Elizabeth Garrett Anderson - Early Life

Early Life

Elizabeth Garrett was born on 9 June 1836 in London, the second of eleven children of Newson Garrett (1812–1893), from Leiston, Suffolk, and his wife, Louisa née Dunnell (1813–1903), from London.

The Garrett ancestors had been ironworkers in East Suffolk since the early seventeenth century. Newson was the youngest of three sons and not academically inclined, although he possessed the family’s entrepreneurial spirit. When he finished school, the town of Leiston offered little to Newson, so he left for London to make his fortune. There, he fell in love with his brother’s sister-in-law, Louisa Dunnell, the daughter of an innkeeper of Suffolk origin. After their wedding, the couple went to live in a pawnbroker’s shop at 1 Commercial Road, Whitechapel. The Garretts had their first three children in quick succession: Louie, Elizabeth and their brother, Newson Dunnell, who died at the age of six months. While Louisa grieved the loss of her third child, it was not easy to raise their two daughters in the London of that time. When Elizabeth was 3 years old, the family moved to 142 Long Acre, where they were to live for 2 years, whilst two more children were born and her father moved up in the world, becoming not only the manager of a larger pawnbroker’s shop, but also a silversmith. Elizabeth’s grandfather, owner of the family engineering works, Richard Garrett & Sons, had died in 1837, leaving the business to his eldest son, Elizabeth’s uncle. Despite his lack of capital, Newson was determined to be successful and in 1841, at the age of 29, he moved his family and devoted wife again, this time back to Suffolk, where he bought a barley and coal merchants business in Snape, constructing a fine range of buildings for malting barley.

The Garretts lived in a square Georgian house opposite the church in Aldeburgh until 1852. Meanwhile, Newson’s malting business expanded and five more children were born, Alice (1842), Millicent (1847), who was to become a leader in the constitutional campaign for women's suffrage, Sam (1850), Josephine (1853) and George (1854). By 1850, Newson was a prosperous businessman and was able to build Alde House, a mansion on a hill behind Aldeburgh. A “by-product of the industrial revolution”, Elizabeth grew up in an atmosphere of “triumphant economic pioneering” and the Garrett children were to grow up to become achievers in the professional classes of late-Victorian England. Elizabeth was encouraged to take an interest in local politics and, contrary to practices at the time, was allowed the freedom to explore the town with its nearby salt-marshes, beach and the small port of Slaughden with its boatbuilders' yards and sailmakers' lofts. Thus, Elizabeth was as at ease among the upper classes as she was among the fishing folk of the area also enjoyed good health, which she maintained throughout her life.