family – Page 2 – A little bit of this ~ A little bit of that

The pommie mafia

January 23, 2016April 7, 2021 ToniLouisaLeave a comment

The photo below was given to me by my relative Margaret Creighton who lives in Australia. It shows my great great grandparents Charles and Emily Abram (nee Hutchings) pictured front and centre, with their youngest daughter Violet, seated in between and surrounded by many of their children. Margaret’s father was Reginald (Reg) Abram and is pictured on the back row of the photo. When Margaret gave me the photo, she told me her husband used to refer to it as ‘the pommie mafia’.

Back row, from left to right: Will, Frank, Walter, Mabel, Albert, George, Louis, Reg, Will (Millie’s husband), Bet-Martha (Louis’s wife), George (Frank’s son),
Front row, left to right: Gladys (daughter), Alice (Will’s wife), Vera (Will’s daughter), Emily, Violet, Charles, Kit (Albert’s wife) Gwen (Albert’s daughter), Millie, Annie (Frank’s wife)

Further information about Charles and Emily’s children can be found below.

It is believed there were at least two other siblings that died. One was a female named Mary, the other was a male but his name is not known. A newspaper article from 1930 at the time of Charles and Emily’s Golden wedding anniversary records there were fourteen children, with six of these serving in the Great War and all of them returning home.

Golden wedding announcement: Northampton Chronicle and Echo, 24 March 1930

When asked about the photo above in her 100^th year, Violet re-called a number of things. The photo was taken not long after Walter and Mabel’s wedding and one of the brothers, George had come over from America to visit. The dress that Violet wore was blue velvet.

Charlie Abram, my great grandfather, was not in the photo because he was in Africa serving in the war. Violet remembered that Charlie had been married prior to marrying my great grandmother Millicent May Bowers and that his first wife had been a ‘dark skinned lady’. (Records show that Joseph’s first wife was Lucy Thompson, her father was William was a gardener and her mother was called Harriet. Joseph and Lucy married on 16 April 1906).

Violet said she was about the same age as Gladys (Frank’s daughter) but Gladys had died aged 29. She noticed that Theresa, who they called Sis, wasn’t in the picture but she couldn’t remember why and that Kit and Albert’s son Sonny had also died young but was unsure at what age.

After the war, Charles and Emily and my great grandparents Charlie and Millicent settled in England but many of the family emigrated to Australia. Violet re-called that Rose (Kathleen) was not in the photo as she was already in Australia – she had left with her husband, an Australian soldier, around 1919. Reg followed in approximately 1922 – 1923 and Louis, Bet-Martha and Violet left around Christmas 1924, arriving in Australia on 9 February 1925. George didn’t want them to go and had tried to convince them along with Charles, Emily and other family members to go to America.

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Mum and dad

January 23, 2016June 27, 2016 ToniLouisaLeave a comment

My mum and was born in Biggleswade (sometimes referred to as Giggleswade in our family) in 1948. Biggleswade is the home of Jordans cereals and at one time it was recorded that it had 52 pubs. (Mum has told me on several occasions that her Uncle Arthur once saw a ghost skating on Biggleswade pond … there may be a connection between the ghost and the number of pubs).

Mums parents were Ellen Brooker and Frederick Charles William Payne. Mum had two sisters who were twins – Pamela Ann and Freda, seven years older than herself but Freda died when she was only three days.

Mum spells her name Diane but on her birth and baptism certificates, her name is spelt Dianne. The house she grew up in was known as a pre-fab and was one of more than 150,000 prefabricated buildings built all over the UK between 1946 and 1948 to rehouse ex-servicemen and their families or bombed-out people. They were only supposed to last 10 to 15 years but many are still standing.

Mums first job was working for a company called Kayser Bonder in Biggleswade as a sewing machinist, she also worked for Skirtex as a sewing machinist and Electrolux as an amateur winder, both in Luton. As a sewing machinist she did piece work, a type of work which pays a fixed rate for each unit produced or action performed regardless of time. After having my sister and me, she worked as a childminder and later worked for Tesco and Mothercare. On retiring, she took up quilt making, something she had always wanted to do and it turns out she is amazing at it.

Dad was born in August 1944, the only child of my grandparents Louis Bowers Abram and Delia Eileen Clarke. When he was young dad spent a lot of time at airfields watching aircraft and was a member of The London Gliding Club in Dunstable. In his late teens he became an airport fire security officer, which was the starting point for 35 years as a fire/security officer protecting people, fine arts (including works by Leonardo da Vinci), power stations and research facilities. The roles were very active and often involved climbing vertical ladders of 90 – 100 feet.

Dad told me his earliest memory is aged three – four years old sitting on the tailboard of a removal lorry with a wire haired fox terrier, moving from a city side street house in Northampton to a bungalow in the Northamptonshire countryside, two miles from the nearest small town with open country side front and back. When he was younger he also enjoyed CB radio and later progressed to ham radio, studying with City and Guilds to obtain the required licence and becoming involved with local scout group who had a radio jamboree once a year.

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Big sis, little sis

January 17, 2016April 17, 2016 ToniLouisaLeave a comment

My sister Rachel and I were born a little over two years apart. I was born at mum and dads then home in Luton and Rachel was born in hospital in Chester. Despite being two years older, it did often feel like Rachel came into the world running (there was just so much to learn about), whereas, I took things much slower – mum thought she was going to have me a week or so before she did but it seems I had a think about things and decided to wait a while longer … to this day i am a dotting your i’s crossing your t’s kinda of a gal.

I remember Rachel getting into a fair few scrapes – using her teeth to get out of her cot; a visit to accident an emergency when she ran head first into Stuart McClleland in the school playground (coming off worst with a black eye); coming home from infant school with her cream waistcoat covered in paint; then there was the time she took a liking to my Pluto toy and tried to eat him, managing to bite through the plastic. Needless to say Pluto didn’t recover. She was really much too young to know what she had done but somehow has never been allowed to forget what she did.

My childhood seems to have been less eventful, I was much happier in a corner with my head in a book, although I had my moments too. I remember pulling the legs off a plastic spider when Rachel annoyed me one time and throwing her Darth Vader toy out of the window to see if he could fly.

Despite our differences though, she is always the person I have the most fun with and I have very happy memories of the many things we have done together.

Love ya loads little sis.