My maternal grandmother, Antonetta Elizabeth Cosslett, would have turned 100 on the 13th of December 2017. And it is this hypothetical centenary that has motivated me to record what I know about her. I am the third youngest of a very large brood of cousins on my mother’s side of the family, and only really came to know her in her last decade or two, so perhaps there is a sense of disconnection with history that I am trying to mend too. And then, despite the fact that I spent most Christmas and Easter lunches in her company, she was the least coherent and articulate family elder, particularly when it came to her past. Her spoonerisms – “miracle aid” instead of medical aid – were the subject of family jokes, and her descriptions of where she had grown up left me with more questions than answers.
So let me start with what I knew before I started digging:
She was born on the 13th of December 1917.
She had married my grandfather, who came from the Cape, in the 1930s.
They had lived in working class neighbourhoods – first at Wilhelmina Street, Troyeville, then at Highgate Street in Jeppestown, before moving to the slighter better Park Street, in Belgravia.
They had 10 children, one of whom did not make it to term, and another, Patricia, who died as an infant.
They were desperately poor, and despite having to fit 10 people into a three-bedroom semi-detached house in Jeppestown, took in...
