SHORTHAND TYPISTS
Lynda and Elsie were two of the seven children born to Melynda and Charles King, a gas stoker. The family were living in Rye. By 1921, Lynda now 24 and Elsie, 22, were getting the train from Rye to the railway works in Ashford where they were both shorthand typists for South Eastern & Chatham Railway.
In 1926 Lynda married Peter Caven, an SE&CR railway shipping clerk, and in 1929 Elsie married Ashford Works railway clerk Horace Winder. Horace was relocated during WWII to the emergency Southern Railway HQ in a former hotel in Deepdene in Dorking. The building housed an all-male crew of clerks, messengers, surveyors, police officers and its own chef, kitchen porters and waiting staff.
Lynda moved to Dover with Peter and their two children during the war. She lived to the age of 64. Elsie was living in Dorking when she died in 1982, aged 83.
Notes/links:
https://www.subbrit.org.uk/sites/deepdene-ww2-southern-railway-traffic-control-centre/
Research and design by:
Danny Coope / Street of Blue Plaques
http://streetofblueplaques.co.uk/
