A Wonderful Aunt

A Memory of Middleton.

My Aunt Emma was born Emma Blood, she had two sisters Ivy and Lily all born in Middleton by Wirksworth. Emma was born circa 1903. In the 1920s she was a domestic at what she called the 'big house at Ashbourne'. She started courting Thomas Gould, he was born Wirksworth and every night he would walk from Wirksworth to Ashbourne, leaving home as clean as a button but by the time he got back home he looked like a coalman - Emma would hide him in the coal shute. Emma would always say that she was related to a Captain Blood who had been a pirate, perhaps that's why she had a dark complexion and wore big gold hoop earings. These two wonderful people are responsible for who I am today. Emma died in the early 1980s and Tom in the 1970s. Does anyone know anything more of Emma Gould, nee Blood?

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