Individual's Report

Grace was born at 212 Stockwell Road on the 22nd July 1922, the second child of her parents marriage, and her birth was registered 1 month later on the 22nd August 1922 by her mother.

I don't know a lot of detail about her early life but I know that she worked in a wool shop and also in the ticket office of a dance hall in either Brixton or Stockwell, and it was whilst working in the ticket office that she first met Ernest Doust.

During the war she served in Devon with the ATS. She was a morse code operator and could still remember the code until the last years of her life.

She married Ernest Doust on 1st April 1945 at St. Stephens Church Vauxhall, and at that time was living at 364 Coldharbour Lane Brixton.

After the wedding they moved into 2 Davidson Gardens, Lambeth, the home of Ernest’s parents. In June of 1946 their first child was born. Having a baby, they managed to secure a flat on the ground floor of no. 47 Tradescant Rd, Lambeth, Which they moved into in 1947. During their time there they had their second child.

In 1953 the family moved two doors along, when they privately rented no 45 Tradescant Road, and a year later their third child was born. Their fourth child was born in no.45 in 1955.

The family moved again in 1964, when they moved to no.4 Davidson Gardens, Lambeth. Next door to Ernest’s parents.

For many years Grace worked in Pearces' newsagent on the South Lambeth road in London before finally moving to Sudbury in Suffolk in 1986.

Grace and Ernest enjoyed 20 years of retirement in Sudbury before Grace was widowed in 2005.

Grace lived out her final years in the house which was a stones throw from Ernest's grave, before she passed away in February 2009 and was laid to rest with her husband in Great Cornard cemetery.