The Brown Family My Mother's side
These Four Essays were written by Colin Walden in 1988-9 and I, Michael made one or two minor updates and additions to each one in 2007
The WALDEN Family
My earliest recollections of my fathers family are somewhat hazy. I can remember visiting my grandparents when the lived at 1, Pountney Rd Clapham, just opposite the church of All Saints Lavender Hill. which played such a big part in their lives. I must have been about three years old at the time. I remember my grandfather as being a rather stern man with a walrus moustache. Though it was not obvious to me at the time I understood later from my mother that he ruled his children with a rod of iron and they had to do just as he wanted. He was a carpenter by trade though he may have finished working by the time I knew him. When he died his tools were passed on to me and formed the basis of my collection of tools. He didn't seem to be much interested in his grandchildren, and I thought him a rather grumpy old man. My grandmother died of cancer when I was about five years old, much mourned by my grandfather who said she was a saint, The house was a largish three storey terrace house which they rented.1 believe my grandparents lived on the basement floor. The ground floor was used for bedrooms and the top floor was made into a flat and used by the eldest daughter Kate and her husband Jack. By this time my parents had moved from Clapham out to Carshalton, Also living in Poutney Rd at this time were Harry and Amy. Harry was a cousin of my father but he didn't have much of a job and was considered of little account in the family. His wife Amy was much more out-going and made much more of an impact. I remember she was a heavy smoker always smoking Craven A cigarettes, She died in her forties. I can remember her getting very thin and frail, though whether this was related to her smoking I do not know. Mabel was held in much higher esteem, particularly by my father, something which irritated my mother somewhat. Mabel and her husband Bert Herbecq lived in Nightingale Rd Carshalton and I can remember visiting them when I was young and with Basil, sailing a boat in their fish pond at the bottom of the garden. Bert had fought in the trenches in the war and had been gassed. He never looked very well and he died of the after effects when he was still comparatively young. During the thirty-nine forty-five war Harry and Amy moved to a house, which they rented, next door to Mabel, a move which I believe was not wholly welcome to Mabel. My father's brother Bert had a typing and duplicating business on the corner of Station Approach Clapham Junction. I can remember visiting him there in his office. He had a car from as far back as I can remember and was for a long time the only member of the family who could afford one and was consequently looked up to by the rest of the family, certainly by my father. In the First World War he was a second lieutenant in the army, I believe he fought in Palestine. In the Second World War he joined up again and became a Major. Bert and his wife Florrie never seemed a very happy or well matched couple. Bert always spoke in a joking sort of way and I often heard him complaining to my father About Florries behaviour. I think she was jealous of the girls in his office and I remember hearing once that she had walked in on him behaving as she had always suspected he did. After this she worked in the office as well so that she could keep an eye on him. Despite my fathers admiration for him I never felt comfortable with Uncle Bert. Bert sold my father his Vauxhall 12 FGY 609 in about 1950 and later sold his business to my brothers Brian and Michael before he died. This had only become possible due to the severe decline and consequent loss in value of the business due to Berts illness prior to his death. His wife Florrie died some ten years later. My fathers sister Kate, who was considered to be somewhat simple by the rest of the family, was married to Jack Yule. He was a very happy go lucky fellow who always had a lot to say for himself but who didn't really amount to very much. He had several different jobs at the time when I knew him and he ended up as a porter at a Guildford hospital. In his latter years my grandfather moved down to Guildford to live with his daughter Kate and he died there sometime around 1935. My grandfather's family came from Christchurch near Bournemouth where they had lived for some time. My father spoke of them as having been quite well off, estate agents, I believe, but my mother said that there had been money problems related to drink I believe. She said the family had got themselves a bad name in Christchurch. My father used to say that the family were descended from Scottish kings but I don't think this was very much more than a fanciful idea of his.
The youngest son Leonard (Len) married Linda Watkinson. He must have been quite young when they married. They lived at Wallington on the Butter Hill estate. I remember visiting them there, it must have been soon after the houses were built as the garden was as yet not made up. I can also remember them having as gramophone and playing the Broadway Melody on it. Len and Linda lived in much the same sort of way as my parents. He worked in London at the book publishers Constable for most of his life. Their only son John as killed in a tragic motorbike accident soon after the end of the thirty-nine forty-five war, while in The Royal Air Force working as a navigator on Canberra aircraft, a terrible blow for his parents. They had moved to Thames Ditton by this time and Len died of cancer while only in his fifties.Linda lived on at Thames Ditton for some time before moving into a retirement home in Wallington quite near their first house.
