Margery McIntyre

Margery (Marjorie) was sixty-two and living in Dunoon, New South Wales with her husband of forty-one years. She had been born at Guise’s Flat a small locality between Michelago and Queanbeyan on the road to Cooma. She was the second child of fifteen and had one older brother.

She had met and married her husband in Queanbeyan. Her first-born son died aged three weeks, but she and her husband went on to raise a family of seven. They were dairy farmers but following a rough patch shortly after their youngest children were born in the Illawarra district, they voluntarily sequestered their land in bankruptcy.

They were farming again in 1926 having joined the great migration north to the northern rivers district of New South Wales during the later years of World War One. Some of their older married children had also moved north with them. All of their children were married or at least in relationships. They already had twenty-nine grandchildren.

John William Fuller

John was the youngest of two in his family. His parents had emigrated to Christchurch New Zealand as newlyweds and he and his brother were born there. In 1926 John was sixty, he was still working for Railways at Middleton Station a short walk from his home.

He and his wife raised a family of five, the youngest were still attending school in 1926. Their eldest two sons had completed (or almost completed) apprenticeships as fitters with P.D.Duncan. Their eldest son had surprised them by leaving to live and work in Australia a few years earlier without any discussion. They were both a little anxious that history should not repeat with their younger son.

John enjoyed listening to radio short-wave broadcasts in his shed in the backyard. He enjoyed listening to music but I don’t know if he played an instrument. Most of his children had learned to play though. He also liked sketching, painting and photography and would spend time “colourising” photos to bring them to life from the sepia tones in which they were developed.

William George Cooper

William was the ninth child in his family. His parents had come to New Zealand with their parents with the first wave of settlers from England. His father and grandfather were tailors, but William served an apprenticeship with his older cousin to become a carpenter/builder.

In the early 1890s he had moved north from Kaikoura, first to Wellington and then to the Horowhenua where he me his young wife; the daughter of a carpenter. They raised a family of nine moving to the Waikato about 1910 after William had completed building the Levin Post Office. For a time, they farmed near Waihou before returning to live in Hamilton and briefly Auckland where William returned to his earlier career and built several houses.

In 1926 William was fifty-nine, the family home was in Firth Street, Hamilton East. His siblings were spread far and wide across the country, none lived nearby. Three of his daughters and his surviving son were married and he was now a grandfather to seven grandchildren. William was also a great gardener spending much of his spare time tending a large productive vegetable garden.

Emma Louisa Bartlett

Emma was the third daughter in her family. Both of her parents were born in New Zealand, but her grandparents had all emigrated with their young families on the same ship and settled in Nelson, New Zealand. Emma was born in the Waitohi Valley, near Picton. In about 1883 her parents moved north from Marlborough to Horowhenua. Her father was a carpenter, and it was likely through his network that she met her husband, William Cooper.

In 1926 Emma was fifty-one years old and had been married for thirty-two years. Together they had had nine children, although two sons had died, one possibly during the Spanish Flu pandemic and the other from complications with appendicitis.  Three of her daughters and her surviving son were married and there were already seven grandchildren.

Emma’s brother William died in 1926 leaving his five children orphaned as their mother had died in the Spanish Flu pandemic eight years earlier. I imagine there will have been much sadness surrounding this and discussion as to where the children would go and who would raise them.

The family home in 1926 was in Firth Street, Hamilton East.

George Timms

George was the youngest in his family. His mother had died when he was six months old. He had five older sisters and an older brother.

In 1926 George was forty-nine years old and employed as a taxi driver. He had most likely started his working life as a groom but by the time he married, he was a coachman for a large estate on the outskirts of Old Milverton near Blackdown.

Married. In name only. Ten years ago, that had all changed. Truth be known it was probably earlier than that when things started to fall apart. His wife didn’t have a lot of family like he did; she was close to her brothers and when they emigrated to America the trouble began. He had kept finding excuses not to follow them, and all the while their family had grown. Her behaviour had worsened; she became quite erratic and neglected the children and the house.

For a while he had hoped she would return to full health, but it had become apparent that that would not be the case. Taking the children to visit her had become an ordeal, they did not know what to expect and she refused to acknowledge them. He stopped taking them and put all his energy into work. The older girls helped run the house even though they were still at school.

Now only their son was at school and the girls had all found employment. The oldest had just married and emigrated to the other side of the world. To New Zealand. Should he tell his wife? Even if she didn’t acknowledge him anymore? Should she know that their daughter had married? That she was braver than he was and had boarded a ship and made a journey to a new country?

Geoffrey (Jeffory) Denniss

Geoffrey was the youngest in his family. He had four elder sisters and an elder brother. They were the second generation in his family to have been born in Australia. He lived most of his life on the shore of Lake Illawarra where his father was a fisherman.

His elder brother was keeping their fathers fishing business going on the Lak and several of his sisters had married into local fishing families. Two of his sisters had died in the last couple of years, but his other siblings and their families all lived relatively close by in the area they had grown up.

In 1926 Jeff was employed as a coke burner at the Australian Coke Works. He and his wife lived in Rosemont Street, he was forty-eight years old. They had a large family although they had lost four children as babies. His sons were six and twelve years old. Two of his older daughters were married and he was already a grandfather.

Laura Ellen Kelsey

Laura was forty-eight in 1926. For the last ten years she had been an inmate at the Warwick County Lunatic Asylum in Hatton, Warwickshire. Life had become a comfortable routine. She was fed and cared for, had opportunities to be involved with domestic chores, handcrafts and social gatherings.

In 1921 at the census about 1000 people lived or worked there, 772 were inmates like her.

Did she look out across the countryside at the longboats plying the locks in the canal or hear the trains in the distance and remember her childhood?

She had a husband and children although she had not seen them for many years. It was easier that way, to shut the hurt out. She had pretended when her husband brought the children to visit that she did not know them. He stopped bringing them. The older girls would be grown now, maybe even married.

She told the staff who wanted to help her that she was not married, that she had money in the bank and that she was the Queen of Spain.

Why did nobody understand? She was lonely, abandoned, her family all gone. Her days had been busy with four children, but her mind would not rest. Why could they not go to America to join her brothers?

She had stopped caring for herself, the house and the children. Her neighbour betrayed her; told officials she was unkempt. How dare she? She was not much better herself in that run down court where they had all made their homes.

She hoped her children would be happy and successful, and blinked away a tear.