Edna Beattie Rogers was born on 12 December 1909 in Liverpool, England, the youngest of three siblings. She completed her School Certificate at 18 in 1927 and remained at Aigburth in Lower Sixth Form in 1928 beginning her A Levels.
Edna Beattie Rogers was born on 12 December 1909 in Liverpool, England, the youngest of three siblings. She completed her School Certificate at 18 in 1927 and remained at Aigburth in Lower Sixth Form in 1928 beginning her A Levels.
In January 1929, following her 19th birthday, Edna joined Alfred Holt and Company, owners of The Blue Funnel Line as a clerk in the Freight Department. In 1931 she became an order clerk in the stewards department, where she remained for 12 years. Her main task was analysing food and liquor consumption per head for passengers and crew of ships returning to Liverpool from voyages abroad.
It was here that Edna met David Rothera, a recruit in the mail department and it was love at first sight for both of them. David’s mother sent him to work for Holts in Liverpool where she had been governess to the Holt family. However, during the depression in 1933 he was retrenched and returned to England. Edna urged David to apply to British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) for a job which was successful and he was sent to various stations in the Middle East and India during the next five years.
In 1943 Edna and David at last resolved to get married. David obtained a transfer to Uganda, which was possible for Edna to reach in wartime. When a former colleague heard about Edna’s desire to go to Durban, he authorised a free passage for her on the SS Nestor bound for Australia. Two battleships accompanied the Nestor as far as Freetown, Sierra Leone.
After ten days there she sailed southwards, hugging the African coastline to avoid German submarines. As Edna had caught malaria in Sierra Leone, BOAC personnel put her up at the Mayfair Hotel in Smith Street for a week while their doctor prescribed quinine. Edna ascribes this medication as one of the causes of her deafness in later life. On the third morning, 19 July 1943, Edna and David were married in the District Commissioner’s Registry Office with BOAC’s office staff as witnesses. The happy couple moved into a flat to commence a married life that was to last 57 years.
Their son, Frank, was born on 25 September 1944 in Kampala. At the end of 1946, they were transferred to BOAC, Hong Kong for eight months until August 1947. During a visit on leave to Edna’s brother, their daughter Alison, was born in Brighton on 4 January 1948. David got a job as an accountant for a garage workshop in the Colcade in Hill Street and Edna got a job as secretary to the Rhodes Librarian, Gerald Quinn.
Edna retired from Rhodes in 1977 at 68 and worked for various shops in High Street including Fabric House where she worked for about two years. Edna and David then sold their house in Hillsview Road and bought one in River Road, Kenton where they lived for some years. David died on 22 June 2000 aged 88. Edna then moved to Brookshaw where she has lived ever since. She traveled to England in 2001 to visit her son, Frank, who lives in Kent and to Nottingham and Liverpool to visit other relatives.
Edna is a British citizen who has lived through five reigns – Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII, George VI and Elizabeth II. She was five years old when the First World War broke out and 30 years old when the Second World War broke out.
