Fanny Jefferson was born in London on 9th November 1882 to an English mother and a black father.
When Fanny was only four years old, her father, who worked for the Telephone Company in Cannon Street, died after a pole fell on his head.
Receiving only £1 a week for a month from the Telephone Company after her husband’s death, Fanny’s mother struggled to take care of her children.
Help was hard to come by for Fanny’s mother in Victorian London. People were not very sympathetic towards a woman who had been in an inter-racial relationship. After the death of Mr. Jefferson, Fanny’s mother had also given birth to children who were considered “illegitimate” by Victorian standards; isolating her even further from her community.
Desperate and without any money to support her children, Fanny’s mother reached out to Barnardo’s. She tried to place all of her children into Barnardo’s care, but only Fanny, who was deaf and described as fragile, was admitted to Barnardo’s in 1889.The charity felt that she was the most vulnerable child out of all the siblings.
Fanny’s mother eventually found work as a dressmaker, which allowed her to look after Fanny’s brother and sister, while two of Fanny’s half siblings were adopted by her aunt and uncle.
Fanny found employment in domestic service and left Barnardo’s care in 1900 at the age of 18. She never married and died in Thanet, Kent in 1974 aged 92.
