Happy 100, Ethel! (From Witney Gazette)

Happy 100, Ethel!

2:03pm Thursday 31st July 2008 in Witney By David Horne

A WOMAN who helped run a tripe shop in Lancashire was on Wednesday celebrating her 100th birthday in Witney.

Ethel Bradshaw and her late husband, Ernest, came to live near their son's family in West Oxfordshire 12 years ago.

Her centenary was marked with an afternoon tea party and sing-song with entertainers at Madley Park House residential home, Witney.

Her daughter-in-law, Sandy Bradshaw, the home administrator, said: "She is very happy here. For several years now, she has had to cope with very poor eyesight and almost total deafness, but, in true Lancashire style, she soldiers on."

She was born in 1908 to poor parents in Padiham, near Burnley, and at 13, started working in a local mill.

When she was 22, she married her husband, who was a 'tripe dresser' in his father's shop. They later took it over, and expanded and converted the business into the town's delicatessen.

In Padiham, Mrs Bradshaw was heavily involved with the Unitarian Chapel, where she and her husband put on plays and helped run the Sunday school.

They moved in 1996 to a bungalow in Milton-under-Wychwood, where their son James lived with his family. Mr Bradshaw died in 1998.

At a get-together for family and friends to mark her 100th anniversary, she was joined by her other son, Richard, and her four grandchildren, Christopher, Hollie, Amy, and Jack.