Celia Compton was born in Mile End in April 1886 to Charles, a wood chopper, and Mary Compton. Celia was one of nine children; only six survived into adulthood. On 25 January 1904, she married George Hayday, who was 10 years her senior. They had no children. She remarried after his death in 1933, became a money lender and died in 1966, aged 80

Photograph: Horace Warner/Spitalfields Life