MY FAMILY

This daguerratype photograph is my Great-Grandfather, his wife and her daughter and my Grandad and was taken some time between 1890-93.  The story of them is rather sketchy and I have to rely on what I`ve been told as opposed to any research. The gentleman on the right is Robert, my Great-Grandfather, the small boy Charles, my Grandfather.  The woman was married to my Great-Grandfather, of that there is no doubt.  But I have been told my my 90 yr old Aunt that she was NOT my Grandad`s mother. I haven`t seen my Aunt for a while and cannot confirm anymore details than I already have been told.  I gather that when Charles was about two years old his mother died.  Robert remarried and his wife, Ethel I think her name was, who I assume was a widow, brought up Charles as her own son, along with her daughter whose name I don`t know but for the purpose of this entry we`ll call Ellen.  I  think she was about 11yrs at the time.   

William was a in the sergeant in the Metropolitan Police in Dulwich,London before moving the family to Langley, Slough to take up the post of village policeman.  His strict, strait laced wife Ethel, lived a rather comfortable, but very religious life with her ready made family.  Ellen was a very spoilt child by all accounts and didn`t get on with Charles at all.   She never married and Charles totally despised her all his life.  She wasn`t very old when she died but my Aunt remembered her and said she was not a nice woman.  I know no more of William and Ethel only that she outlived her daughter and husband and was considered by my father and aunts and uncles to be an absolutely terrifying woman, even though she was barely five feet tall.

Charles went on to be very good at sports and art. He played football and cricket, and years later when he gave up playing he became a football referee.  He sold many of his water colours and a few pastels.  We have two of his works that were left to me.  They are signed and dated 1952 and 1950.  They are reproductions of John Constable`s work and have been examined by an art expert who told me that they are excellent.   Charles served in WW1 as a stretcher bearer in the Royal Army Medical Corps.  He was medically discharged in 1919 after seven years military service.

He married my grandmother and went on to have five childen including my own father.  He outlived my gran, remarried and died aged 89yrs in 1976.