A small flock!

[spison]

Only the Australian part of the following story was my work and the credit for the actual discovery needs to go to my some sort of cousin, M, who is living in Newport, Monmouthshire. She contributed the hypothesis of what may have happened and family knowledge of the return and did the considerable legwork in the UK. We (mum and myself) checked Australian records. Oh what a tangled web.....

William Jones remained in England when his brothers, George and Benjamin, came to Australia to work for the company, Lysaghts, when it expanded into Australia. It was probably not a happy marraige because at some stage his wife, Catherine Mary Jones nee Johnson, who he married in 1906 and with whom he had five children, also came to live in Australia, leaving her husband and her children in England. The couple never divorced and William was charged with bigamy sometime after 1930. When his second wife, Mary, discovered that she had inadvertently made this bigamous marriage, she threw a milk jug at him and the story reached the papers. William died in 1960.

It has always been assumed by Catherine's family that she arrived in Australia sometime after 1921 and that she went to meet up with her Jones brothers-in-law and their families. No evidence of Catherine Johnson or Jones was able to be found arriving in Australia or leaving England and she doesn't appear on the NSW electoral rolls. As a boy my father remembers Catherine, who he called 'Aunty Kit'. His recollections were that his father and uncle treated Kit with either disapproval or ambivalence because she was living with an Ernest Alfred Gallienne (b. 1894). Catherine's Australian granddaughter, B, also confirms that her father, Lawrence, knew that she was living with this particular man.

Ernest Gallienne was so often A.W.L. during WW1 that he was denied his medals and his papers are notated with the statement that 'it is unlikely that he ever saw a shot fired'. In 1919 he spent three months in Wandsworth Prison for obtaining money through a trick. He was court martialled for his frequent desertions. Ernest died in 1936.

By matching Australian war records, emigration and electoral roll information, it has been proven that Catherine Mary Johnson nee Jones assumed the name Kathleen Richards and bigamously married Ernest Alfred Gallienne in 1919 in England. Kathleen stated at the time of her marriage that she was a spinster and born in 1893. It is unknown whether Ernest knew of her duplicity or was complicit in helping her. Ernest was born in Australia and his father was a butcher in Tighes Hill, a suburb of Newcastle, located very close to the Lysaghts plant. An extract of the marriage certificate is located in Ernest's Australian enlistment papers and it is stated in his papers that Kathleen arrived in Australia with Ernest on 15th May, 1920 on board the 'Zealander'. The 1833 electoral roll shows Kathleen and Ernest living at 22 Antill Street, Mayfield after moving there from Dubbo where they had been living in 1930. At this stage many of the Jones families were living in Antill Street – my father's family were at number 10. In 1936 she and Ernest are living at 80 Carrington St, Mayfield and living with them is Lawrence Llewellyn Jones, Catherine Mary Johnson's son. Why would Lawrence live with a woman he didn't know when he had cousins in the area?

The UK Incoming Passenger lists 1878-1960 show Kathleen Gallienne, aged 46, returning to England after Ernest's death in 1936 - arriving in Hull - on the 'Esperance Bay', on 18 February, 1939. She was intending to live there permanently. Her intended abode was Chepstow Road, Newport, Monmouthshire. In a letter to my mother, Catherine's English granddaughter, M, confirms that her father and his brother met the 'Esperance Bay' and were reunited with their mother after 20 years. Catherine/Kathleen then lived with her first husband's sister and her husband at the above address. Family stories say that Catherine was killed in a bombing raid over Sheffield in 1940 and her body was never found. No further trace of Kathleen Gallienne or Catherine Mary Jones nee Johnson has been located.

It is now clear that Catherine left for Australia as Kathleen the year before the Jones brothers. It must have been an awful shock to her that they arrived to settle in exactly the same town as her. It is very likely that in letters home George and Benjamin mentioned that Catherine was in Australia. This in turn probably caused Lawrence to attempt to find his mother and emigrate to Australia where he settled. It is unknown whether anyone would have known who Kathleen Gallienne nee Richards was had the Jones brothers remained in Newport and therefore she would have been lost to her children forever.

If anyone can find any references to the death of Kathleen/Catherine Jones/Richards/Johnson during a Sheffield bombing raid during 1940 (or there abouts), M & I would be very happy. I have tried the CWGC under all possible names variations and combinations and spellings (I think).

Jane (and M who is very happy to have found her grandmother)

[birdlip]

Phew! Quite a story Jane!! Well done unravelling all that!

[Ditch]

If anyone can find any references to the death of Kathleen/Catherine Jones/Richards/Johnson during a Sheffield bombing raid during 1940 (or there abouts), M & I would be very happy. I have tried the CWGC under all possible names variations and combinations and spellings (I think).

Jane; Nothing conclusive's surfaced but, ye might find some interesting background pointers amongst https://www.ww2talk.com/forum/searchi...tml#post291985

[spison]

Thankyou so much Ditch. I did register. The information was useful on the background of the raid/s.

