this past weekend. Instead they met on Zoom.

[12] The Steel Supply Company.