The Black Hole

It was always a mystery as to what had happened to my father before my mother met him. During the Second World War people found themselves quite often away from home. It was not just the servicemen fighting overseas but also people back home found they were employed in unlikely places because of the war. My father, John Basil Alexander, was employed around 1941/2 at the ICI chemical factory near Fleetwood. He was a maintenance engineer and he had a labourer called Wilfred Duerden. Both were working away from their birthplace. Dad was a widower, his second wife Olive having committed suicide in May 1941. Dad and Olive had a daughter, my half sister Dawn. Wilfred Duerden was the son of a lay reader called Hartley Duerden of Nelson, Lancashire. He had married Jane Leach in 1910 and they had two daughters, Alice and Joan. Wilfred was there as someone engaged in "war work". He was a warp dresser in the textile industry.

It was through Wilfred Duerden that his younger daughter, Joan, met John Basil Alexander. They were married in Fleetwood in August 1942 and lodged in a house in Conway Avenue, Cleveleys. The photo above was taken at their wedding. They had a problem with Dawn because there was nowhere for her to stay with them. Sadly, Dawn was farmed out to a number of people until she was fostered by "Uncle Tom and Auntie Mary" a couple living in Goldbourne near Wigan. I feel sure this gave her great insecurity in later days. She had lost her mother in tragic circumstances and then had been excluded from her new family when her father remarried. How would anyone expect her to feel?

I was born towards the end of 1943 in the Barras Nursing Home, Cleveleys. I don't think it was very long before Mum and Dad moved house to live in a terraced "two up, two down" house in Pine Street, Nelson. The house was owned by Mum's Auntie Alice and Uncle Adam used to call in to collect the rent each week. By December 1947 my brother, Graham was born. Dawn was now living with us so it was getting rather crowded in the small house. So it was not long before we all moved to live in a council house, 38 Marsden Hall Road, Nelson. It was during the short period at Pine Street that we received a surprised visit from my father's brother, Gordon Alexander. He was in the army and was in the area because he had a delivery or collection to make at the Ordnance Depot in Colne nearby. He was the only member of Dad's family I ever met.

My father's years before meeting my mother were a mystery about which he rarely spoke. All I knew was that he had a disciplinarian father who was a commercial traveller in millinery and that there were three boys and one girl in terms of siblings. Claude was the youngest boy and he had died as a POW in Singapore. Gordon was the next oldest boy and Tiss (Grace) was their half sister. I still possess a photograph of my grandfather, John Edgar Alexander and my Uncle Claude.

After a few years of genealogy the Internet began to provide more and more information about family relationships as websites came to existence that had a means of searching for births, marriages and deaths. This meant that I could have another try to find details of my father's past. Mum had pieced together snippets and ended up with a tale of fiction! My grandfather had remained in his family home following the untimely death of my great grandfather, Nathan Alexander in Hertford. Nathan had been the last brother of Peter Alexander to travel south to settle in the Luton area where he built up a lucrative business as a credit draper. In the 1891 census he was shown with his family and a general servant in the household. In 1901 the census showed his widow, Annie, being supported by John Edgar and living in Church Street, Luton.

Looking up John Edgar in 1911 Census, I found that he was living with Gertrude Mary and by then they had two sons, John Basil and Cecil Gordon. Referring to my previous posting, I found that Grace's two full brothers were in the household of Gertrude Mary's parents. I could find no trace of Herbert Jeakings, their father, so I think he must have left without trace. It is my guess that my grandfather decided to live with Gertrude Mary, who was his cousin, and help rear Grace. It is probably the case that because no trace could be found of Jeakings the matter was solved by pretending to be married. They lived in Nottingham before moving to Great Yarmouth where they settled permanently.

From my searched in the General Register Office records I discovered that my father had first married in 1926 at the age of nineteen when he was described as a professional musician. His wife was Eileen Mabel Dye, 19 years old and pregnant. Their son was born in February 1927. They named him Keith John Alexander! At some point later my father must have had an affair with Olive Elsie Cushine of Norwich because I found him living in Kendal, Westmorland when Dawn's birth was registered in 1934. I rather suspect that, because my father had been the guilty party, Eileen was unwilling to give him a divorce until she wished to marry which did eventually happen. My father married Olive Cushine in 1940 by which time Dawn would have been six years old. Olive took her own life the following year. How unhappy she must have been.

Back in Great Yarmouth my grandmother had lost her youngest son in the war. I have the death certificate for Claude and it does not make happy reading. When I first read it I felt that for the first time the war had become a personal thing for me. Gordon had married in 1939 and by 1944 they had a daughter, Barbara Ann. Grace had married in 1923. John Edgar had died in 1938 at the age of sixty five.

All this information I acquired without having to leave my PC! It is surprising to learn the amount of family records in the public domain. FreeBMD is a website where many members have transcribed the GRO indexes to provide the clues to many mysteries for many families. This website is by no means complete as the transcribers keep ploughing on with their work. I would commend genealogy to anyone wishing to know more about their personal past. It is quite fascinating.