L is for Lisbeth

Part 8 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 I was able to glean at first where from the following sources:

• a “female enemy alien – exemption from internment” card¹
• marriage registrations²³
• nursing register of 1946⁴
• a newspaper article, outlining a life “marked by tragedy”⁵
• a newspaper article, giving details of her will⁶

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.”⁷

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 annexing Austria from the time of his take-over of power in Germany in 1933. At that time, 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 therefore 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.

In the newspaper article it states that Lisbeth’s mother and father were “killed by the Germans”. 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 I speculated that it could. Also the fact that her parents were murdered by the Nazis would suggest they were, and added to this was the fact 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”.

One other clue pointing to Lisbeth’s potential Jewishness was her marriage to Major Reuben John William Stilwell during the war when she was 20, in Amersham, Buckinghamshire⁸. 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 also 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 1946 and 1948). Since it is possible these children are still living, I won’t divulge their names or the sources that confirm those years⁹. Major Stilwell died at the age of only 46 in 1955 at the General Hospital in Northampton, leaving Lisbeth a widow at 33. He left her effects with a worth of £3393 4s. 9d.¹⁰ which could have paid for or gone towards the house she bought at 4 Fairacre¹¹, where she later was killed.

She finished her training as a nurse at the Royal College of Nurses in 1944, taking her final examination at the Luton and Dunstable Hospital¹². She took employment at Glacier Foods Ltd. as an industrial nurse¹³. 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 Fairacre¹⁴. 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 partner¹⁵. It is possible that she wanted a partner for a steady income, although 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 purely conjecture.

Originally, on her internment exemption card she had answered the question about whether she wanted to be repatriated with “No”¹⁶. 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 house¹⁷. 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 final decision that this would be 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 strangulation¹⁸, 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)¹⁹.

The story of how Uncle Len, or Samuel Leonard Thomas Ashworth, killed his third wife, Lisbeth, less than four months after marrying her, and thereby splitting up both 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.

This post was originally published on 14 Apr 2025 on Substack. It was updated and properly sourced on 30 Dec 2025.

1. UK, World War II Alien Internees, 1939-1945”, The National Archives; Kew, London, England; HO 396 WW2 Internees (Aliens) Index Cards 1939-1947; Reference Number: HO 396/241, Name: Lisbeth Stillwell; Gender: Female; Nationality: German; Birth Date: 20 Mar 1922; Birth Place: Vienna, Austria; Description: 241: Dead Index (Wives of Germans Etc) 1941-1947: Stern-Tscher. ↩︎
2. England & Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1916-2005, General Register Office; United Kingdom; Volume: 3a; Page: 4359, Lisbeth Frank marriage to Reuben J W Stilwell registered Jul-Aug-Sep 1945 in Amersham. ↩︎
3. England & Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1916-2005, General Register Office; United Kingdom; Volume: 6a; Page: 83, Lisbeth Stillwell marriage to Samuel L T Ashworth registered Jul-Aug-Sep 1960 in Maidenhead. ↩︎
4. UK & Ireland, Nursing Registers, 1898-1968, Register of Nurses. Royal College of Nursing, London, United Kingdom, Name: Lisbeth Stilwell [Lisbeth Frank]; Residence Year: 1946; Residence Place: Hayes, Middlesex; Registration Date: 24 Nov 1944; Publisher: General Nursing Council for England & Wales. ↩︎
5. Maidenhead Advertiser, 21 Oct 1960: “Woman found dead was strangled, inquest told”. The life of Mrs. Ashworth, who was married for the second time in July this year at St. Mary’s, was marked by tragedy. She was born in Austria, taken out of the country just before Hitler took over, and came to England when she was 16 to train as a nurse. Her mother (…) and her father were killed by the Germans. ↩︎
6. Maidenhead Advertiser, 6 Jan 1961: “Mrs Ashworth’s Will”. By her will dated 29.9.60 she left her property to her children. ↩︎
7. see FN 5. ↩︎
8. see FN 2. ↩︎
9. sources withheld for privacy reasons. ↩︎
10. England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858-1995, Principal Probate Registry; London, England; Calendar of the Grants of Probate and Letters of Administration made in the Probate Registries of the High Court of Justice in England, Reuben John William Stilwell probate on 28 Sep 1955 in Birmingham, England. Died 27 Jul 1955 in Northamptonshire, Northampton, England. ↩︎
11. The number of the house has been given in several newspapers as 3 Fairacre, in the solicitor’s statutory notice it is, however, 4 Fairacre:
    Maidenhead Advertiser, 6 Jan 1961: “Statutory Notice. Lisbeth Ashworth deceased”. Notice is hereby given, that all persons having a claim against or an interest in the Estate of Lisbeth Ashworth, late of 4 Fairacre, Barh Road Maidenhead in the county of Berkshire (who died on the 15th day of October, 1960), are hereby required…. ↩︎
12. see FN 4. ↩︎
13. Maidenhead Advertiser, 21 Oct 1960: “Woman found dead was strangled, inquest told”. Mrs Ashworth took a course at the Royal College of Nursing and then worked at Glacier Foods Ltd. as an industrial nurse. ↩︎
14. Maidenhead Advertiser, 21 Oct 1960: “Woman found dead was strangled, inquest told”. A year later she paid a deposit on her home at Fairacre, the large new block of houses and maisonettes near the top of Punt Hill, and moved in with her children. ↩︎
15. Maidenhead Advertiser, 20 Jan 1961. “Four years prison for killing wife”. In July last year he married again after answering an advertisement placed in a newspaper by a marriage bureau. ↩︎
16. see FN 1. ↩︎
17. Maidenhead Advertiser, 21 Oct 1960: “Woman found dead was strangled, inquest told”. On September 7 Mrs Ashworth gave instructions to an estate agent to let the house, furnished, as she intended to return to Germany with her husband at the beginning of November. ↩︎
18. Maidenhead Advertiser, 21 Oct 1960: “Woman found dead was strangled, inquest told”. Evidence was given by Dr. K. R. Pallot, who said death was due to asphyxia caused by manual strangulation. ↩︎
19. see FN 6. ↩︎