Tag: Whale

The Marriotts Part III

Linda Swinburne

So, by late September 1918 (just a few weeks before WW1 ended on 11 November) four of the ten children born to Elizabeth Louisa Whale and Sidney Randolph Robert Allies Marriott had been killed fighting in various countries around the World. One was 27, two were 23 and one 22. What a devastating loss and one that must have been difficult for all the family to bear but particularly Elizabeth and Sidney.

Elizabeth was already the only surviving child of William Whale and Elizabeth Rose. Elizabeth had had four sisters and a brother but all of them died either in infancy or as young adults. Elizabeth’s father had died aged just 40 leaving her and her Mother alone.

After her marriage to Sidney, children follow year on year almost and as I said in Part I, the Marriotts seem to live a fairly grand life in nice houses in what are now London Boroughs but in what would then have been leafy suburbia.

After WWI had finished, Elizabeth continued to live in Streatham, South West London until the time of Sidney’s death in 1924 when Sidney’s Last Will and Testament details that all his estate would be left to his wife Elizabeth.

When Elizabeth died, two years later in 1926 aged 73, she is living with her son Claude and his family in their house in Horsell in Surrey. A very grandly named “Cintra”.

But it is Sidney’s life after WWI which gives us more of an insight into the effect of the loss of their sons I think.

Sidney had obviously been a very capable and educated man. He had held a high ranking post in the Civil Service. He had a large and well provided for family.

Sidney Randolph Robert Allies Marriott

After he retired from Whitehall, it seems he held a reservist post as Quartermaster of the London Volunteer Regiment during WW1. The Quartermaster generally runs the Stores and Barracks for a Regiment and holds the rank of Captain or Major. Sidney is noted as such on his youngest child, Kenneth’s, Last Will and Testament in which Kenneth leaves his Estate to Sidney when Probate is granted in 1919.

Sidney died in 1924 aged 78. But when he died, his address is given as one in Herne Bay on the Kent coast and the place of his death is the Kent County Asylum in Chartham, Kent.

Sidney Robert Randolph Allies’ Death Certificate

Regrettably, none of the records for this institution survive so it is difficult to know what Sidney’s diagnosis might have been or when exactly he was admitted. But certainly I can guess. I suspect (and so will you I should think) that the loss of his four boys one after the other in the brutal fighting of the War was just too much to bear and Sidney needed to be cared for in a specialist facility where he finally died away from his family and most sadly, his wife of 46 years. How very sad and what a lesson about the toll that War takes on families. Not just the obvious needless loss of life but the enduring effects of loss and sadness.

Just before I go. A quick word about Sidney’s Father, Thomas Weatherley Marriott (1791 – 1857). Thomas was a Barrister. In 1823, a year before Thomas Cubitt struck his deal with Lord Grosvenor and began his famous work in Belgravia to set out and build Eaton Square, a tract of land that formed part of the Moreau family property further to the West was sold for development to a John Betts and Thomas Weatherley Marriott.

Betts and Marriott proceeded to design and develop a simple grid of streets and a square with a connection to Brompton Road. Hampered by a lack of access to Kensington Road, Thomas Marriott struck a deal a few years later with Lord Dungannon to buy land to the east which provided access to the neighbouring Trevor Place and upwards to the north. And thus, Montpelier Square was formed. Properties there today sell for £8m plus. A direct relative of the Marriotts (from Shirley Marriott’s line in Australia who has provided the photographs I’ve used on these blog posts) with whom I’ve been corresponding on Ancestry.com tells me that any money that Thomas had in order to buy this prime real estate in Knightsbridge dried up after the development. No fortunes to be handed down through the Marriott line it seems.

So that’s me done with the Marriotts. What a family. Such stories and sadness. Lives lived and lives lost. Of a whole family changed by WW1. I think the distraction in this case was well worth it.

As always, thank you for reading this post.

The Marriotts Part II

Linda Swinburne

So I was telling you that there was trouble ahead for the Marriotts when they were all pictured together in 1908 at Claude’s wedding.

But not for them all. Six of the ten Marriott children survived WW1.

Arthur Weatherley Trevenan Marriott did not marry and did not serve in WW1. Like two of his brothers, he followed his Father Into the Civil Service and became, like his Father, an Admiralty Clerk.

Arthur and his sister Madeleine were made co-Executors of their Uncle’s Will in 1924 and Arthur seems to have lived his life after receiving this inheritance in a hotel in West Kensington in London.

