My mother was born in 1908 in Sydney Australia and her name was Clyda. Now, if you Google that name, it comes up surprisingly few times. In fact I do not ever think I have heard the name before, except for the name of a watch and a Gaelic football club, so she is a rather unique person.
Her parents were Florence and Thomas Alfred Fletcher Lowe, she was just sixteen when she married Thomas who was then aged twenty four in Devonport near Portsmouth in England.
He was in the British Royal Navy and served as a Senior Electrician, she was described in her marriage certificate simply as a spinster, a not uncommon job title in those days! Although they lived close to each other in their home town of Bolton, which is in the north west of England, there is little evidence of their families knowing each other or communicating with each other, so I have been lead to assume that Florence ran away from home to marry Thomas against her, and presumably his, parents wishes or knowledge. Apart from the fairly obvious fact that when they started to ‘walk out’ together she would have been very much a minor, I think the reason for my supposition will become a little clearer in due course.
So, they were married in the UK and went to live in Australia. From here the story is a little bit blurred around the edges I’m afraid. All that I have are one or two stories from my mother, who died when I was eleven years old, and a variety of documents relating to the will of my grandfather Thomas and its’ apparent non existence in Australia.
When I was but a small and insignificant sprog my mother one day told me that she had been born in Sydney and that she came to England when she was four years old in the company of a lady from London. This was because her mother had died and at the time of the death of her mother, her father had already died in a shipwreck in the Pacific Ocean. She was brought up by her grandparents in Bolton where she had met my father, and they all lived happily ever after. Except they didn’t, but that’s another story.
So, when I started to do the research I was left with just a few documents. They included my grandmothers’ death certificate, a few letters dated back to 1922 from a solicitor in Sydney about his inability to find any trace of my grandfather, and a letter from a Mr G Kent of Sydney, New South Wales, and a couple of photographs of my grandmother and grandfather.
The letter from Mr Kent is perhaps the most interesting because of what it does not say, rather than its actual content. In the letter Mr Kent tells my great grandmother that Florence had been ill for some time, almost since the birth of her child (Clyda –my mother), and that regrettably she had died in a hospital in Sydney and then buried in a local cemetery.
He undertook to look after the child until suitable passage back to England could be found. This passage back home took place some ten months later when my mother came back in the company of a single woman who lived in London.
I have been able to trace the movements across the world of both my grandmother and grandfather through various shipping lists, and have managed to almost pin them both down to dates and places. All except one that is. My grandfather did not die in a shipwreck in the Pacific. He served in the Royal Navy until 1926 when he took a pension. He served in one of the RN Battleships during the first World War and was injured when his ship sank at the Battle of Jutland. I hasten to point out here that the sinking of the battleship was nothing to do with him, it wasn’t his fault!
By the time my mother came back to the UK her father was somewhere in the Navy either in the UK or abroad and my great grandmother was trying in vain to find traces of his will and in fact his death up to 1922. From the tone and content of the letters it is clear that she believed that my grandfather was dead, but he wasn’t. He was keeping his head down and out of sight in the Royal Navy, and may in fact have remarried in Australia and left there in 1910!!!
Which then beggars the question, “Who was my grandfather?” Was he Thomas Alfred Fletcher Lowe or maybe the enigmatic Mr G Kent?
Answers on a postcard please.
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