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.

Thomas Watson Hogg

Thomas was born at Traquhair, Peebleshire, Scotland in the summer of 1879. During the 1890s his family had moved from the Scottish Lowlands to the outskirts of the industrial city of Newcastle Upon Tyne in Northumberland, England. Instead of continuing as a shepherd, Thomas’ father became a miner. It was that career path which Thomas also chose.

From all accounts he seemed to be always on the lookout for an opportunity, leaving his family for years at a time to try to make a go of living and working somewhere else. America and even Australia.

In 1914 at the beginning of World War One he appears to emigrate alone to Australia. He didn’t stay very long before returning to Europe and finding his way back to Northumberland to enlist. Miners were well respected in the Army for their tunnelling skills. At the end of the war, he applied for repatriation to Australia stating (wrongly or rightly) that he had been resident there for three years prior to the war.

Settling in the Illawarra at Wollongong he became a bricklayer. I imagine there would have been a lot of work around at that time as homes were being built for returning soldiers. In 1926 Thomas was forty-seven, his family had grown since arriving in Australia and the youngest children were aged two and six years. They were living in Five Islands Road, Unanderra near (or with) their eldest son and his new bride.

Ethel Elsie Gibson

Ethel was forty-six in 1926. She was the middle child of seven born in Kiama, New South Wales. Both of her parents were of Irish descent. She had one older brother and two younger and two older sisters and one younger.

She and her husband had a large family of eleven although not all the children had survived infancy. The family home was in Rosemont Street, Wollongong and daily life there would have been busy for her. Her youngest child was six years old, but her elder daughters were in their late teens and early twenties. Two of them were married already, her first grandchild had just turned one and another baby was on the way.

She thought of her own sweet three baby boys whose lives were only measured in weeks and hoped that her daughters would not experience the same losses she had.

Edith Lilian Vose

Edith was the first child in her family born in New Zealand in 1881, two years after their arrival from England. She was the fifth child and had two elder brothers and two elder sisters who had made the journey with their parents.

In 1897 her elder brother Samuel had been successful in securing some land in the new Wharenui settlement in Riccarton, Christchurch. Three acres on which he needed to build a cottage and develop market gardens in return for ownership after a certain period. Less than three years later Samuel died and his nineteen-year-old sister was the beneficiary of his land, cottage and garden. Perhaps she had been living there with him keeping house and helping with the work. This was the cottage where she remained for the rest of her life, raising a family.

In 1926, Edith was forty-five. She had five children, the youngest aged twelve was still at school. Her eldest son had completed his apprenticeship a few years earlier and left without a word and gone to Australia. Her second son was nearing the end of his apprenticeship or had possibly completed it. Would she have been filled with anxiety that he might follow his brother?

Her days would have been busy with domestic chores, milking the cow, making butter, tending the garden and fruit trees often you would imagine with assistance from the children. Edith’s mother has died in December of 1925 imagine there were days were grief still consumed her in that first year without her.