When Lizzie’s husband Edward died of his WW1 wounds, she found that she did not qualify as a war widow. Lizzie challenged each bureaucratic obstacle until the Minister for Pensions ruled in her favour, following which many other women in a similar position also received a widow’s pension. My grandmother kept a bundle of old correspondence in a dark blue stationery box. I first came across the letters in the late 1960s, when my father read them again and again, just after Lizzie had died. The letters tell a poignant and very personal story, about the impact of…
