L is for Lisbeth
Final part of “Uncle Len, Wife-Killer”
Having exhausted all lines of enquiry that are open to me, all that is left is to tell Lisbeth’s story, of which we know very little, as she was killed. Practically the only information can be gleaned from the following sources:
a “female enemy alien – exemption from internment” card
marriage registrations
nursing register of 1946
a newspaper article, outlining a life “marked by tragedy”
a newspaper article, giving details of her will
From these we know that she was born Lisbeth Frank on March 20, 1922, in Vienna. According to the newspaper article, published on October 10th, 1960, Lisbeth was “taken out of the country just before Hitler took over and came to England when she was 16 to train as a nurse.”
The annexation of Austria took place on March 12, 1938. Lisbeth would have turned 16 eight days later. From the following day, until the end of the Second World War, Austria was united with Germany under the Chancellorship of Adolph Hitler. Hitler had propagated the idea of taking over Austria from the time of his take-over of power in Germany in 1933. The idea was well-supported within Austria itself because the country was struggling economically. Hitler’s concept was to pull together as many ethnic Germans living outside Germany (Volksdeutsche) into a “Greater Germany”. The annexation was unopposed by the Austrian Army and Hitler’s Wehrmacht was able to take over without any trouble. A referendum was held a month later which served to ratify the “reunification” of Austria with Germany.
Lisbeth’s mother, a concert pianist, and her father were “killed by the Germans”, according to the article. Now we know Anne Frank, one of the most famous Jews of this time, shared her surname with Lisbeth. That in itself does not mean her family was Jewish, but it could. Also the fact that her parents were murdered by the Nazis would suggest they were, and also that they had quickly sent their daughter away, probably to save her. On the other hand, not only Jews were murdered by the Nazis, but also political activists, communists and other ethnic groups and minorities that were seen to be undesirable to the “Master Race”. However, one other clue to Lisbeth’s potential Jewishness was her marriage to Major Reuben John William Stilwell during the war when she was 20, in Amersham, Buckinghamshire. The name Reuben is also a common Jewish name, but, once again, not exclusively so.
If we assume that Lisbeth came from a Jewish family, and we search the database of Austrian victims of the the Holocaust at doew.at which hs 78,000 entries, the name “Frank” turns up more than 300 people. Without the first names of the parents, this is not a great help. A search in the Austrian birth registrations in Family Search, also with the name Elisabeth turns up only the name “Frankfurter” and Ancestry also doesn’t throw up any useful result. Broadening the search to the Catholic Kirchenbücher or searching for Elisabeth or Elisabeta doesn’t help either. [Note to other genealogists: I’m open to other ideas].
As Lisbeth was working as a nurse during the war, it is quite possible that she met Stilwell while caring for him at a hospital after he was injured. But this is conjecture. In any case, according to her internment exemption card she was employed at Tudor House in Grayshott as a probationary nurse. Grayshott was an Army town, hosting barracks and training camps, and the Military Hospital in Tudor House. Stilwell was 13 years her senior.
Lisbeth had two children with her English Major: a girl and a boy (14 and 12 at the time of her death in 1960, so born about 1946 and 1948). Since it is possible these children are still living, I won’t divulge their names. Major Stilwell died at the age of only 46 in 1955 at the General Hospital in Northampton, leaving Lisbeth a widow at 33.
She finished her training as a nurse at the Royal College of Nurses in 1944, taking her final examination at the Luton and Dunstable Hospital. She took employment at Glacier Foods Ltd. as an industrial nurse. Since the children were still only small, one wonders how she managed while training and working, but she did.
In May 1958, she moved to Maidenhead from Northamptonshire and first stayed with friends before finding a flat in Ginger Hill. A year later she put a down-payment on the house in Fairacre. Why she chose to come to Maidenhead is unclear, perhaps a nursing job. But it is clear she did not meet Ashworth until 1960 when he answered her advertisement in the paper seeking a marriage partner. It is possible that she wanted a partner for a steady income, but she seemed to have her own means of supporting herself. Perhaps she was just lonely, or she wanted a father for her children. A single, foreign woman approaching forty with two (now teenage) children at the beginning of the sixties was probably frowned upon, and another soldier husband would afford her some protection from gossip. Again, this is conjecture.
Originally, on her internment exemption card she had answered the question about whether she wanted to be repatriated with “No”. It was quite likely she also had reservations about living in Germany, since her parents had died at the hands of the Germans. But her apparent willingness to move to Army married quarters in Germany with Ashworth was demonstrated by her giving instructions to the estate agent to let her house. On the other hand she left it furnished and didn’t want to sell the house, suggesting that she wanted to return. It was by no means a permanent move.
Lisbeth was killed by her spouse on October 15th 1960 and, after the inquest, which found she had been asphyxiated by manual strangulation, she was buried in Weedon, Northamptonshire on November 15th, 1960. In her will dated 28 Sep 1960, she left everything to her children. Her effects amounted to £4,890 gross, (£2,879 net value).
The story of how Uncle Len, or Samuel Leonard Thomas Ashworth, killed his third wife, Lisbeth only months after marrying her, and thereby splitting up his and her families, is a terrible tragedy. Until the court records are reopened in 2060, only conjecture can make a story out of the collection of facts gathered here. In hindsight, now in 2025, it may seem questionable that one might accept that the punishment for unlawful killing should be reduced because the perpetrator says his victim said dreadful things to him. On the other hand, the desperation of these two parents to make a new family after losing their loved ones, and to make a home together for the children, is palpable. Only one of them, however, had the chance to enjoy family life again. Len went on, after doing his time, to marry my Aunt Dinah and have another son, and to live out his days in peace.
Lisbeth did not. She died at 38. Who knows what her story might have been, had she been allowed to live.
Such a very sad story - I am glad you have managed to remember Lisbeth.