Elsie Cruden, lived at Russell Street Cambridge
Notes on Elsie by her neice Elizabeth Brown (nee Toller) - my mother :)
Auntie Elsie
Elsie Elizabeth Ely (formerly Calino, nee Cruden)
Born: 1st July 1903 in London.
She was gran's (Ada Broom [formerly Cruden, nee Hatchman]) second child with her first husband, George Henry Penny Cruden. Gran was 30 when she was born. Uncle George (Cruden - Elsie's brother) was 3. Uncle Arthur (Cruden - Elsie's brother) was born when Aunty Elsie was 1 3/4 years and their father died soon after this, so Gran came back to Cambridge with her three young children. Gran married my grandad when Aunty Elsie was 7 3/4 and they were living in Newnham. They soon moved to 76, Russel Street, Cambridge and gran had three more children (here, and the first in Newnham). Aunty Elsie had dancing lessons and was trained for the stage so, after a brief time as a young nanny, she left for America with her new husband Processo Calino, a Philipino man. The family all loved Cesso.
Cesso and Elsie parted; both remarried and he lived in a bungalow in Kenny (Elise's second husband) and Elsie's grounds for years. Uncle Kenny wrote to me after Elsie passed on in 1993 I think he wrote, then he became very ill. He said she never aged and the vast age difference never mattered to him: 30 years.
When Auntie Elsie left the theatre, she rescued dogs, at one time in the early 1960's, having many German Shepherds. They shared the couple's 'sunken bed'! She rescued one little dog called 'Nellie', who had been tied to a tree. The owner didn't stop her from taking Nellie, who had bitten Aunty Elsie in an effort to attract her attention she believed. The collar was cutting into Nellie's neck. Aunty Elsie and Uncle Kenny loved dogs so. He wouldn't leave his dog after she passed on and so he did not come to Cambridge again.
Aunty Elsie did not 'come home' until 1957 when she was 53 3/4. he came again in 1961 and 1970 then brought Kenny with her in 1979; the last time we saw her before she passed on in 198?
Aunty Elsie and Kenny married in America, in a church with two tramps as witnesses!
Recently discovered that Elsie had worked for Mr Porter of Little St Mary Lane at the Half Moon as a cook/domestic, after her marriage to Cesso in 1923 (aged 19) but before America.