Edith (Edie) Caroline Arragon was born in Marylebone, London, on 24 January 1880. The youngest daughter of John Charles Arragon, a local house painter, and Jane (née Saunders). Edie was baptised at St John’s Wood, Our Lady, on 18 September 1881; however, shortly afterwards, her mother died. John remarried in 1883, and Edie and older sister Winifred were sent away to the Priory Boarding School at St. Marychurch in Torquay, Devon.

John died in 1890, and the girls eventually returned to London, where Edie entered service and worked for households in and around Kensington and Chelsea. During the 1930s, she was the housekeeper at 14 Oakley Street for John Craig, a silk merchant, and his wife, Hana, a court dressmaker. In 1940, Edie went to stay with Ernest and Alice Wilkins (an old friend) at Meadow Cottage in Wrotham Heath to escape the Blitz.

On the night of the bombing of 15 October 1940, Edie was in the Royal Oak when the pub suffered a direct hit. Edward ‘Ted’ Lowes (of Whatcote Cottages) and Joan Wilkins were walking towards the ‘Oak’ where they were due to meet friends. They saw the explosion, and Ted subsequently found Edie under rubble and carried her outside. However, she was already dead.

Edie was buried in the Platt churchyard on 21 October.