Arthur died from heart failure in Charing Cross Hospital in Hammersmith in 1943 aged 64 . You will recall from Part I that he is buried in Nunhead Cemetery along with his sister, Madeleine. Arthur was the seventh and last burial in the family plot.

Madeleine Delano Marriott also did not marry and after receiving her half of her Uncle’s estate, she bought a guest house in Hammersmith in West London.

Madeleine died in Hammersmith Hospital aged in 1941 aged 61 from “Acute Bacterial Food Poisoning due to consumption of contaminated food at her home”. Post Mortem Verdict – Misadventure. Goodness.

Madeleine was the sixth burial in the family plot in Nunhead Cemetery.

Claude Randolph Marriott also became an Admiralty Clerk (like his Father and brother, Arthur) and latterly an Engineer. He married a Naval Architect’s daughter and lived rather grandly it seems in large houses in Surrey. Claude died in 1959 aged 77.

Ethel Clara Marriott married twice. Her first marriage produced a daughter who went on to be Headmistress of the International School in New Delhi, India from 1954 – 1980. Ethel was widowed in the early 1950s, remarried in 1953 and she and her husband travelled frequently to see her daughter in India.

Widowed again in 1969, Ethel lived out her life with her daughter who had come back to the UK after her retirement. Ethel died aged 99 in 1982.

Kathleen Mabel Marriott married and had two sons. She died aged 80 in South Africa. I have no idea how this came to be but there it is.

Weatherley Sidney Mortimer Marriott served in WW1 in the 25th London (Cyclists) Regiment. Weatherley married twice. His second wife died in 1950 and left him a substantial amount of money. Afterwards he is to be found travelling extensively around India and the Far East. Weatherley died in 1969 aged 81.

But the four youngest children of the Marriott family, all boys, all died in WW1.

Shirley Verdon William Marriott (no clue about why he was named Shirley …) married a Hilda Maybury on 5 November 1913 in Wandsworth Register Office. The very next day the two of them got on the steamer, SS Ballarat and sailed for a new life in Adelaide, Australia where Shirley became a Woollen Warehouseman’s Assistant. Shirley and Hilda had two sons born in 1914 and 1916.

In that same year, Shirley enlisted in the Australian Army and embarked overseas in April.

Shirley Verdon Marriott in his Australian Army Uniform

Shirley was sent to France and died in the Somme Valley in Northern France on 9 August 1918 aged 27. He is buried in the Heath Commonwealth War Graves Military Cemetery, Harbonnieres, Department de la Somme in the Picardie Region of France. But before he was buried in this cemetery, his colleagues (presumably) buried him in the Somme Valley in the mud and filth that the soldiers had to endure. This is Shirley’s original grave in the Somme. Such a tragically sad photograph. His hat seems particularly poignant.

Roy Dudley Marriott boarded a ship to Cape Town, South Africa when he was 19 in 1913 to start a new life as a Farmer.

In 1916, he joined the South African Army and was sent with Allied troops to attack the Germans in the heart of their territory known as German East Africa. Roy died in June 1916, aged just 23, in Tanzania (formerly Tanganyika) and is buried in the Commonwealth War Grave Cemetery in its capital, Dar es Salaam.

Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Osborne Delano Marriott served as a Cyclist in the 25th London Regiment (as had his brother, Weatherley), then as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Prince of Wales Own (West Yorkshire) Regiment before being promoted to Captain in the Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding) Regiment.

Osborne was sent to France in 1915 and died in August 1917 also aged 23. He is remembered on the Tyne Cot Memorial in West-Vlaanderen in Belgium, a monument to the missing of WW1 who have no known grave. Most of these casualties died in or around the fighting in Ypres, Belgium.

The Tyne Cot Memorial, West-Vlaanderen, Flanders, Belgium

Kenneth Melbourne Hugh Marriott was the youngest of the Marriott children.

Kenneth served in WW1 in 25th London (Cyclists) Regiment (as had his brothers Weatherley and Osborne) then the 1st West Riding Regiment and then the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force where he attained the Rank of 2nd Lieutenant.

Kenneth died, aged just 22, in Palestine (now Israel) which was then part of the Turkish Empire. Kenneth is buried in the Commonwealth War Graves Military Cemetery in Jerusalem.

Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery, Jerusalem, modern day Israel

Gosh, didn’t the Marriott boys get flung far and wide? The World War really was the World War for them wasn’t it? From Australia to France, South Africa to Tanzania, London to Belgium and Palestine. And in all the four. locations that are their final resting places, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission keeps the graves looking pristine, ordered and dignified. Never Forget.

