LEE, Emma Jane

1853 - c.1920

 Llanelli School of Art

As Emma Jane Andrews, she was born at Bury St Edmund's, Suffolk on 27 November 1853, eldest daughter of Alfred Andrews (1833-1906), builder & carpenter, and his wife Emma Jane Barker née Roach (1826-1881), who married at Bury St Edmund's in 1853. Emma married at St James's Church, Bury St Edmund's on 11 March 1880, Mayday Lee (born 1856), a chief mate on passenger steamers of the Great Eastern Railway, and in 1881 they were living with her parents, 47 year old Alfred, now licensee of the One Bell Hotel, and 54 year old Emma, at 48 St John's Street, Bury St Edmund's, Emma a 27 year old artist with her 24 year old husband Mayday Lee, a chief mate, with Emma's siblings including Mary Jane Andrews. As Mrs Lee she exhibited at the Bury St Edmund's Fine Art Society in 1881, several pictures including a self-portrait and her oil 'Gorleston Pier' was highly commended and as Mrs Mayday Lee in August 1886 exhibited 'Alpine Scene', 'On the Lea at Tottenham', 'A Farm in Devonshire', 'Broadwater Farm' and 'An Old House in Bedfordshire'. In 1887 Emma gave a piano recital with the Tottenham Philharmonic Orchestra at Edmonton, London and in 1891, Emma was a 37-year-old teacher of painting, living at 3 Greenfield Terrace, Llanelly, Carmarthenshire with her three children, Mabel Ellen 10 and Bessie Ada Louise 9, both born at Bury St Edmund's and Mary Agnes Lillian 1, who died at 3 Greenfield Terrace, Llanelli on 14 August 1891 aged 10 months. In 1894 Mayday Lee, then a ship's captain, was still living in Llanelli. In 1901, Emma and her sister Mabel, sailed from Plymouth on the 'Ormuz' for Gibraltar, where Emma's husband took a position as nautical surveyor shipmaster pilot, with the Gibraltar Port Authority and in 1911 they were living at 24 Morello's Ramp, Gibraltar where their 30 year old daughter Mabel Ellen was a teacher of English. Their daughter, Bessie Ada Louise, married Ernest J Dempster, consular agent, who lived in Tangier. Mayday Lee, master mariner, nautical surveyor, and a widower, was still living in Gibraltar in 1921 with his daughter Mabel Ellen, a teacher, and probably died in Gibraltar.

Llanelli Art School