A sinister discovery

This weekend I finally found myself with a bit of free time, mainly because my poor boyfriend had taken himself off to bed ill and hence he couldn’t force me to DIY. So, I turned to my family history for the first time in a while to do some proper digging.

I decided that I would focus my efforts on the family of Doris Ross, who was my grandfather Horace James Hancock’s first wife, before he married my mum’s mother Margaret Goulding. She’s not at all a direct ancestor of mine, but she died young, I’m not entirely sure how, and the couple didn’t have any children, so although I felt a little bit like I was intruding on someone else’s family, I knew that no direct line descendants would be researching her at least, and I’ve always been a little bit intrigued by her.

For one thing, Horace was born in Wales, and was supposedly a fireman in Brighton during the Second World War – however, his marriage to Doris took place in 1941, in Wakefield and it has never been clear how he came to be here. I had wondered if he only moved here after he met Doris, if she was local. As it turns out she was.

In fact she was incredibly easy to track down. Firstly, I was able to find her probate record, and thus confirm the death I had for her, in 1954, was correct. She was aged just 42, giving a birth date of 1912. This was a little frustrating, as it meant she wouldn’t appear on the 1911 census, but I was able to find a birth record for her, which gave her mother’s maiden name as Gillings. From this I was easily able to track down a Gillings–Ross marriage: Elizabeth Gillings married Claude Atkin Ross in 1908. And with a name like Claude Atkin Ross to follow the rest was a breeze. Finding his probate record, with Doris Hancock named as the executor neatly tied up the parcel, so I knew I had the right family.

I won’t bore you with all the minute details of the family tree. In brief, the family seems to be mainly upper working class and one branch originates in the tiny village of Lambley, north-east of Nottinghamshire, with other branches rooted more strongly in Wakefield and the surrounding areas. However, there were a couple of intriguing snippets:

First up, there’s the religion issue. The Ross line in particular seems to be somewhat undecided as to whether it is C of E or Wesleyan – in places, one sibling is baptised Wesleyan, and then the next C of E, which variation I struggle to understand. Claude Atkin Ross himself is baptised Wesleyan in 1909, a year after his marriage to Elizabeth. I can’t find any register at all of Doris’ baptism, but many of her siblings had Wesleyan baptism. I’d liek to find out more about why this might have happened.

Far more sinister though, is the family murder! The victim was Claude Atkin Ross’s aunt Emma Eliza Sheard, formerly Perkin, née Land  – sister of his mother, Nancy Hagar Land. I was first alerted to the murder when I discovered her probate record, which read as follows:

Sheard, Emma Eliza of 4 Chevet-terrace Walton, Wakefield, widow who was last seen alive in or about July 1941 and whose dead body was found on 17 December 1948 at the Sharlston West Colliery Walton. Administration Wakefield 18 February to Harry Bramley Norman clerk. Effects £654 7s 8d.

Of course, this immediately piqued my interest, and I Googled her to see if I could find out more:

One of Walton's dark deeds happened at Chevet Terrace back in the first half of the twentieth century. Winifred Mary Hallaghan of Chevet Terrace was arrested in 1949 charged with with the manslaughter of her great aunt, Emma Eliza Sheard. When the Second World War started, Winifred invited her widowed great aunt to stay with her and her husband at Chevet Terrace. It seems that Winifred thought that the old lady might be nervous on her own. However, things did not go smoothly and Mrs Sheard, it seems, was not an easy woman to live with. In 1941 there was a quarrel between Winifred's husband, Don, and Mrs. Sheard over an electric light bulb. The quarrel ended with Don Hallaghan telling the awkward aunt that she had to go.

