Grace (1871-1937)

Grace Meadows was born in Leytonstone in 1871, the youngest child of Edwin Lewis Meadows. She grew up in Woodford and moved with the family to Frindsbury, near Rochester, where in the 1891 census she gave her occupation as “artist painter student”. She trained at the art school of the Rochester Municipal Technical Institute, where in 1894 she gained first-class passes in freehand drawing, drawing in light and shade, and model drawing; in 1897 her sheets of foliage and design were sent up for examination, and in 1898 her work was accepted towards the Art Masters’ certificate (Chatham, Rochester and Brompton Observer, 11 August 1894, 14 August 1897 and 20 August 1898).

She later lived at Westerham with her mother and her brother Fred. In the 1921 census she was an advertisement representative for the Daily Telegraph, and in 1930 she was advertising in the Westerham Herald as “Miss Meadows, Spirella Corsetière, London Road (opposite Post Office), Westerham. ’Phone 29”, the same number as Fred’s car hire. Local reports of the 1910s to 1930s mention “Mrs. and Miss Meadows” among the wedding guests and mourners of Westerham.

By 1933 she was living with Fred at The Organ Inn, Ewell (Westerham Herald, 25 November 1933). She died at the Victoria Hospital, Deal, on 11 February 1937. Probate was granted in London on 25 March 1937 to Edith Kimber. More about the family is on Edwin Lewis’s page.

The Sevenoaks Chronicle of 19 February 1937 (p. 5) reported the death “on Thursday week” of Miss Grace Meadows, formerly of Westerham, sister of F. J. Meadows, “former licensee of the George and Dragon”, which agrees with the date of 11 February 1937.