Thomas and Mary Ann
Thomas Griffin was born on 5 July 1873 in Leveelick, Kilmovee, Co. Mayo. He was the oldest child of Michael Griffin, a farmer, and his wife Mary Ann Caulfield. He grew up in Kilmovee with his eight younger brothers and sisters, but times were hard in Ireland, even a generation after the Great Famine of 1845-1850, and by 1891, Thomas had joined the many Irish still flooding into England, and found work on Chorlton Green Farm as a "milk lad". By the time of his marriage in 1898, he was the farm dairyman and milk dealer.
Mary Ann Gregory was born in Wolverhampton on 11 February 1876, and was the daughter of Samuel Gregory, a gas tube fitter, and his wife Mary Ann Goodwin. Both the Gregory and the Goodwin families were originally from Shropshire.
Thomas and Mary Ann had six children:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Alice Norah Griffin
Norman Henry Griffin
Lillian Griffin
John Griffin
Rose Angela Griffin
Edith Mae Griffin
(1899-1960)
(1903-1983)
(1906-1982)
(1908-1909)
(1910-2000)
(1917-1945)
After his marriage, Thomas worked for a local builder, contracting labour for drains and fences, among other things. He was a keen gardener, and outside his working hours was always smartly dressed, usually with a flower in his buttonhole.
Mary Ann was an army nurse during the First World War and after the war she set up her own midwifery practice in Old Trafford, Manchester. Although most women at this time gave birth in their own homes, the practice had a labour room and beds for three women, as well as rooms for pre- and post-natal clinincs. Mary Ann was a strong advocate of birth control and legal abortion, having witnessed all too often the disastrous consequences of the back street abortionists. Her daughters Norah and Rose worked with her, and she employed other women at times.
Thomas died in Stretford on 2 January 1937, and Mary Ann died in Hulme on 29 August 1952.
Second generation
Norman Henry Griffin
Norman Henry Griffin was born in Manchester in 1903. He had a horse-drawn vegetable round for some years, before going to work on the buses just before the Second World War. He married Alice Lodge in Manchester in 1925, and had nine children, all born in Manchester:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Vera Griffin
Joyce Mary Griffin
(possibly living)
(possibly living)
(possibly living)
(possibly living)
Frank Griffin
(possibly living)
(possibly living)
(possibly living)
(1926-1985)
(1927-1927)
(1938-1987)
m. John Kirwan, 1951
Norman died in Manchester in 1983 and Alice in 1999.
Rose Angela Griffin
Rose Angela Griffin ("Rosie") was born in Manchester on 3 June 1910. She was a nurse, and worked at Bootle, Liverpool General and Warrington Hospitals, becoming Theatre Sister and then Deputy Matron. She was on duty at St Mary's Hospital, Manchester on the night of 23 December 1940 during the air raid known as the Manchester Blitz, when the operating theatre and nurses' quarters were hit by bombs. As her mother's house had also been detroyed in the raid, she and most of the family went to live with her married sister Lillian.
Rosie married comparatively late in life to William Stokes, a purser on the Ellerman line. She died in Warrington in 2000.
Edith Mae Griffin
Edith Mae Griffin was born in Manchester on 13 May 1917, and married Francis Harold Clarke, a joiner, in Hulme in 1938. They had two children:
1.
2.
(possibly living)
William Samuel Clarke
(1940-2005)
Edith died of tuberculosis on 22 September 1945 aged just 28. Francis died in Manchester in 1977.