Friday 2 October 2009

Introducing Harry - the bigamist! 1940 the story begins


So I guess by now you are wondering who is the infamous bigamist? Well, Harry Butterworth is his name and he is the handsome suave chap on the left in Rochdale with my father Malcolm Butterworth as a toddler. (Malcolm has just turned a youthful 70 and is still looking good!)

So this would have been about 1940...but Harry already had an eye for the girls as the letters from the past will reveal...Not only that but we have discovered and revealed on the last Anne Diamond show (21.9.09) that Harry was a bit of a fibber!
He made up his qualifications as a civil engineer, he changed the date on his birth certificate using lanry bleach ( a precursor of tippex) and he used different names - Henry David Butterworth and David Henry and Harry being the 3 we know about!
There is plenty more we are discovering about Harry and his naughty pastimes...follow the blog to find out more gossip from the past....

Suffragettes unite!


We are discovering fascinating facts - sometimes not what we expect - Florence Clegg. my great-Grandmother, the possible suffragette may, or may not, have been active at the time.


Some suffragettes boycotted the census and Florence's name was on the 1911 census when Emmeline Pankhurst's campaigning was at its height. She campaigned in Rochdale and Manchester and a lot of mill girls supported her. As Florence was a teacher she may have taught mill girls who were sympathisers. However, we discovered Florence definitely had colleagues at Whitelands College in London - the first teacher training college in the UK - who were likely to be active. Their drawings in Florence's beautiful book from 1901 show symbols of the suffragettes - lilies and women dressed in purple robes.


Florence moved from Rochdale to London - an Edwardian Sloane Ranger! Whitelands College was just off the Kings Road - like my Grandmother, my Aunt and myself who all gravitated to London from Rochdale - how strange that these patterns of behaviour develop without us really knowing why...


This whole process is very strange - I find myself awake at night wondering about all these people I am connected with but do not know...it's as if a whole line of ancestors are standing in a queue waiting for me to ask them questions! And after a fantastic spiritual healing session recently (my Grandmother Olive Butterworth was a real fan of this too!) l am wondering if this experience could get even more spooky....

Research starts in earnest




Well research has taken up a lot of time - visiting the Berkshire Family History society where Derek and Jocie helped me begin to decipher and put together the jigsaw of my family's history with incredibly clever detective work. I got special treatment as it was for the BBC of course! Jocie has over 10,000 contacts on her family tree - I think they should be interviewing her!

So what secrets will the little battered suitcase of letters and memories reveal in the coming weeks?




Wednesday 2 September 2009

In the studio with Anne Diamond




Arriving late at 11am (cutting it a bit fine as the show starts at 11am!) I met Derek Trinder from the Berkshire Family History Society http://www.berksfhs.org.uk/ and we went straight in to meet Anne Diamond who was very welcoming, relaxed and friendly. The programme went at breakneck speed and as usual seemed to go by in a whirlwind of talk, news, music and sport.

Anne said,

'Karen has uncovered a series of compelling mysteries in my family history. Today she's going to to tell us what she already knows and outline the questions she really wants answered about her extraordinary relatives. Derek will offer advice to Karen about where to go next and how to find some answers to her questions'.

We discussed all the threads of the family stories that need to be pulled together and with Derek's help will be confirmed - or thrown out as rumour and family nonsense!

The Big Questions

1) We discussed the fact that Florence Clegg my great-grandmother on my paternal side was rumoured to be a suffragette and used to campaign and protest alongside Emmeline Pankhurst. I would love to find some evidence to verify this and learn more about what my great-grandmother did for the suffragette cause. Florence had studied at Whitelands College in London in the early 1900s and had a first class qualification in Divinity. Her daughter, my grandmother Olive Ashworth went to Leeds University, as I did, but way back in 1932...very academic for those days.

2) Then for the revelation everyone is especially interested in, that my grandfather Harry Butterworth (sometimes called David Henry Butterworth) was married to my grandmother Olive, but he disappeared while serving as a civil engineer in the Far East during the war. Olive later discovered that he had turned up in Portsmouth and married a second wife. I have letters between the two women in which his second wife expresses her shock at finding out that he was already married and movingly describes Harry's death. I really want to find out more about what happened to Harry during the war years when he disappeared, before he later re-emerged on the South Coast. I have lots of letters to delve into and photos to dig up to explore what emotional backlash this unleashed.

3) Who was my maternal grandfather? My mother (now deceased) was born out of wedlock during the war (1942). There would have been huge stigma attached to this and my mother suffered as a result. My grandmother Marjorie Richardson changed her name by Deed Poll to Pennington, but that's the only clue I have to the possible identity of my grandfather.

4) After the war Marjorie worked in an asbestos factory up North in Rochdale where she met a Polish refugee called Franciscez Dudek and they married in 1950. The stories handed down to me suggest that Franciscez was liberated from Dachau Concentration Camp. There are old family photos in which he still looks painfully thin. Marjorie and Franciscez emigrated to Philadelphia but he died shortly afterwards of stomach cancer, thought to be brought on by malnutrition.

I would really like to find out more about Franciscez and how he came to be in Dachau.

FURTHER BACK IN HISTORY

5) Is our family descended from Hugenot nobility? My grandmother Olive Butterworth found a family crest and there is a family legend that the Butterworth's (my father's side) are descended from one Sir Roger De Boitworth, a French knight.

6) I believe the family on my Mother's side are descended from a wealthy family of strict Quakers, linked to Elizabeth Fry. Could this be true?

Then in 3 weeks we go back on BBC Berkshire with other "experts" in their field to reveal what we've been able to find out and to offer some fascinating background to the story of my family.

Tuesday 1 September 2009

The Gift Horse

Well how did all this begin? it was one of those dull drizzly Tuesday mornings where you wish something exciting would happen and just change your life a little....well this Tuesday it did...

The BBC called and asked me to appear on a show in an hour's time...apparently in
2007 I answered an advertisement saying I was interested in researching my family
who are admittedly a pretty intriguing bunch...

Embarrassed I had to admit I had done nothing in two years about the research so declined to appear initially. I went home and got out the little brown battered suitcase with all the airmail letters, photos, alien registration cards, ration books and even a pair of spectacles...I looked through the spidery handwriting and dusty remains of my ancestors' mystery lives and began to wonder and regret declining the offer from the BBC - looking a gift horse in the mouth and all that...if only someone would just come along and do all that investigation work for me...

Then to my surprise a little later a very nice gentleman, (quite posh) from the BBC rang again asking if I would appear on a two-part show, with Anne Diamond to look at all the questions I have about my family...on BBC Radio Berkshire at 11am Sept 1st 2009.

I would be accompanied by an expert in research who would look at my family history and go off and try and answer the questions I have and then in 3 weeks come back and put the jigsaw together again. Just like the BBC TV programme I love 'Who do you think you are?'...soon I would know much more about all those naughty and nice ancestors of mine!

YES! my answer was easy this time as it seems my wishes were answered and how exciting to be part of such a journey of exploration.

First I had to go off and speak to my father, brother, aunts and uncles and explore with them the details and check they were ok with me discovering these details, sensitive in many areas as you will soon see.

It took time but it was lovely to chat and discover how each of them had a little more of the jigsaw to piece together. Then it was time gather more information and to look again in the battered brown old suitcase stuffed with letters, telegrams, birth, marriage and death certificates

...what more would I discover? Already I was finding out things that were making me uncomfortable...

All of the relatives already have become much more alive and real to me.. I am losing sleep thinking about them all - how crazy is that?

Now I am ready - it's the morning of the first interview and off I go - soon I will begin this journey to find out who I really am...