Press News
Family in mourning for Edith Jacques, 102
8:57am Friday 10th February 2012
AN “incredible” great-grandmother who devoted her remarkable life to her family has died at the age of 102.
Edith Jacques, who lived independently in her own home in Acomb until recent months, has been described as a role model to her family, despite having a tough start to life and suffering a string of tragedies.
Her family said Edith worked hard to look after her family and to be independent, even continuing numerous cleaning jobs until she was in her mid-80s.
Her son, Terry, said: “She was a remarkable lady who led a remarkable life and was an incredible role model for her sons and family.
“She was a very nice person. She never asked for anything and she was always looking after the interests of other people rather than what she wanted. She was fiercely independent and lived for the family and was active in the church.”
Born in Bilbrough, Mrs Jacques had a tough start to life when her father died when she was a child and at the age of 13 she had to leave school to look after her grandmother and her family.
She married Ernest Jacques on December 24, 1927, and they had three sons; Leslie, now 83, and twins Terry and Ernest, now 74. Sadly, on the night the twins were born, her husband cycled into York in a thunderstorm, consequently caught pneumonia and died weeks later.
Mrs Jacques worked hard to support her children but at the start of the Second World War, became seriously ill herself. Her doctor told her the only way she could properly look after her eldest son and ensure her twins were also fed and looked after was for the twins to go into a home.
Their abiding memory of the time was that, as their mother started working as a cleaner at Rowntree’s, she saved her workmates’ unused food coupons to buy chocolates for the twins.
The children stayed in the Dr Barnardo’s home until they were 12 and able to return to their mother, which, on her 100th birthday, she described as the best day of her life and revealed she still had the letter telling her the children could come home.
She worked at Rowntree’s for 31 years until she was obliged to retire at the age of 65 and took on five separate cleaning jobs, including cleaning at the vicarage for the Vicar at St Stephen’s Parish Church, Acomb and for a retired head teacher of Millthorpe Girls School and on behalf of a team of doctors at High Petergate.
She still rode a bicycle to and from work until she was 85. Mrs Jacques was also a member of the congregation and the Mothers Union at St Stephen’s Church in Acomb and attending services and community lunches at the Salvation Army in Gillygate.
Her funeral will be held at St Stephen’s in Acomb at 11.15am on Wednesday.