First, perhaps, a little of the Wellburn/Lonsdale family history.
My mother's Great-Grandfather on her mother's side was Charles Lonsdale who was born in 1806 in Boroughbridge about 15 miles northwest of York.
By the 1851 census, he was living in Heslington just next to York (coincidently where I went to University for three years!). Grandfather Wilson Lonsdale was just 3 months old at the time of that census, he was the youngest of six brothers. William (20), John (13), Thomas (11), Charles (9), and Frank (3)
The family was still in Heslington for the 1861 census but by 1871 at the age of twenty, he is living in St Nicholas Street in Norton near Malton and working with three others as plasterers under his Uncle William then aged 40.
In 1871 or 1872, he met Josephine Buck Sangwin, who was living in Hull at ‘Spring Bank’, 13 West Parade.
They had an "illegitimate" boy, James, in 1873 who sadly died.
Then in 1875, now in Durham, the pair married and had subsequently had many more children. In 1877 it was Charles Fleming, in 1879 Josephine, in 1881 Lottie, in 1889 Edith Emma, in 1893 Maud, in 1895 Alice, who died in infancy, and then lastly in 1898 Daisy.
There is a record of Maud, Joyce’s mother being christened in 1895 while they were living at 42 Florist Rd in Leeds - she was baptised at the same time as Edith Emma and Alice.
By 1898 they are in Scarborough for Daisy’s birth and in the 1901 census they are living at 56 Prospect Rd, Scarborough
Now for the father of Joyce, Lewis Wellburn. He was born on June 28th 1898 in Scarborough and the son of a policeman from Cayton just up the coast from Scarborough.
For the April 1911 census, he is resident at 56 Falsgrave Rd, Scarborough.
Wilson Lonsdale dies in 1917. Lewis and Maud are married in the winter of 1920, and the next census in 1921 finds them living with Maud’s mother Josephine, and sister Lottie in Prospect Rd.
Sadly Josephine Buck Lonsdale died in January 1924 before she could meet her granddaughter Joyce, who was born on February 24th 1924... just, it was very close to midnight of the 23rd so the exact date was always a matter of debate.
Another baby Lewis (Lew) Wellburn was born to the couple in 1926
My mother shared some clear, but not many, memories of her childhood with me.
Her father, as a coastguard, standing on the cliffs in a huge storm and sheltering her under his great coat. He somehow came to have a paralysed arm and they prayed together over the arm, miraculously it was healed!
Also she told how she and Lew used to play by the stream at Scalby Mills. These were happy days.
The “healing” may have been why the family converted to Catholicism because on 20th February 1931, she was baptised at St Peter's church by the Reverend P Loughran.
This is where things get complicated, it must have been getting tricky at home, because Maud somehow leaves the house, probably now Mayville Avenue, and Bertha Deyes, (also known as Betty and Elizabeth) moves in.
It is very odd that as a “New Catholic” her dad should have soon been living in sin with Bertha right through until 1948, maybe Catholicism was why he didn't divorce Maud or she him.
However the next year my mother and Lew were sent off to a Catholic Children's home, ‘Nazareth House’ in Middlesborough - their records show that she entered on 8th February 1932 and was there till 7th January 1936, it was probably the same for Lew. The priest who recommended them to the home was the same Rev Loughran who babtised them the previous year.
My mother remembered with horror her time at the home and had persistent nightmares about it throughout her life. The horrors especially came back during thunderstorms and would often be of people in a long line being harshly judged as sheep or goats and sent to heaven or hell for all eternity. I believe there were harsh punishments for tiny misdemeanors or wetting the bed, hands were tied in bed at night to prevent "touching yourself", there are books about this particular home and the Sisters of Nazareth in general.
Meanwhile back in Scarborough Lewis Wellburn was now living with Bertha Deyes and they had two children, Wendy, who was born in July 1934. June was born, in her own month, in 1936. Bertha came from Sculcoates in Hull, so I am not at all sure how they met or where poor Maud had gone at this time.
