Woman in green

So....meet my granny. My mother's mother. Nellie went up to the great kitchen in the sky when I was just a wee laddie. I remember my mother being upset when she died, but that's about it as far as personal recollections go.
Nellie came from Huddersfield, and met my granddad Arthur in the Standard Fireworks factory there, some time in the early 30s. Her father, Lawrence, was an Irish stonemason, who liked gambling, the drink, and (unfortunately) knocking his Mrs (my great grandmother) around a bit. (I don't think the second and third items on that list were entirely unconnected). But she was a tough old bird and outlived him. Unfortunately she lost her hearing (supposedly because of the domestic violence) and also went blind (cataracts - which couldn't be treated back then). So there she was - a blind and deaf widow with a house full of fatherless children, taking in a bit of washing to earn money and keeping the bairns in check by being rather fierce with them. As my Mum said to me once: "imagine having a mother who couldn't see or hear you..." It can't have been easy.
But my great granny was still (or so family legend has it) considered a catch and used to have men coming to court her, communicating with tactile sign language, in which words are spelt on the person's hand. Later, Arthur won over his mother-in-law by sitting by the fire with her one evening and spelling out an entire newspaper article on the abdication of Edward VIII. Or so family legend has it anyhow!
Nellie's brother Reg was a veteran of World War One. He was taken prisoner and returned some time later to find that his family had been evacuated from their home. Of course he had no idea where they were for a time. He was supposedly embittered by his experiences in the war and went on to become....err...an alcoholic landlord.
I must try and dig out another photo of Nellie which lingers in my mind. It shows her as a young woman in the 1920s when she was worked "in service" as a household cook and she is wearing a then-all-the-rage cloche hat... I don't think she ever lost her taste for swish millinery...