Ethel was born on 31st January 1873, the eldest child of parents William Richard Earp and Emma Earp, nee Armstrong in Tunstall Staffordshire. She was baptised on 26th July 1874 in Tunstall.
When she was two her brother William, known as “Little Billy” was born followed a year later by brother Rowland Armstrong.
The family moved to Runcorn and in 1879, when she was six, her sister Mabel Harriet was born followed two years later by sister Emma Kathleen in 1881.
In the 1881 Census they were all living in Halton Road, Runcorn with a domestic servant Lucy Booth.In 1882 her brother Little Billy, aged 7, drowned in the ‘Runcorn canal’.
She attended Stockton Lodge School for Ladies, in Stockton Heath.
In the 1891 Census she was 18, they were all living in the Preston Brook Tannery and Ethel, Mabel, Rowland and Emma Kathleen were all scholars. Ethel kept a series of journals throughout her life.
By 1901 she was a School Governess. Her maternal grandmother Mary Armstrong who was a widow of 84 was living with them as well as three lodgers who were working on the canal.
In the early 1900’s Ethel became a State Registered Nurse. In 1910 she nursed at Plymouth Hospital.
In the 1911 Census they were living at The Tannery in Preston Brook.
In 1914 she nursed wounded Servicemen at the Vicarage Hospital in Runcorn and Daresbury Hall (?Oaklands Hospital). Later she nursed at Bootle Hospital.
After the war she travelled to Malaya to help to care for her sister Mabel’s children, twins Billy and Dolly, and John and Bob when they were very young. She travelled back from Penang to London on the ship “Delta” arriving on 15th March 1921.
In 1939 the Register shows that she was a retired nurse staying with her sister Mabel’s family at Smithy House near Chester.
In the years before her death in 1966 she was living at The Old Hall in Halton. She died on 13th January , aged 93, at Liverpool Hospital in Kingswood. She was buried in Daresbury Church as were her father, mother and sister Kathleen.