Constance Agnes JENKINS (née HODSON) (1881-1963)

Constance Agnes Jenkins, née Hodson (1881-1963), known as Connie, was the step-daughter of Annie Hodson (née Mourilyan) who was the niece of Eugénie Sladden.

Connie was born on 17^th June 1881 at Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire, the eldest of five children of Ernest Rust Hodson by his first wife, Margaret Maria Kendall.  Connie spent the first six years of her life in Hertfordshire but then, in 1887, moved with her family to Belgium when her father took over the headship of St Bernard’s School, Brussels.  Her mother died in June 1893 and her father married again in 1898 to Annie de Salis Mourilyan who was only 11 years older than Connie.

In 1903 Connie began training as a nurse in Isleworth, London.  She married John Card Jenkins, known as Jack, in December 1913 in Leicester.  Connie had first met Jack in Belgium as Jack’s family had been in Brussels since the 1820s as Anglican chaplains.  His father had built the Church of the Resurrection in Brussels (this was where Connie’s father and his friend, Fred Mourilyan, sang in the choir).  Jack founded St Bernard’s School, New York, in 1904, which was shortly after St Bernard’s School in Brussels closed.

There is a reference to Connie in Fred Mourilyan’s letter of 27^th June saying that she had sent a letter to her father through the American Embassy about the news Fred had found out about her step-brother, Charlie.  Connie is mentioned several times in the diaries of her step-sister, Amy Hodson.  These diaries have been edited by Amy’s great-niece, Monica Kendall, and published by SilverWood Books in 2015:  “Miss Cavell was Shot, The Diaries of Amy Hodson 1914-1920”.

Connie and Jack had three children.  Jack retired in 1949 after 45 years as headmaster and died in England in 1958.  Connie died in 1963.