Lily Emmeline Mutters was born on 13th December 1890 in Cullompton, Devon, to George Mutters (24 or 25), a mason and bricklayer, and Emma Mutters (nee Brealey) (35), a dressmaker.
Though the couple's third child, their first two children had passed away as babies, about a year before Lily was born, leaving Lily as their eldest surviving child.
Lily was the third of seven children (4 daughters and 3 sons):
- Charlotte Irene 1888 - 1890 (1 year)
- Henry George 1889 - 1889 (0 - 3 months)
- Lily Emmeline 1890 - 1970 (79 years)
- Charles 'Charlie' George 1892 - 1970 (77/78 years)
- Violet Grace 1894 - 1953 (58 years)
- Anna/Anne 1896 - 1896 (0 - 3 months)
- William 'Willie' George 1898 - 1910 (11 years)
For some time, when Lily was but a baby, her father was ill. The 1891 Census shows him as a patient at Devon and Exeter Hospital, whilst Lily and her mother Emma stayed in Cullompton:
Though born and living in Cullompton for a time, around 1892, when Lily was about one year old, she and her parents moved about sixteen miles south west to her father's native Woodbury. There, Lily was soon joined by more surviving siblings.
On 26th May 1894, a three-and-a-half-year-old Lily began attending Woodbury Church of England Primary School. Her younger siblings, Charlie, Violet and Willie, would also go on to attend the school.
In Apr/May/Jun 1896, when Lily was five, her youngest sister Anna/Anne passed away, aged only zero to three months, in Woodbury.
1901 Census:
In July 1905, at the third annual Arts and Crafts Exhibition (in connection with the Exeter branch of the University Extension Guild), fourteen-year-old Lily exhibited her Honiton lace. Lace-making had been a common occupation for women in east Devon for centuries, and Lily and her school-friends' work was encouraged and celebrated as a successful revival of the craft.
On 12th March 1910, when Lily was nineteen, her youngest brother Willie passed away, aged only eleven, in Woodbury.
In her teens or early twenties, Lily moved from her native Devon all the way east to London. There she can be found on the 1911 Census, aged twenty, working as a domestic servant (and sole live-in servant) for the Aria family. The Aria family was headed by New-York-born widow Marie Aria, who lived at 47 Chatsworth Road in Brondesbury, in North-West London, with five of her adult children - the majority of whom worked as cherks.
1911 Census:
On 20th April 1918, when Lily was twenty-seven, her father George passed away, aged fifty-two. Though he passed away in Wales, he was buried in his native Woodbury. Six years later, on 9th May 1924, when Lily was thirty-three, her mother Emma passed away, aged sixty-nine, in Woodbury. She was buried alongside her husband.
At some point, Lily returned to Devon, for in Apr/May/Jun 1924, Lily (33), a domestic servant, married William James Barner (33), a postman, watchman and caretaker, in the district of St Thomas, Exeter. At the time of their marriage, Lily was between five and seven months pregnant, for the couple's first child Reginald was born in the August of that same year.
Lily and William would have four children (2 sons and 2 daughters):
- Reginald W 1924 -
- Joyce V 1927 -
- John/Joseph C 1928 -
- Betty H 1932 -
The birth records of their middle children imply Lily and her family moved to the district of Crediton in the late 1920s - electoral registers from this time show they were in fact living in Shute - ; the electoral register of 1931, shows they had moved to 1 Council Houses in Cadbury; and by the birth of their youngest child Betty in 1932, they where living in the district of Tiverton.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, the Barner family were living at 15 Parr Street in Exeter. According to the 1939 Census, William was unemployed at the time, and Lily carried out unpaid domestic duties, leaving the breadwinner, their fifteen year old son Reginald, who worked as a shop porter.
I know little of Lily's later life but its end. In Jan/Feb/Mar 1970, she passed away, aged seventy-nine, in Exeter.
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