A night at the Strand Palace Hotel

Because I've been doing a series of blog posts based on documents found by professional genealogical researcher Judy Lester, I'm going to stick with her list of findings even though there is a big jump in the timeline at this point. The research brief was to find a birth certificate for my British-born grandfather, David Scott Ritchie. Having located him living with his aunt and uncle in St John's Wood at the time of the 1911 census, the paper trail disappears for close on 3 decades and reappears in 1939.

Judy found a passenger list showing David Scott Ritchie, his wife Florence and 2 daughters arriving at Southhampton from South Africa on 5 July 1939. The ship they were on was called the Pretoria Castle and the address given for their stay was the Strand Palace Hotel in London. Clearly, the British Tabulating machine Company treated its agents well.

Here's some background to fill out the story: Grandad and Grandma left England in 1929. They settled in the small South African town of Fishhoek and Grandad ran the Cape Town office of Hollerith computers. They had two children, my auntie Gill in 1932 and my mother Wendy in 1935. Grandad visited the company's head office in London every 5 years and it was his practice to exchange his first-class business ticket for a second-class family ticket. This, then, was his second trip back to headquarters.

The first time the family returned to England, auntie Gill was a babe in arms. The second time, Gill and Mom were 7 and 4 respectively. I can only imagine what an adventure the sea voyage must have been for them! For Grandma and Grandad, too, sailing into Southhampton and thinking about all the exciting things that lay ahead for the girls must have been thrilling. Not to mention a comfortable first night staying at the Strand Palace Hotel close to the royal palace of King George VI.

Meanwhile, David's mother Maude was still living alone and working as a cook. She would not have had space to accommodate the family from South Africa but they no doubt visited her and took her on outings with them. David's father, on the other hand, had been a patient in the London County Asylum [since renamed St Bernard's Hospital, Southall] for 30 years. Whether David saw him there or not I don't know. Judging from the fact that neither my aunt nor my mother even knew about the existence of a mentally-ill relative though, I suspect not.

Aside from a few days in the office then, this was to be an ordinary summer holiday. There would be beaches to explore, horses to ride, cousins to play with and ice cream and candy floss to eat. But if the family weren't troubled by the presence of a sad lunatic in a mental hospital, they were most certainly troubled by the threat of imminent war with Germany, as I will show in a future post.

Photo credit: "UK-London-The Strand: Art Deco on the River" by Wally Gobetz.