Violet Helen Carson, OBE (1 September 1898 â€" 26 December 1983) was a
British actress of radio, stage and television, and a singer and
pianist, who had a long and celebrated career as an actress and
performer during the early days of BBC radio, and during the latter
decades of her life as the matronly Christian widow, town gossip and
original battle-axe Ena Sharples in the ITV television soap opera
Coronation Street.Carson was born on German Street in Ancoats,
Manchester. Her father William Brown Carson, who was Scottish, ran a
flour mill and her mother, Mary Clarke (Tordoff) was an amateur
singer. As a child, she took piano lessons while attending Church of
England school, Carson performed with her younger sister Nellie as a
singing act called the Carson Sisters. In 1913 she became a cinema
pianist providing the musical accompaniment for silent films.She
married road contractor George Peploe on 1 September 1926, but he died
in 1929, aged only 31. They had no children. Carson never remarried.
The premature death of Peploe mirrored the early life of Carson's
iconic character Ena Sharples many years later; in the years long
before the show was created, Ena's fiancé had died in World War I,
and her husband died prematurely in 1937.
British actress of radio, stage and television, and a singer and
pianist, who had a long and celebrated career as an actress and
performer during the early days of BBC radio, and during the latter
decades of her life as the matronly Christian widow, town gossip and
original battle-axe Ena Sharples in the ITV television soap opera
Coronation Street.Carson was born on German Street in Ancoats,
Manchester. Her father William Brown Carson, who was Scottish, ran a
flour mill and her mother, Mary Clarke (Tordoff) was an amateur
singer. As a child, she took piano lessons while attending Church of
England school, Carson performed with her younger sister Nellie as a
singing act called the Carson Sisters. In 1913 she became a cinema
pianist providing the musical accompaniment for silent films.She
married road contractor George Peploe on 1 September 1926, but he died
in 1929, aged only 31. They had no children. Carson never remarried.
The premature death of Peploe mirrored the early life of Carson's
iconic character Ena Sharples many years later; in the years long
before the show was created, Ena's fiancé had died in World War I,
and her husband died prematurely in 1937.
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