TA'BOIS, Jessie Flora
As Jessie Flora Charles, she was born at Shoreditch, London on 28 July 1868, daughter of John Charles, a master watchmaker, and his wife Mary Ann née Ridewood (1842-1892), who married at Chelsea in 1866. In 1871, Jessie was a 1-year-old, living at 2 Grove Place, St Pancras, London with her parents, 26-year-old Charles and 28-year-old Mary Ann, with sibling, 3-year-old Jane. Jessie married at Edmonton, London in 1892, Percy Ta'Bois (1868-8 June 1937), a chartered accountant, and in 1901 a visitor at 109 Truro Road, Wood Green, Edmonton being described as a 31-year-old married woman with a 2-year-old son, Percival Ta'Bois, born at Fairlight, Athenaeum Road, Oakleigh Park on 19 March 1899. In 1911, Jessie was a 42-year-old, living at White House, Harrow Lane, Maidenhead, Berkshire with her 43-year-old husband and her only surviving child of three, 11-year-old Percival Leo, who married in 1930 Zweena Frances De Verdon. As a 50-year-old artist, she emigrated from Plymouth, Devon on the 'Noordam' on 29 November 1919 for New York, she seems to have been on her own account. On her return to the UK, she went to live at Southwold, Suffolk taking a studio on Ferry Road from where she instructed Ida Mabel Blair (1882-1953), the mother of author George Orwell (1903-1950). In 1939, a widow and an artist, living at 19 York Road, Southwold. Jessie Flora Ta'Bois died at 2 Cottage, The Rest, Raydon, Southwold on 27 February 1950, aged 81. She painted a portrait of Dorothy Elsa Forbes Hope, a mayor of Southwold, which is in the Southwold Council collection.