The English Connection Continued

After two years Florrie gave birth to a boy, Martin, but sadly at the age of 41 she died.  Her son was three and her daughter Elizabeth was fourteen and attending a grammar school. Without her mother to encourage her Elizabeth (known as Betty) lost enthusiasm for school. Her sisters had long left the home, and her father allowed her to leave school and take the role of housekeeper and surrogate mother to the child Martin.

This was a dreadful waste of a young life; a teenage girl with such potential, grieving intensely, cut off from her peers to become a domestic servant to a father who had raised her to believe she was born to better things - to middle class aspirations, a life of opportunity and considerately more wealth than she had experienced. It was her birthright, he had insisted!

 

James Bourne had told his daughter Elizabeth many stories about his background and although he shunned family ties and traditions he made sure Elizabeth was aware of her inherited social status in life. He never took his wife and children to meet his relatives.

                                                                     Sister and niece

He was in his fifties when he met her mother and had spent most of his adult life wandering and working from place to place. He more or less turned his back on his family at an early age when he was attending a boarding school. Apparently he had made several attempts to ‘escape’ – not back to his home but to his travels and independence.

At some point when he was young he did marry a woman named Elizabeth, but she died. Daughter Elizabeth did not know this until very late in her life.

James became a skilled brickmaker and considered money was simply a means of living a modest life so when he was informed that he was the sole beneficiary of his family’s estate he refused it. Probably because it might have made demands on him.

                                                      James Bourne second from left

He continued to deny his wife even the basic financial means to provide for her family, except for Elizabeth, so Florrie had to persuade her daughter to cadge from her father so he might contribute as a husband.