The Family Return to Kilmacolm, Renfrewshire, Scotland

Sadly, Nancie's Father, William Thomson, died at Rosebank,  Kilmacolm, in January 1917, aged 47, leaving his widow, Mary, with three little ones under the age of five. She never remarried and always said that the five years she was married were the happiest years of her life. However, from then on, life was a great financial struggle.There was no income support in those days, no pension and only other members of the extended family to help.
Much of Nancie and Nell's childhood was spent being 'farmed out' to relatives. At least then Mary didn't have to worry about feeding them! Clothes were mostly 'hand me downs' from older cousins. Mary took in a lodger who paid enough to cover her own rent. By this time she was living in the bottom half of Rosemount, opposite The Auld Kirk,on the Port Glasgow Road.She lived here until her death in 1958. At one point, in the 1920s,  she even moved out and rented the house to someone while she ran a hairdressing business with one of her sisters at Ashton House, Gourock.
Several of Mary's sisters did not marry. I think there was a dearth of marriageable young men after the ravages of the First World War.No doubt the post-war influenza epidemic only made the situation worse.