Finding Maude Alice Ritchie on the 1939 Register

Documents never cease to amaze me. The 1939 Identity Register taken at the end of September, just weeks after Britain declared war on Germany, is a veritable goldmine of family information, which is why I was so glad when Judy Lester did what I could not and traced Maude Alice Ritchie in that record.

To put this in context, Maude had been separated from her husband David Scott Ritchie Sr since 1909. Her son David, my grandfather, had been cared for by his aunt and uncle, the Smiths, so that she could work. She had been occupied as a cook in domestic service since at least 1911, the year of the census, and possibly many years before that. The First World War had taken place during her late thirties, and she had said goodbye to her son and his wife when they moved to Cape Town, around her 50th birthday. The outbreak of the Second World War and the 1939 Register happened when she was 60.

Thanks to the Register, I now know that Maude was living in a multi-occupancy house at 167 Fernhead Road, Paddington in the first month of the war. From descriptions of Fernhead Road on the internet [bearing in mind I can't read a map[, I gather it runs from Harrow Road in what was then North Paddington through Shirland Road and Fordingley Road. Tall 19th-century houses characterise the area's architecture, nowadays mostly converted into flats. The area is now called Maida Hill and there is a daily market held in the piazza at the intersection between Harrow and Fernhead Roads. Incidentally, the house at number 91 Fernhead Road was the childhood home of the British comedian Norman Wisdom, although he would have been 24 when the register was taken and probably living elsewhere by then.

Maude's neighbours were middle-aged and elderly folk like herself. William and Emily Burge were in their late fifties, he a master builder and she doing "unpaid domestic duties" at home. Edward and Beatrice Winyard were in their late forties, he a porter at a medical institution and she a housewife involved in the preparation of food. The Taylors were a widow and her son, Sarah aged 77 and Stuart aged 39. Stuart was unmarried and a shopkeeper at a grocery store. Maude had no-one living with her and was temporarily without a job. Her entry on the register relating to occupation says "Cook when employed".

This, then, is where my grandfather and his family would have visited her when they travelled from Cape Town to England in the summer of 1939. It is hard to picture my mother at age 4 ascending the stairs of this house full of strangers. I know nothing about Maude's personality, whether she would have hugged the children warmly or maintained a rigid pose befitting of a servant in a well-to-do household. Was she jolly or strict, fond of little ones or disapproving of their playfulness? All I know is that Mom never spoke of her. If Maude encouraged visits to her flat, she certainly didn't make a big impression on her granddaughters.

Photo credit: "Squirrel, Maida Hill, W9: by Ewan Munro.

Locating my maternal grandparents in the first month of World War II

I told in my last post about my grandfather David Scott Ritchie taking his family to England when he travelled on business in 1939. They sailed into Southhampton in July. Then England declared war on Germany on 3 September. I can only imagine their horror at the thought of what this might mean and how they were going to get back to Cape Town.

Since Grandad had meetings to attend in London, however, they could not depart immediately. They stuck to their plans for a holiday in the country and went camping and fossil-collecting instead. We know this because their names appear on the 1939 Register for Seadown Camp , Bridport Road, Dorset. This was another of the records found for me by Judy Lester.

According to the National Archives website, the 1939 Register was taken on 29 September that year. This surprised me as I thought it was taken much earlier in 1939, before war even seemed likely. Swift organisation and hard work must have accompanied the staging of the event and the nation is to be credited for pulling it off in such uncertain times. As for the information gathered, it was used to "produce identity cards and, once rationing was introduced in January 1940, to issue ration books. Information in the Register was also used to administer conscription and the direction of labour, and to monitor and control the movement of the population caused by military mobilisation and mass evacuation."

So to the register entries themselves. Grandad gives his name as David S. Ritchie, his date of birth as 31 March 1902 [the same date that appears on the statutory declaration made in 1918 by his mother Maude], and his occupation as "Electrical Engineer Accountant Machinery". Grandma gives her name as Florence M Ritchie, her date of birth as 28 Dec 1904, and her occupation as "Unpaid Domestic Duties". There are two redacted entries which presumably relate to Auntie Gill and my mother Wendy, aged 7 and 4 respectively.

Although David and Florence were not residents of Bridport Road, it is interesting to note the most common occupations of residents in that area. Men were typically retirees, farm labourers, gardeners, dairy owners, cowmen, general labourers, carters or carpenters. Women were typically involved in unpaid domestic duties, living by their own means, working as housekeepers, school teachers, cooks or house maids, incapacitated or retired. Clearly, this was where folks went to get away from the big smoke.

I'm pleased to see that Seadown Holiday Park is still going strong. According to write-ups and reviews, it offers families a simple, fuss-free holiday a stone's throw from the beach. Dogs are welcome so it could be a nice destination for me and my guide dog Tango when I visit the UK with my sister! Being there will allow us to vividly picture the family in their caravan listening to reports of the war on the radio. Also, to contextualise some oft-repeated stories featuring the campsite that have been handed down to us, but more about those in another post. For now, I'm just chewing on the fact that Mom and Gill were there when war broke out, rather than in far-off Fishhoek. How anxious Grandma must have felt, and how innocent the girls must have seemed as they hunted for shells, built sandcastles and scattered breadcrumbs for the visiting birds.

Photo credit: "West Bay, Bridport [Dorset]" by Michael Day.

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.

Travelling first class from England to South Africa

Grandad had been working for BTM for a couple of years. One day, he was summoned to head office and told he'd been chosen to head up the Cape Town branch, which was an amazing opportunity for a young man of 26. His task was to bring up the staff compliment to 12 and build a solid base for the Hollerith brand in South Africa. I'm guessing he had met his sweetheart by then because he and Sandy [Florence Sanderson] married a year later.

He must have been excited about the prospect of starting a new life with his bride in a faraway land. I imagine he knew something about South Africa as it was a member of the Commonwealth, the location of the Anglo-Boer War and an envisaged growth region for BTM. Yet I wonder what his imagination dreamt up when he thought of living there? Lions and elephants on the streets? Or smart colonial cocktail parties?

The company gave David a first-class ticket to sail on a Union Castle ocean liner to Cape Town. That was when he bumped into Henry, Duke of Gloucester. Apparently, the Duke was stunned into silence by the sight of his double, and Grandad had to scramble to think of what to say in the presence of such an esteemed royal personage. After all, this was the son of King George V, no less. With a polite half-smile and a respectful “How do you do”, my grandfather got past the awkward moment, but as he says in his memoir, “I swear he gave me a wink!”

This is a fascinating anecdote but it’s hard to correlate with the facts. Grandad’s memoir states that the Duke was on route to Lobito Bay on the Atlantic coast to open the Benguela Bay railway. The Benguela Railway was completed in February 1929, sure enough, but there is no record of the Duke of Gloucester being amongst the officials at the opening. What is certain is that Henry and his brother were in Africa in September 1928 on an expedition to shoot big game. It was while in Nairobi that Henry was entertained by Mansfield Markham and his wife Beryl, and where his affair with Beryl is purported to have begun.

Finding passenger lists for people travelling to and from the United Kingdom isn't generally complicated, but for some reason, I haven't been able to track down that first trip of David's in 1928. All his subsequent trips are there [1939 being the most eventful because the family's time in England happened to coincide with the outbreak of war] but then he was sailing as a second-class passenger along with his wife and daughters. So, that first voyage remains something of a mystery. Another one to add to the mounting pile!

Photo by Royal Australian Historical Society