FISON, Ethel Mary
As Ethel Mary Prentice she was born at Ipswich Road, Stowmarket, Suffolk on 25 January 1870, daughter of Edward Henry Prentice (1838-11 August 1871), a chemical manufacturer, and his wife Sarah Pitcairn Webb (1837-6 May 1927), eldest daughter of Lankester Webb of Combs, who married at Combs, Stowmarket on 14 May 1861. In 1871, Ethel was a 1-year-old, living at Stowmarket with her parents, 32-year-old Edward and 33-year-old Sarah and two sibling sisters, Gertrude Minnie, born 1868 and Constance Isabel born 1871 but her father was killed with twenty-one others later that year in an explosion at the family's Stowmarket Gun Cotton Factory on 11 August 1871. Ethel married at Stowmarket on 11 April 1903, Frederick Flint Fison (1876-14 January 1919), M.A., of Castle House, Hereford. In 1911, Ethel was a 41-year-old, living at Shelbrook Boarding House, Cliff Terrace, Snettisham, Norfolk with her 35-year-old husband Frederick, a schoolmaster, and their two children, 5-year-old Joseph Edward and 2-year-old Kathleen Mary. Her husband, who was born at Combs and was of Hunstanton, Norfolk when he died at the Towers Hotel, Clevedon, Somerset in 1919, when Ethel returned to Suffolk. A member of Ipswich Art Society 1930-1934 and, as Mrs Fison, exhibited from Homefield, Croutel Road, Felixstowe, Suffolk in 1931, two watercolours 'Les Marecoltes' and 'Finhaut', she may have exhibited others but have been conflated with her daughter. In 1939, a widow living on private means, at 111 Woodstock Road, Oxford with other members of the Fison and Prentice families. Ethel Mary Fison died at 327 Woodstock Road, Oxford on 1 November 1958, aged 88, leaving an estate of £35,000.