I never knew my paternal Grandmother EDNA MURIEL ANNE SPARKES’ (Nee French), Margret Anne (nee Cox) as she died giving birth to her fifth child at age 36 in her cottage home at ‘Blue Row’, Swerford, Oxon, in 1911 when my father, Nelson (her eldest child) was 8 and his sisters, Edna (5) and Margery (3). There had also been another son, Dudley, born between Nelson and Edna, who died aged nine months. The baby, Susan, was subsequently brought up by my Grandfather – aided by his children – until Grandfather William was to remarry Ellen five years later – but his new wife was not prepared to take on his existing family. In 1918 they had twin daughters, Elsie and Dorothy, though my poor Grand-father suffered yet another loss – Dorothy died at just at 2 weeks old. It was not uncommon with the working classes around the year 1911 that Nelson, Edna and Margery were destined to life in the Orphanage earlier established by Doctor Barnardo.
I don’t know quite how, but my father ‘got wind’ of the plot being hatched and aged 14 walked the three and a half miles into Banbury and stowed away on a London-bound mail train, intent on making his own way in the world, rather than be Orphanage-bound. Two years after entering the Orphanage my Dad’s youngest sister, Margery, contracted meningitis and died at the tender age of 7, leaving Edna, aged 10, away from her family and, presumably, feeling completely alone in the world. She was to continue living at Barnardo’s for another four years until 1921 when it was the Orphanage’s policy to empty their overflowing Homes and (following the British Government’s earlier lead when the very first convoy of sixteen convict ships unloaded their human cargo at Botany Bay, New South Wales, in 1899) – continued to ship their ‘unwanteds’ on a six -month, all-expenses paid sea voyage to the Antipodes!
At the age of 14 Edna was earning her meagre living in the Sydney area, working ‘in service’, and later as a cook on a Sheep Station. I don’t know much of her history, except that she had her first child, William, (after marrying ‘Bill Holder’) when she was 28 in 1935 (my first-cousin, Bill, and later, Valerie and John. She thought she was happily married, though it transpired that her ‘husband’ had another wife and family on another Sheep Farm, and he was subsequently sent to gaol for bigamy; leaving my Aunt Edna a single parent with three young children – so ‘history was to repeat itself’ with her own Children’s Home experience, as her two sons were also confined in one for the duration of the Second World War, since she was obviously working every day and there was no Welfare State in Australia.
Although my Father corresponded regularly with his estranged sister for around sixty years, they never ever did meet again – although they always hoped to “next year”… Eventually it was my pleasure to visit my Australian family ‘for him’. One of the early joys of my stay at my cousin Bill’s home in Rockdale, Sydney, was to pour over old (mostly) black/white photographs – some dating back to the 1940’s – which my parents had sent out to proudly show off their own family, and many of which I had never seen before.
My cousin and his wife, Loretta, took five weeks holiday to be with my twin sister and I every day and drive us wherever we wanted to go – remembering that Australia is rather large and usually it’s about a 6-hour drive to any ‘next town’; so we were up and out every day ‘doing’ the sights of N.S.W. (including a sea-plane trip of 45-mins over the Opera House (Jorn Ulzon’s Swedish design, 1959- 1973) and the famous Harbour Bridge (1923-1932 – the second largest free-spanning bridge in the world); getting a bird’s-eye view of the area surrounding the Harbour (known as’ Circular Quay’) with its cosmopolitan audience bemused by Aboriginals entertaining us from a hard brick pavement platform with their ‘diggery-doos’.
One of our most memorable day trips was to view The Blue Mountains, heading to-wards the Australian ‘Highlands’ (which, indeed, scenically resemble our own), and be overawed at the natural undulating landscape whose every inch was packed with Eucalyptus trees – ‘the lungs of the world’! The oil in these trees vapourises when heated by the sun and emits an eerie blue haze – hence the name. When we arrived on the 5th October it was about 25-degrees, and the start of the Aussie Spring. We were to be based there for 5 weeks, and when we left, the first week in November, it was hotting up to between 26-30 degrees, and the beautiful Jacaranda trees were brightening up any space in the landscape with their sugar-pink blossom. On picnics we often enjoyed the company, at our tables, of Laurakeets (very tame) -who look as though an artist has painted them in the brightest reds and blues in his palate! My favourite sound was of Laughing Kukaburras – much more pleasing than the screech of wild Sulphur-crested, pure white, Cockateels . Two flocks of these live in the confines of the Botanic Gardens, a public space hugging about ten acres of the harbour shore, along with noisy grey and red Parakeets who gather ready for roosting around 4-pm as (until their ‘daylight saving’ time change at the end of October) it gets dark around 6-p.m. (which took some getting used to!)
So, the reunion of two – although not the actual, of course – family souls did joyfully take place in 2005, satisfying a virtual century’s need to be reunited which had existed since that day in Swerford, Oxon during the First World War when my Grandfather had been forced to choose between struggling to survive and remaining loyal to his first family; or starting a new life with a new wife. The sadness of it all is that she (Ellen) was not happy to care for his offspring so they were removed from the family’s care -having such disastrous consequences on the lives of my ancestors.
Edna Sparkes (2006)
