[1] In January 1904 she married George Joseph Cressall in St. Dunstan's Church, Stepney, and by the end of the year the newly-weds were living at 15 Barnes Street, Limehouse.
It was around this time that Cressall could frequently be heard speaking at meetings at the East India Dock gates next to the entrance to Blackwall Tunnel.
In 1921 she, along with her husband, was one of Poplar councillors sent to prison for refusing to follow a court order that they implement what they regarded as an unfair form of taxation.
[4]She later said: Think of it, you mothers, young girls taken from a life of freedom and locked up in cells with doors as thick as a pawnbroker's safe.Imprisoning a heavily pregnant councillor was a serious mistake on the behalf of the government; public support for Cressall grew and her incarceration became an embarrassment.
Cressall, however, refused to go unless her fellow councillors were also released – she was also very suspicious of a document that the authorities asked her to sign, in case it in some way caused her colleagues further problems.
In the end, it was LCC Labour group leader, Harry Gosling, who convinced her to leave, on 21 September 1921, close to three weeks after she had been locked up.
[5]The Cressels had eight children, seven boys and a girl: Walter Percival (1904-1942), Thomas William (1906-1938), Albert John (1907-1995), George Phillip (1910-1986), Charles Keir (1914-1979), Samuel Lawrence (1921-1974), Bessie Susan (1923-1995) and Edgar Frederick (1927-1983).
[1] In 1923 the Cressalls moved to 15 Macquarie Way on the Isle of Dogs, where Nellie spent her remaining years until her death in 1973, the last of the Polar Councillors.