ELDRIDGE, Elsie Gertrude
As Elsie Gertrude Curtis, she was born at Fulham, London on 29 January 1884, daughter of John Alfred Curtis (1849-31 May 1928), a clerk in the meteorological office, and his wife Anna Maria née Clements (1851-1930), who married at Kensington, London in 1875. In 1891, Elsie was a 7-year-old living at Barclay Road, Fulham, London with her parents 42-year-old John and 40-year-old Annie, with siblings Mary 14, Mabel 10, Katie Elizabeth 9, Edith Rebecca 5 and newly born Dorothy Jessie, all born in London. Elsie married at Fulham in 1907, Frederick John Pay Eldridge (26 January 1880-February 1951), and in 1911, a 27-year-old, living at Tatchmoor, Mill Lane, Kettering, Northamptonshire with her 30-year-old husband, a teacher of science & mathematics, who was born at Westminster and their 1-year-old son, Bernard John. By 1918 they had moved to the Grammar School House at Eye, Suffolk. Elsie was a painter in oil and watercolour, and a member of the Ipswich Fine Art Club 1923-1948, she exhibited a total of twenty-eight paintings during that time, mostly landscapes, still life and animal studies. In 1923, she exhibited two oils ‘Roses’ and ‘Feeding Time’ and four others 'Queensmere, Wimbledon', 'Muriel', 'Bluebells at Kew' and 'Study of a Head', in 1927 from Beech Place, Stowmarket, Suffolk, an oil 'Still Life' and four others items a 'Bust from Life-Tuleo', a leatherwork blotter and two leatherwork purses. In 1933 she exhibited from 'Rockford', Finborough Road, Stowmarket, four works 'Lions at the Zoo', 'Chas Bowden, Esq.', 'West Door at Eye' and a book plate, and in 1937, two oil paintings ‘Eye Church Tower’ and ‘Dutch Barge, Rotterdam’. By 1939, she was living at 52 Hestercombe Avenue, Fulham, London and as Mrs F. J. Eldridge exhibited at Ipswich Art Club in 1943, 'Still Life', in 1944 as Mrs Elsie G. Eldridge 'The Backway, Hadleigh'. Their third son, 22-year-old 2nd Lieut. David Eldridge, 5th Battalion, Suffolk Regiment, was killed on a training exercise in Norfolk on 21 May 1940. Elsie Gertrude Eldridge died at 68 Finborough Road, Stowmarket on 31 March 1949, aged 65.