Clarissa Maud Whall Fitt was the eldest daughter of George and Eliza of Norwich. There were three girls and an older boy – I don’t know much about the family, but they were quite well off and lived in a nice house in Thorpe, Norwich, with a kitchen garden on the other side of the road, I think. Miss Fitt pointed it out to us once when we were driving through Norwich, but I was a child and I’m sorry to say that all I remember was that it was painted white. George, I’ve just discovered from t’internets, was an auctioneer and I’m surprised that Clarissa never mentioned that, when I married Russell.

I was wrong when i said that she was exactly 102 and a half when she died. I got the year right but her birthday was 12th June 1882, not the 26th and she died on 25th November 1984. I realised I’d made a mistake because I knew she’d died in the autumn, not on Boxing Day, but now I’ve found her birth certificate. Her sisters were Alice and Dora, which I know because the photograph album was a gift from them to Clarissa on her 21st birthday and her brother was called George after his father. I’m looking them up now, just for interest.

Clarissa’s mother died in 1911, but I think she’d been in poor health for some time, as Clarissa was relied upon to look after the family. She had a sweetheart, David, but she felt obliged to turn him away as her duty was at home, even after her mother died. Poor Clarissa. She was already in her late 20s, so it was her last chance of marriage and a family. At some time, they moved to Lowestoft. The most dreadful thing happened to Clarissa. In 1926, her father had a stroke and was put to bed, but he was very agitated and kept asking for his spats, because he had to go to his office. He was unable to explain and he died there in his bed. George Junior was married by then and he and his wife threw Clarissa out. In her 40s, grieving for her father and the only life she’d known, she was ordered out of the house and had to sleep in the shed (I think it was actually the coal shed) until she could find a job and accommodation. In the office, it turned out, there was an unsigned will, where her father had made provision for her – knowing that (and probably knowing what his son and daughter-in-law were like) – he’d been desperate to sign it and he must have died in torments of guilt.

Clarissa got a job as a mother’s helper/nursemaid/nanny. She loved babies and children, so she was happy in her job. None of the four siblings had children – I don’t know if Dora married, but the other two did. When George Junior’s wife died, Clarissa looked after him for the rest of his life – she blamed the wife for her cruel treatment. In due course, George died and so did Alice’s husband, so the two sisters set up home together. They moved to 43, Waveney Crescent in 1954 and Clarissa lived there until she was 98.

My mother met them because she was involved with the local charity for blind people and Alice Dare was going blind by then. I remember them in the early 1960s. Alice was in her late 70s, but she seemed very old to me, being nearly blind, frail and almost bald. My mother, Jane, got involved when Alice became mentally ill, it seemed and was sent to a mental hospital in Ipswich. Jane drove Clarissa to visit Alice and they said she was raving and having hallucinations. My mother tracked down the problem. The poor woman said she could see birds – as her sight was so poor, they assumed she was ‘seeing things’ but she wasn’t. Her mania was caused by a combination of drugs that didn’t suit each other and, once in hospital, she wasn’t given them any more and she was absolutely sane again. Someone threw out food for the birds outside the window, which was what Alice saw. It was really awful, if Jane hadn’t fought her corner she’d never have got out.

So after that, we took them under our wings.