The only other information I have on Catherine/Kathleen is that in 1940 she had been living with her son and working as a barmaid at the "Ship's Inn" in Beeston, Nottingham. She had left his home to return to work and was never seen again. Because she had staged her disappearance in 1919, one couldn't help wondering if she may have done it again under cover of the raid but it does seem likely that she did die in December 1940.

Jane

Jane

[Ditch]

Grrr! Modem murder and double posted the below!

[Ditch]

Damn it, Jane. I actually popped in here to say something like; " Oh well. That's about as '50 / 50' ~ 'A Total Brick Wall' ~ 'Unanswerable' (etc) as ye get.

Only, even as this page was unfolding and ye words, above passed through my mind ..... Eureka! There is a way of narrowing the odds yet. Look:

" She had been living with her son and working as a barmaid at the "Ship's Inn" in Beeston, Nottingham. She had left his home to return to work and was never seen again. "

Ok. Ye know where, in Beeston ~ or where ever ~ she and her son lived. Yeah? And ye obviously know where she was working. " The Ship's Inn ", Beeston.

Ok. Get a map. Pin point her home address. Then find out and pin point the pub she worked at. My guess is that they'll have been walking distance apart. So, plot the shortest route between the two. Note the surrounding streets. Then, ye want to draw up a list of every named street within a fifty yard radius of any given point on that route.

See, what I'm thinking is this: If she was a CWD casualty and yet listed as " Unidentified "? Then ~ forgive me but, lets not beat about the bush here ~ she'd likely have been blown to kingdom come, or burned to a crisp. That would mean being close to a HE Bomb hit. Or caught up in a heavy Incendiary drop. And, either way, it'd have to be within a relatively small radius of her route to work. Even HE's couldn't vaporise people, through houses, at That great a distance. Ye'd really be looking at a parallel street or two, to get the full on effect and thus become " Unidentifiable ", especially close to home, on a known route, where they'd be expecting to find ye.

Now, all this is only 'educated' guesswork, of course. I have no proper experience of what bombs could, or could not do. Just going on what I've picked up along the way.

Bottom line is; If ye can figure her route to work. Then find an " Unidentified " along that route, or at least a reported HE hit, right where she might be expected to have been walking that night? Well, then it's up to you to draw ye own conclusions, isn't it?

And, believe me: Such information Is out there. I've trod this road before. And managed to discover the whole story behind something my Great Aunt told me about, fifty years ago. Relating a war time event. I had no names. Nothing. Just the roughest ideas of people involved. " The Internet " cracked it for me. Or, rather; My dogged perseverance and some brilliant people on the internet did.

Keep hacking away at this, Jane. You too might yet come up holding The Grail!

[spison]

Eww Ditch! Gruesome stuff ... but I had already thought that she must have been unrecognizable or completely obliterated.
I don't have the son's address in Beeston but I will include a request for it in the letter to M in Newport when I put together all the facts from both raids. She will know as it was her uncle. (M isn't online.)

I'll post the question now and if I get no answer here I'll work out how to connect two threads and put in a new query. Where was the "Ship's Inn" in Beeston, Nottingham?
Jane

[malcolm99]

I'm a bit perplexed and maybe I've misunderstood something but I can't see any connection between bombing raids in Sheffield and in Beeston, Nottingham. Beeston is a long way from Sheffield and wouldn't have been subject to the same bombing raid. Are you sure it's Beeston in Nottingham or could it be a Beeston somewhere else?

[Ditch]

Where was the "Ship's Inn" in Beeston, Nottingham?

Dunno, Jane. And, because of its clever framing, one imagines it was a genuine and correct name too. Nothing on Google, as I'm sure ye've found.

Beeston though is reasonably close to Nottingham centre. Whether or not the university was there at the time, it's now practically ony that which seperates the two, apparrently (https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&...e&ved=0CA8Q_AU) Still a bloody long way for a Bar Maid to travel to work though. I can't see it.

So, leads one to suspect the pub was indeed local to Beeston. Draws the beady eye back to Beeston then, doesn't it? Woman leaves an address, somewhere in Beeston. Aiming to walk a mile or two to work. Boom! (Poof! Momentary mysty cloud of pink vapour)

Blitz bombing wasn't exactly up to todays ~ claimed ~ accuracy of popping one down a particular air hole. Perfectly feasible that a decent carpeting of Nottingham would have sucked in nearby Beeston.

Wonder if the pub took one too? Doubt it. That would've been taken as the explanation at the time. Or, was the immediate area so wrecked that it's long since been redeveloped? Either way, there's no obvious trace of that pub now. Ding! How about trying the Nottingham / Beeston Council offices? Nottingham Central Library? Nottingham Records Office? Give ye something to be doing while ye wait to hear from 'M'. Then when she gets back to ye with A, ye might have B waiting. Trace the route from A to B .....

[Ditch]

Oh lord! Malcolm; How did that come about? I'd completely missed the fact that we were (apparrently) talking about two entirely different areas here! Aaaaaargh!

Heads must roll for this!

I was just warming to it too. Who took the wrong turn?