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 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.

I wonder how Ethel felt about becoming a grandmother while she still had young children of her own. It was the same though for her brothers and sisters most of whom lived nearby. Many of her nieces were also getting married and the wider family was growing.

Ten years had passed since her eldest nephew had been lost in France during the war. 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 loss she had had to bear.

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.

Mary Milne Gerrard

In 1926 Mary was forty-four years old; a mother, wife, mother-in-law and soon would become a grandmother. Her eldest son had married in August that year and a baby was on the way.

Mary had been born in the Poor House in Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Scotland in the summer of 1882 to a single mother. Her twin brother had died there from croup aged seventeen months.

Her mother had married when Mary was seven and had another son the following year. Her stepfather’s work in paper mills brought them from Aberdeen to Newcastle, Northumberland in the 1890s. It was there she met her husband and they married four months after her mother had died in 1901.

Mary had eight children. In 1919 after the war ended, they emigrated to Australia bringing their three surviving children with them and then having two more in the years after they settled in Wollongong.

In 1926 she was living in Five Islands Road, Unanderra, her home life would have been busy with the younger children ranging from twelve to two years.

Mary is the youngest in the next generation alive in 1926 - the ones who fifty-nine years from then would become great great grandparents to my daughter.

Joseph Alexander Becker

Joseph was born in May 1887 in Rob Roy near Queanbeyan and Michelago, New South Wales. He was the second child and second son, but first surviving child in his family. His parents were dairy farmers, though later his father would be described as a labourer.

His youngest two sisters were born after the family had moved north to the Illawarra region and it was here that he met his wife. Joe married Susan Millar at Corrimal in 1907.

They raised a large family and re-located from Illawarra to the Northern Rivers district to take up dairy farming with their eldest six children. Some of Joe’s married siblings, his parents, younger siblings and his wife’s sister-in-law had also made the move north in the late 1910s.

In 1926 Joe was thirty-nine, a father of ten children farming at Tuntable Falls. Their eldest son was making frequent appearances in court in Lismore for drunkenness which was likely troubling for Joe and Susan at the time.

Joseph is the last of my daughter's eight great grandparents - although in 1926 none of her grandparents had yet been born. Next we move on to the next generation back, follow on to see who we will meet.

Susan Bissell Millar

Susan was born in Bulli, New South Wales in June 1888, although at her marriage she gave her birthplace as Austinmer. Her father was a miner, like most men living in Bulli and the surrounding area. She was the fourth child and third daughter in the family.

Susan had her first child when she was eighteen, five months before she married Joe Becker in Corrimal in March 1907 with the consent of both their parents since they were both minors.

Toward the end of World War One there was a big migration in New South Wales from the south to the Northern Rivers where dairy farmers were in high demand. Susan and Joe followed her elder sister Jane and her family there. Her sister soon returned to Bulli though. Joe’s parents had also moved to the Northern Rivers at about the same time.

In 1926 Susan was thirty-eight; life was busy running a household and managing children. Their tenth child and third son arrived, Susan will have had help with the domestic chores as the older children all lived on the farm. Susan and Joe remained there for some years, eventually moving off a farm and into Lismore.