Mrs Sheard did not go at this point, for there followed a further exchange of bad-tempered words, this time with Winifred. Mrs Sheard said that Don should be the one to go as he had been having a bit on the side with the woman next door. Although Winifred did not believe her great aunt, she was sufficiently angered to strike her. The old woman fell backwards, hitting her head on a sewing machine. Winifred left her great aunt lying on the floor. Later, when she returned, she found her still lying there, at which point, she dragged her great aunt to bed. It seemed likely that Mrs Sheard was already dead. On her way to tell her husband about the incident, it seems that Winifred noticed children playing around a capped pit shaft not far from her home. And so it was that Mrs Sheard up at the bottom of the shaft, toppled there by her great niece Winifred.

Later, Winifred sold a cottage that her great aunt owned in Neville Street, Belle Vue - by forging her signature - all the while Mrs Sheard's remains lay at the bottom of the shaft. It seems that she did tell her husband and her brother about the incident in 1946, but they kept 'mum', so to speak. It was in 1948, that the corpse was discovered by a colliery electrician. At Leeds in 1949, Winifred was sentenced to five years in prison for forgery and three years for manslaughter.

(from http://www.jss.org.uk/north/north.html)

I haven’t yet identified Winifred Mary Hallaghan – who would be a cousin or second cousin of Doris Ross. However, I can confirm that this is definitely the same family, as I have identified Harry Bramley Norman, executor of Emma Eliza Sheard’s will, as the son of Emma Eliza’s older sister Fanny Norman née Land.

I wonder whether Doris, who married Horace at around the same time as her great aunt disappeared, knew about it – after all, this could have been a quite distant branch of the family, or a very close one. Her father, Emma Eliza’s nephew, was still alive, but his mother had died in 1934, so he may not have had much contact with her family. If they were close, I wonder how they felt about this tragedy?

L x

From looking at old photographs: 3. Mystery Wedding

Mystery number three is more recent. I came across a lovely photograph of my dad’s parents, John Newby and Fay Rayner, with my grandfather’s parents, the mysterious Walter Newby and Margaret Thompson, pictured outside the front door of what appears to be a church. I then found another photograph clearly taken at the same event: the same church appears, and all four are wearing the exact same outfits, down to the headband/fascinator worn by Fay.

The event in question is a wedding. The second photograph quite possibly pictures all of the wedding guests; it is a very large group photo. Given that two generations of the family are in attendance, and that the photograph was kept for such a long time, it seems likely that it’s the wedding of a family member or a very close family friend. Of course, I’m now determined to come up with a probably identity for the bride and groom, so let’s look at the evidence:

No date is given, but I can fairly easily deduct that it was most likely taken some time in the late 1950s. My grandparents married in the summer of 1956, and separated when my dad (b. 1963) was aged two or three, so it couldn’t have been much later than 1965-ish. To my (admittedly clueless) eye, the fashions look more fifties or early sixties, so I’m leaning towards earlier rather than later in the period 1956–66

On their marriage, my grandmother was only seventeen, though my granddad was older at twenty-four, and I’m under the impression that it all happened fairly quickly. With that in mind, I think it’s unlikely that this photograph was taken before their marriage. My dad’s oldest sister was born around a year later in June 1957. The next child, a daughter, was born in October 1958, her third child, a son, in the summer of 1960, and finally my dad in August 1963.

Given the young age of my grandmother in this photograph, I would assume it was taken within a couple of years of their wedding. As she’s not visibly pregnant in the photograph, I would be inclined to rule out the periods of early 1957, mid- to late 1958, and early 1960. So, we’re looking at either the first half of 1956, the July 1957 to spring 1958, or any time during 1959.

I think it’s doubtful from their ages in the photograph that it was taken much later than that, but as I can’t be sure, I have to consider the possibility that it was taken some time from late 1960 to the end of 1962, or even after the birth of my dad, into the mid-sixties.  However, I’d still guess earlier rather than later.

The next thing is location. Now, ordinarily identifying a church on the basis of an image of its front door, given that it could be taken almost anywhere in the country, might be rather tricky. The church has a sort of triangular shaped ‘porch’, with the church sign (too small to read, even with my trust magnifying glass) affixed to it. However, we’re helped somewhat by the presence of a pub with a clearly legible sign in the background: The New Inn. One of the photographs is taken from a slightly different angle, and we can also see the side of a building, probably a house, alongside the pub.

