Ethel celebrates her 100th birthday with card from the Queen
Published: 13 October 2011
by PAVAN AMARA
A RETIRED cleaner celebrated her 100th birthday at a Gospel Oak care home on Tuesday as friends joked that the Queen should have popped a tenner in a card sent by the Palace.
Ethel Beech (pictured) nodded in agreement as friends at Wellesley Road Care Home quipped: “We could have done with a few bob in that card.”
During Second World War Ethel and her family escaped a bombing raid in 1941. Her son Ronald, 74, who was at the party alongside his sister Barbara, 72, said: “They just about got the door to the bomb shelter shut in time.
If they hadn’t, then maybe we wouldn’t all be here today.
My grandad shut the door behind him, and the bomb dropped a second after.”
Ethel worked as a cleaner at the BBC studios in Mornington Crescent, where she often watched rehearsals for The Goon Show.
Friends came from Spain, Kettering in Northamptonshire, and around Camden to celebrate her birthday.