Phyllis Isobella Gross (later Pearsall) was born in Upper Norwood, South London, on 25 September 1906.
Phyllis Isobella Gross was born on 25 September 1906 in Upper Norwood, South London, England. She was the daughter of Alexander Gross, a Hungarian-Jewish mapmaker and entrepreneur who founded the Geographia map company, and Isabella Bell Crocker Dessau, a suffragette of mixed Irish-Italian descent.
Her unconventional and often turbulent childhood, split between England, Italy, and later America and France, exposed her early to both the world of cartography and to a spirit of independence and resilience. Her father's map-publishing business would later prove pivotal in inspiring her own life's work.
Growing up amid financial instability and her parents' fractious marriage, Phyllis developed a strong work ethic and adaptability from a young age. She attended school in Paris and later Roedean School in England, developing linguistic skills and an artistic sensibility that would serve her later career as a painter and eventually as the creator of one of Britain's most iconic maps.
Her birth marks the beginning of a life that would defy the conventional expectations placed on women in early twentieth-century Britain, culminating in her legacy as the creator of the London A-Z street atlas, a woman entrepreneur and cartographer in a male-dominated field.