My earliest memories also stretch back to an Uncle Walter who was actually my fathers uncle and who may have been the brother of my grandfather Frederick. My father had an Aunt Emmie who lived with her husband William Capelin in Norwood. I don't remember what relation she was to my father but I suppose she could have been his father's sister, anyway Uncle Billy and Auntie Emmie played a big part in our visits to relatives. She had been in domestic service with some member of a rich Newspaper owning family. Her husband was a bank messenger. Despite what would seem to be their rather lowly positions in life she always seemed to me to live comfortable middle class circumstances. I understand she had been left some money by her former employers and when she died she in turn left some of it to my father who was, I understand her favourite nephew. This enabled my father to pay off the mortgage on our house in Mead Crescent, Carshalton, when my father would have been 43 years old. We often visited her in Norwood when we were young. I believe she died around 1938 and her husband died a few years later in about 1946.
The BROWN Family
My first memories of my mothers family go back to the time when I visited them with her and I suppose Basil when I was about two or three years old. They lived in Clapham though I can't remember the address. It was a Victorian terrace house with a front garden of about 2 yards length and a tiled pathway. The room I remember best is the kitchen which was used as a living room. It had a big black leaded kitchen range which was used for cooking and heating, a large central table and chairs set around. There was a back yard rather than a garden and they kept chickens here. At this time Ernie and Grace were living at home with my grandfather and grandmother.
I know very little of my grandfather, he was certainly living at home when I first went there and I remember him as being rather small and thin. I think he was working as a furniture removal man for a removal company. I think he must have died not long after I first knew him as I have no further memories of him.
My grand mother Rosa lived very much longer and I knew her much better. She seemed to run the family and make all the decisions. She had had eight children, unlike her husband she was large rather than frail and seemed to dominate the house and those within it. After her husband died the rest of the family lived in several different parts of
I understood from my mother that her mothers parents eloped. She told me that my great grandmother was a Jewess and did not have her parents approval to marry but married none the less. Her family name was Cohen.
The eldest daughter in my mother's family is unknown to me. I understand that she went into a mental asylum before I was born and she spent the rest of her life there. Emily the eldest daughter married Rowland Bromage and they had two daughters, Audrey and Stella. When I was very young they were better off than us. They lived in a slightly superior house in Camden Rd. Carshalton. Rowland was somewhat artistic and he had a good job working for a newspaper. Sometime around 1935 he became ill with goiter trouble which after a few years caused him to go blind. He was no longer able to do his job and the family was forced to move to a council house on the Culvers estate nearby. Rowland eventually died in the nineteen fifties. Audrey met and married an American soldier who came over in the war and she went as a G.I. bride to
Ted married Nellie and they lived in Streatham, Longthornton I believe. They had one daughter Jean who didn't marry. When Ted retired they moved to a bungalow near Romsey, but Nellie moved back to
Dorothy married Jack White and the lived in Earlsfield in
Ernest lived at home with his mother and Grace when I was young. He had taken over my mothers job at Dent's when she left and prospered there, eventually becoming a Director. He married Ena and they had two sons, Terence who died of Le
Grace married Jack Jackson who worked for the BBC and who was always (I haven't seen him for many years) a very jolly fellow. They lived in south
Reginald Frederick John WALDEN
Born 4.3.1895 Died 1971
Born I believe at Clapham, where he lived until he was married in 1922 (?) to Alice Violet Brown. He went to a local Lavender Hill school and left aged 14. I don't know where he worked up to the time he joined the forces in the Great War.
During the war he joined the Royal Flying Core, I think late on in the war when conscription was introduced. He served at Crystal Palace as an officers steward, and did not see service abroad as far as I know. He had strong connections with the church of the Ascension Lavender Hill, where his father was at some time a church warden, his brother was the sacristan, and his brother-in-law Jack Yule was the verger.
He spent the majority of his life working as a civil servant in the Inland Revenue starting as a temporary assistant when he left the forces in 1918 and becoming established at sometime in the nineteen twenties, and very pleased to become permanent at a time when it was so very difficult to get work. He worked at various offices of H M Inspector of Taxes finishing eventually as a Tax Officer Higher Grade. He retired in I960 at the age of sixty five.
He was an upright and honest man and was sober and did not have any extra marital affairs as far as I know. He went to church regularly all his life though I think this was more because he enjoyed the music (he was a member of the choir) and the company than because he had any strong religious belief. I never discussed religious belief with him. I think he considered that such things should not be questioned. At home we lived in a way that would have been consistent with having no religious belief at all, no bible reading, no family prayers. Religion was kept entirely for Sundays at church. In the same unquestioning way he was a lifelong supporter of the Conservative party. I would argue with him about this as I was in my youth a supporter of the Labour party.
