Emily Galbraith

Centenarian survivor with a passion for fast cars and flying

Emily Miller, teacher: born Fenton, Staffordshire 6 July 1895; married 1930 Dugald Galbraith (died 1942); died Penicuik, Midlothian 27 July 2003.

The life of Emily Galbraith spanned three centuries, and brought her into personal contact with Herbert Asquith, David Lloyd George and the explorer Ernest Shackleton.

As a child she saw a rather frail Queen Victoria and could recall the coronation of Edward VII. Aged 15, in January 1911 during her lunch break from school, she witnessed the dramatic Sidney Street siege in the East End of London. She recalled Winston Churchill, then Home Secretary, in a top hat, with policemen and soldiers firing at the building, in which were anarchists who had killed three policemen. She became even more excited when a troop of mounted Royal Horse Artillery arrived and the house was set ablaze.

She was born Emily Miller in 1895, the eldest child of a Methodist minister. She sat on her uncle's shoulders to see Queen Victoria pass by in her coach. She expected to see a golden coach and queen in glittering robes and a crown, and quickly scrambled down when she saw an old lady dressed in black in a black carriage. She could recall vividly the excitement she felt in the crowd after the Relief of Mafeking and thoroughly enjoyed the Coronation of Edward VII in 1902, where she remembered waving a flag and singing patriotic songs.

From 1901, she attended the fee-paying Raines Foundation School in London. Here she sat next door to a German girl who constantly warned her that the German king would come and capture the city. Emily responded by poking her with a ruler. On the train home from Fenchurch Street to Hornchurch in Essex, every time it passed over a signal and gave a bang, the boys in the carriage would all shout out: "The Germans are here!"

Her childhood was marred by the death of her baby brother in a household fire and in her twenties came the death of another much-loved brother, Peter, on the Somme in 1916. She recalled in a recent interview:

Peter and I were great pals. He wanted to be a missionary as my whole family were conscientious objectors. Shortly after the war broke out we were talking about whether it would be right or wrong to join up, to go and kill people and we all said it was wrong. But suddenly Peter said: "What if the Germans were to come into this room and attack you. I wouldn't sit here and let them do it. I can't be a conscientious objector: I'm here as a defender and I have a right to defend you."

During the First World War Emily Miller toured Scotland with her minister father where, she recalled, everyone was knitting for the war effort. In one village, on the shores of Loch Fyne, they even appealed to her father to see if it was wrong to knit socks on a Sunday.

Emily Miller entered a teacher training college in Derby; with her usual unbounded spirit she wrote to Lord Kitchener offering her services and those of the rest of the college girls for the Home Guard and asking if they could be taught to fire a rifle. Kitchener wrote to say that he didn't approve of women fighting, but thanked her very much.

Her brother Peter's death haunted her; the family had no idea where he had been killed, as his body was never found. His name was inscribed on the war memorial at Hornchurch. Later Emily Miller found out that, every year until the mid-Thirties, a young man came on the anniversary of her brother's death to lay flowers on the memorial. One day she spoke to him. He told her that her brother and three others had come under machine-gun fire and had taken cover. Then her brother heard his name being screamed out by someone calling for help from a nearby shell-hole. Peter had clambered out to help but was killed by a sniper. The screaming man, who at the time had panicked, was the one laying flowers every year.

Her brother Horace, although badly gassed, returned from the war. However, Emily's first love, a young soldier from the Isle of Lewis, whom she had hoped to marry, was killed when the train in which he was travelling was blown up in France.

In spite of these traumatic events Emily Miller continued to enjoy teaching. She soon learnt to drive and fell in love with the motor car; and seemed never happier than when doing over 100mph. She learnt to fly, too, and gained her licence after several hours in a Gypsy Moth. Much to her regret she was not called on to fly transport aircraft in the Second World War.

In 1930 she married a Scottish sea captain, Dugald Galbraith, who settled with her in Scotland where she taught and, on the death of her husband in 1942, continued to care for his parents. After the death of her own parents she moved to Penicuik, where she taught until she finally retired at the age of 75. In her retirement she travelled widely, in particular to Canada, where her brother was a minister of the church.

Emily Galbraith recently appeared in two documentaries made by Testimony Films, Married Love (2002) and A Pocketful of Posies (2000), in which she gave her thoughts on fast cars, flying, love and marriage. Her words are recorded in the book All Quiet on the Home Front, published earlier this year, in which she is pictured at 107, holding a framed photograph of her brother Peter in uniform on his last visit before returning to France.

Max Arthur