I’ve started with the likelihood that the church was fairly local to my grandparents, somewhere in the Wakefield area. It can’t be proven of course, but I needed a starting point for investigation and close to home seems sensible, especially as the families in question had all been fairly local for a couple of generations by now as far as I know.

I asked my dad about local pubs by this name, and one suggestion was at Durkar, roughly five miles from my home town of Horbury, where John and Fay were living at Sunroyd Hill in the early years of their marriage. Google informs me that the New Inn at Durkar is located on Denby Dale Road East. A search for churches in the vicinity reveals the Primitive Methodist church a short way down the road. The nearest C of E church is too far away. However, this brick building doesn’t look right – I would have said it was stone (bearing in mind I don’t have access to the photograph and I’m doing this from memory) – and I can’t see the triangular-shaped entrance porch. Also, studying  the relative locations of pub and church on both Google Maps and Geograph convinced me that the church was too far from the pub for its sign to have been visible in the photograph – indeed, I’m not convinced that the pub would be visible at all from the church. Also, looking the pub, it doesn’t quite look right.

So, I tried a generic search for pubs called the New Inn located in West Yorkshire, and then scanned the images and locations for likely candidates. And, by Jove, I think I’ve got it! There is a pub called the New Inn on Shay Lane in Walton, roughly 6½ miles from Horbury. And, whitin the first few Google images, I found this image With the caption: The Methodist Church, view towards the New Inn, Shay Lane. There is the stone building with triangular porch and a sign affixed to the wall. And there is the pub, clearly visible in the background – at least from this angle. The pub does look sort of right, if my memory serves me. I am a little concerned that this pub is still a bit too far away. The foliage beyond the front door, in the middle distance between the two, wasn’t there (the tree might have been), but that could have been planted later.

However, I’m not sure whether there’s enough space between the door and the wall and railings for my photograph to have been taken there, unless they are also later additions. This is possible, though they do look quite old. I haven’t been able to find any older photographs of the church to check this. I suppose an older local person might remember, or I might have to try a local publication. I could even contact the church and ask if they know when they were added.

Overall, I’m about 90% confident I’ve found the right church. My dad knows the entire area very well, as he drives around it for work, so I intend to ask him what he thinks – he might even be able to take the photograph with him on his travels and do the comparison for me.

I’m very intrigued by the fact that this was a Methodist church. Though my home town has quite a strong Methodist tradition, the only evidence I have of any kind of Methodist leanings in my family is that my dad’s older sister got married in the recently demolished Methodist church in Horbury in the late seventies. I wonder if there was a hint of Methodism on my dad’s side after all – after all, I’ve only scratched the surface on his grandfather Walter’s side. And, given the presence of Walter and his wife, it seems likely that this wedding was on his side of the family. However, Margaret and Walter married in an Anglican church.

So, who got married at Walton Methodist church in the 1950s? I'll certainly be checking out Ancestry's Yorkshire non-conformist records, though I'm not sure how up-to-date they come.

It’s definitely not the marriage of Fay’s brother Leslie Gordon Rayner, as his wife was an Italian Catholic. Plus, I would definitely recognise them.

It could possibly be the marriage of John’s brother Trevor Newby, who married Brenda Hartley in the first quarter of 1958. It fits into my schedule of likely dates. However, I think my dad would have recognised them in the image. On the other hand, Walton falls under the Lower Agbrigg registration district in which their marriage was registered, so perhaps I’ll get him to take another look.

Alternatively, it could be a cousin. Walter had, I believe, four brothers: (you can find out more about this on Another Piece of the Puzzle), while Margaret was one of twelve children?. I think I need to devote some time to chasing down the marriages of the various siblings and see if I can figure out who it could be!

L x