My father was interested in sport and in his youth he played football and cricket. When I was young he was still playing cricket and I believe he played for the office team or it may have been the church at Lavender Hill. He regularly attended Carshalton Athletic football matches at the local football ground and became a Vice President of it and was proud of the fact although it only required an increased subscription and I can remember going along with him when we were very young. He had a special place in the spartan Grandstand next to the headmaster of our local junior school. When we, his sons, went to grammar school and became interested in rugby rather than football, I think he thought it was rather disloyal of us and there was constant banter between us over the two games. His weekend pleasures would be going to football on a Saturday afternoon and going to church morning and evening on a Sunday. The church, it had to be a high church, was a mile away and every Sunday we, my father and those of his son's who were old enough to sing in the choir, walked there and back to church, thirty minutes each way. My mother necessarily played a much smaller part in this church going as she was left at home to look after the younger children and to cook the dinner, though as the youngest ones got older she did go to Sunday evensong.
He was short sighted from his youth and as far as I know he wore glasses all his life. He was also red green colour blind and had difficulty with traffic lights.
Though his father was a carpenter he was never a practical man himself. He did some house decorating both inside and outside and he was keen on gardening but that was the extent of his practical work. Although he was not well educated he had learned to play the piano when he was young and he could read music and had a good bass voice. He enjoyed music, mostly of the popular kind, such as show music, marches, popular classics and choral music of all sorts. He was certainly not interested in jazz or in crooners.
He considered himself to be middle class rather than working class. He had a white collar job and he spoke with a middle class accent which he passed on to his children. I suppose he got his accent from his father though he may have polished it up himself to some extent. My mother has told me that my father's father exercised a considerable influence over him and his brothers and they were expected to do as they were told even when reached manhood. Maybe my father would 'have liked to exercise the same influence over his sons but he didn't have it. There was a little unease between my parents on the odd occasion when it was my fathers turn to buy his father, his regular, but not frequent bottle of whisky.
He recognised and accepted class divisions and consciously embraced those activities-which he thought were appropriate to a middle class man, including sending his sons to grammar school and paying fees for three of them, or was it that he recognised the importance of a good education, maybe a bit of both.
He died at an Eastbourne hospital after he had had a blood clot in the region of his intestine which caused a considerable part of the small intestine to degenerate and become infected.
Alice Violet BROWN
Born 8.4.1899 Died 1979
My mother lived in Clapham and was born there as far as I know; she certainly went to school there. She was the third daughter in a family of eight, five girls and three boys. She left school at fourteen and must then have gone out to work. I know that she worked at Dent's until she became pregnant. She had persuaded Dents to give her brithe Earnest a temporary job, addressing envelopes. Earnest did so well that my mother was asked to leave some months before she intended so that Earnest could have her job. It was a bitter blow to my parents as they were desperately short of money in the run up to the birth of their first child. I don't know whether she had any other jobs before Dents. From what she told us from time to time she must have enjoyed working at Dents as all here memories seem to have been happy ones. Having gained promotion from filing clerk she was returned there by Hugh Dent because they could not find anyone who could do the job. While she was there she got a large collection of books and she acquired knowledge of the classics which she was always willing to share with her children.
My mother's family must have been quite poor when they were young. Her father is a rather shadowy figure who died when I was still quite young. I believe he had a job as a furniture remover and I believe he had had other jobs before that but never earning much money. My mother's mother, named Rosa, I do know much more about. She was the driving force in the family and exercised a strong influence over them all.
My mother gave birth to five children, one girl who died in infancy and five boys. She was a good mother, kindly and understanding but sometimes severe when she got cross, sometimes threatening to take the copper stick to us but never actually doing it, and giving us boy's a happy childhood. Both my parents were anxious to see that we got on well at school and got a good education but I believe that it was my mother who used to help us to read and to take care of our progress at an early stage.
My mother was to some extent subservient to my father in the family. Although they decided things together I believe my father had the main say. My mother was a housewife from the time she was married until my father died she never had another job which was the normal situation in those times. She didn't always approve of the things that my father did and sometimes complained. She didn't have any activity outside the home whereas my father, apart from his work, was involved with the church and choir both at Benhilton and Lavender Hill. He went to summer scout camps early on, played cricket and did other things which took him outside the home, yet my mother was largely confined to the home. I think she sometimes resented this though whether she would have wanted to go out herself I do not know. Despite her seeming isolation, my mother got on very well with those people she did meet, neighbours, people she met through her children, relations and others. She was probably much more outgoing than her husband.
It strikes me that my mother's background was more working class than my father's though on looking at their respective siblings there is little to choose between them as regards the sort of jobs they had and their social standing in the community. Even though there may have been a difference I think it was a very small one.
After my father died my mother moved to Croydon and lived in a small house she bought there but she was not really happy there and after about three years she moved to live with Brian and Sheila in their house at Ealing. From there she went to work at Brian and Michael's business in Clapham and was quite happy until she died of cancer after an operation in 1979.