After four years she and Lew were brought back home, her to look after Wendy and the newly-born June. Lew was needed to earn some money.
In 1939 Lewis is living with Bertha Deyes, Joyce, Wendy, and June at 28 Mayville Avenue.
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There are many other puzzling things about this time. I saw an article in the local Scarborough newspaper when Lewis Wellburn was in an open-air theatre presentation of Hiawatha, probably 1947.
The things he claimed to have done must have happened around this time or prior. They include him being captured by the IRA in Ireland. They kept him and another soldier imprisoned naked in a house. Luckily he managed to escape by hitting their captor on the head with a boot before disapearing into the night.
He said he drove the first bus into Scarborough, as well as the first Rolls Royce. He claimed to have a medal from the Society of Pharmacists for his skill in a crash involving a charabanc he was driving which saved the passenger's lives.
He supposedly fought a duel with a Belgian count and was often a leading light in the famous open-air theatre in Scarborough as a swashbuckler. Not sure now how accurate these stories are but I am guessing, not very.
I tried in vain to confirm his escape from the IRA with the "Police Museum" in Belfast- they had no record of him serving in Ireland.
He was a motor mechanic and chauffeur, according to the census, so the driving claims could be true.
My mother said he was a quartermaster of stores in WW2 finding old barns and factories to store essential items in the area near Scarborough and he held a similar post in the Local Council when I met him, probably in 1962.
He certainly showed us around the sheds where the battleships used in mock sea battles on the lake in Peasholm Park were stored and got us a free train ride on the little narrow gauge railway.
As of November 2025 some new facts about him have come to light. In three Election records from 1919 he is marked as "absent for voting" (from 56 Falsgrave Rd) and on two of them, it shows him serving in the Royal Army Service Corps.
He is shown as Private 298843 of the 76th RASC Aux H.P. company on one and at 1st M.T. reserve Depot on another. Sadly its not clear which comes first. The reserve one is a training unit based in Grove Park - but it is unlikely they would be training new drivers at this time, so maybe he is a trainer or helping close the place down. The 76th was in France at various locations
Joyce acted as a mother to Wendy and June and did most of the housework. Unsurprisingly she did not get on well with Bertha, and told me of things, such as when her periods started and she had no idea what was happening. Her stepmother just threw a sanitary towel at her in the bathroom.
She told me how she would go to confession and confess everything sinful she had read about in the bible, things a 12-year-old couldn't possibly do just to be certain she had no sins "on her" should she suddenly die.
However, I do think my mother enjoyed her schooling at St Peter's School. She met Mother Mary Constance who had taught her in Scarborough when I started at Coloma Convent in Croydon as she was now the headmistress there (I went to Coloma, usually an all girls school, from the age of five to eight) and they seemed delighted to meet again and reminisce.
Also, she must have done well at school, as when she left she had qualified for a place at a teacher training course, but very meanly her father would not let her go.
One rare treat for her was being in a school choir that traveled with others from all over the country to London for a concert given in the Royal Albert Hall, it was probably the ‘National Festival’ at the Royal Albert Hall, London on 6th May 1938. Organised by the National Association of Schools Music Festivals, she would have been thirteen.
When she left school she got a job in Boots Lending Library, which she really enjoyed - seen here in a still from Brief Encounter.
When war broke out in late 1939 she moved to being a movie projectionist at the Odeon Cinema (now the Steven Jones Theatre) as men doing the job previously enlisted in the forces.
She told me about how awkward it was to adjust the carbon that needed to arc to give a bright light to show the picture. See above.
It was while doing that job that she met Maurice, my dad, who was training nearby with the Kings Royal Rifles. I think this was at a dance in The Grand Hotel, but it could have been the Olympia. Wendy and I stayed at the Grand last year mostly to see the ballroom- it is huge and grand, as was the hotel (maybe not quite so grand these days), It was at one point the largest in Europe and it is rumored that Hitler planned to use it as his headquarters after Britain was defeated.
End of part one
