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 near York (coincidently where I went to University for three years), her grandfather Wilson Lonsdale was just 3 months old at the time of the 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 in 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 elder brother William then aged 40.
In 1871 or 1872, he met Josephine Buck Sangwin, living in Hull at ‘Spring Bank’, 13 West Parade.
They had an illegitimate boy, James, in 1873, who subsequently and sadly died.
Then, in 1875, in Durham, the pair married and 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.
In 1911 They are still there
Now, for the father of Joyce, Lewis Wellburn. His father, William Henry, was born in 1870 at Fylingdales (where the huge golf ball like radar domes are now), but he became a village policeman in Cayton, it is a small village near Scarborough. In 1897 he married Nellie Smith in Scarborough.
Lewis, my grandfather, was born in June 1898, and by 1901, they were living at 13 Saint Thomas St, Scarborough.
In 1911 they were at 56 Falsgrave Road, Scarborough, William Henry with his wife Nellie and Lewis, 12 Clifford, 8, and Ivy, 2.
At the age of twenty two Lewis meets and marries Maud Lonsdale, four years his elder, in the winter of 1920, and the next census in 1921 finds the pair living with Maud’s mother Josephine, now a widow, and sister Lottie in Prospect Rd. Lewis is working for Robinson Motors Ltd. as a driver.
This is a Maxwell charabanc belonging to Edgar Robinson, who traded as Royal Blue from the station yard at Scarborough. The business became Robinson Motors Ltd and was sold to London & North Eastern Railway in 1929.
Sadly, Josephine Buck Lonsdale died in January 1924, just before she would have met her granddaughter Joyce, who was born on February 24th (or 23rd, or 25th - so close to midnight was it)
Another baby, Lewis (Lew) Wellburn, was born to the couple in 1926.
My mother shared some clear memories of her early childhood with me. Her father was a coastguard, or at least standing on the cliffs in a huge storm and sheltering her under his great coat.
Also, how she and Lew used to play by the stream in Scalby Mills. These were happy days.
The family somehow converted to Catholicism, which may be linked to what my mother told me about a "miraculous" healing. In the 1931 cencus Lewis is described as "incapacitated" and my mother told me she and her father prayed over his paralysed arm and it recovered.
Anyway, on 20th February 1931, she was baptised at St Peter's church by Reverend P Loughran.
This is where things get complicated. It must have been tricky at home because Maud somehow leaves the house, probably now 28 Mayville Avenue and Bertha Deyes, (also known on the census 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 to 1948, maybe catholicism was why he didn't divorce Maud.
However, the next year my mother and Lew were sent off to Catholic Children's homes, ‘Nazareth House’ in Middlesbrough for my mother and one in Hull for Lew - the records show she entered on 8th February 1932 and was there till 7th January 1936, it was probably the same for Lew in Hull.
Meanwhile, back in Sarborough, Lewis Wellburn, living with Bertha Deyes had two more children, Wendy, who was born in July 1934, and June, who was born in her own month in 1936.
My mother remembered with horror her time in the home and had recurring 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 for tiny misdemeanors and sent to heaven or hell, for eternity, accordingly.
For four years, she and Lew were "inmates" there; she told me she was eventually brought home to look after Wendy and the soon-to-be-born June, as Bertha couldn't cope. Lew was needed back to "bring some money into the house" by getting a job.
In 1939 Lewis is living with Bertha Deyes (Shown incorrectly on the return as Elizabeth Wellburn), Joyce, Wendy, and June at 28 Mayville Avenue.
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. 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 escaped by hitting their captor on the head with a boot before escaping into the night.
He said he drove the first bus into Scarborough as well as the first Rolls Royce. He got a medal from the Society of Pharmacists for his skill in a crash involving a charabanc he was driving, which saved the passengers' lives.
He supposedly fought a duel with a Belgian count and was often a leading light in the 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 even 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 warehouses to store essential items in the area around Scarborough, and he held a similar post with 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. Everyone seemed to know and like him.
So what had happened to Maud, and the other question is how did he meet Bertha and why bring her from Hull to live “in sin” with him?
During this time, 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, she had no idea what was happening, and 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 The Convent of the Ladies of Mary. She met Mother Mary Cuthbert, who had taught her in Scarborough when I started at Coloma Convent in Croydon (I went there from the age of five to eight).
Mother Mary Cuthbert was by then headmistress at Coloma and they talked for ages of the past while I read an Ant and Bee book. They seemed delighted to meet again and reminisce. Joyce had done well at school as this scholarship for five pounds (almost Four hundred in today's terms) testifies.
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 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 - one is 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 the men doing the job had enlisted in the forces.
She told me about how awkward it was to adjust the carbon rods that needed to arc to give a bright light to show the picture. See the rods and a typical projector 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 to see the ballroom - it is huge and grand as was the hotel then, at one point the largest in Europe, and it is rumored that Hitler planned to use it as his headquarters after Britain was defeated.
On the night of 19/20 August, 1940, enemy aircraft were active over Scarborough for several hours as she was trying to make her way home through the cemetery at the end of Mayville Avenue. She remembers well how scared she was, crouching by a grave as explosions rang out all around. The worst feature of this air raid was the first Nazi use of yellow-coloured parachute flares. Fifty of these flares were counted as they floated down, lighting up the town and district.