But what about their parents? What happened to them? And how did they cope with this devastating sorrow and loss of their four. youngest sons?

Part III coming soon.

The Marriotts Part I

Linda Swinburne

Cards on the table from the start. I am not related to the Marriotts. They are a total distraction. But they are so, so interesting.

How is there at least a connection?

My 3 x paternal Great Grandfather, Herbert Ball, married twice. He is the Father of Herbert Cannon Ball, the subject of my Blog post last October (2020).

But my blood line runs through from Herbert and his first wife who died when she was fairly young. Herbert married again. this time to a much younger woman (sighs …).

Herbert’s second wife was called Mary Whale and she and Herbert went on to have another family. I was looking for Mary’s death when I lighted upon her siblings. One of whom was her brother, William Whale.

William and his wife, Elizabeth, are buried in Nunhead Cemetery in South London, one of London’s “Big Seven” Victorian cemeteries (the seven include Highgate which most people have heard of but not many have heard of Nunhead which is just as lovely).

William Whale had married an Elizabeth Rose. William and Elizabeth died in 1867 and 1880 respectively. The grave also contains three of their children who died young or in infancy from about 1857 to 1874. So far, so normal (sadly, at least for the mid 19th Century).

Weirdly though, there were two other burials in 1941 and 1943, some 60 years later, of apparently unconnected people also in the same grave.

The names of these people were Arthur Weatherley Trevanon Marriott and Madeleine Delano Marriott. Gosh I thought, what grand names. Who could these people be? And so started a 6 month distraction with people to whom I am entirely unrelated.

There is an official term for this behaviour. It is documented in a recent Newsletter of the Society of Genalogists. It is known as “Genealogical Attention Deficit Disorder”. Or the freedom to pursue whatever looks interesting. So here we go.

I started with William, to see if I could link the Marriott burials with him.

William Whale (1827 – 1867) was the publican of this pub, The Crown in Southwark from at least 1851 until his death in 1867. The photo below was taken in 1851, so William and his family may well be seen standing proudly outside.

The Crown, 31, Lant street, Southwark in 1851

William and Elizabeth had five children. Only one, Elizabeth Louisa Whale, survived beyond 16.

Elizabeth Louisa Whale was born in the pub in 1853. She lived with her family until she married in 1878.

Elizabeth’s marriage was to the very grandly named Sidney Randolph Ronald Allies Marriott who was a Clerk to the Admiralty. This turn of events is very unusual for a girl from Southwark in the mid 19th Century. Most married Labourers or Dock workers. But not for Elizabeth. A high ranking senior Civil Servant working in Whitehall no less.

But more importantly for this post. Aha. There it is. The connection to the name of the people buried with William Whale and Elizabeth Rose. Marriott. I was sucked in. Hope you are too.

Elizabeth and Sidney lived their life in very grand houses in Brixton or Streatham, both of which were wealthy, green and leafy suburbs of London in those times. They go on to have ten children. Yes, ten. None die in infancy. There are servants and Nurses. Elizabeth has her first child at 24 and her last at 44.

It is though, the children’s names that are quite extraordinary (there’s even a boy called Shirley …and Delano appears a couple of times. Delano was Sidney’s mother’s maiden name).

Arthur Weatherley Trevenon Marriott (1879 – 1943)

Madeleine Delano Marriott (1880 – 1941)

Claude Randolph Marriott (1882 – 1963)

Ethel Clara Marriott (1883 – 1982)

Kathleen Mabel Marriott (1884 – 1964)

Weatherley Sidney Mortimer Marriott (1887 – 1969)

Shirley Verdon William Marriott (1891 – 1918)

Roy Dudley Marriott (1893 – 1916)

Osborne Delano Marriott (1894 – 1917)

Kenneth Melbourne Hugh Marriott (1897 – 1918)

And here they are … at Claude’s wedding in 1908.

They’re a handsome bunch. And they look very well to do. Look at those hats the women are wearing. The height of Edwardian sophistication.

And it is the two eldest children, Arthur and Madeleine who were buried in the family grave in Nunhead with grandparents and Aunts they had never met.

But if you’re observant, you will have seen there was a cloud looming for not only for Britain but particularly the Marriotts whose four youngest children all died fighting in World War I.

I hope you can hang on for my next instalment about the Marriotts. coming very soon. If you “like” my Blog, you’ll get notified when the next post comes. Promise to be more regular with my stories than I have been recently.

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