|
|
|
Chapter 1 - page 1
1859 - 1914 - London
The spelling differed in the two women’s names, Catherine Liverton and Katherine Radford, it is difficult to conceive of two women with more contrasting lives, they were my grandmothers.
There were three years difference in age between them, Catherine Liverton the elder being born on July the 19th 1859 and Katherine Radford on the 21st of August 1862, similarly there was three years between their marriages. In the same way as they came from very different backgrounds so their weddings differed, Catherine Liverton’s to Alfred Edward Keen on the 15th of November 1890 in the Independent Chapel at Barnstable would have been a large family gathering. In stark contrast at Katherine Radford’s marriage to James Henry Morris in the ornate Victorian church of St. Bride’s church, Knightsbridge in London on the 26th of March 1894 almost certainly the only member of either family was her aunt Catherine Radford. It is doubtful if her father Henry Giles was still alive. The two marriages would be similarly very different, Catherine’s would be brief and probably not very happy and certainly in financially difficult circumstances, ending with the death of Alfred Keen in 1902, the other would be long, prosperous and very happy, James being devoted to his wife to the day he died, the 1st of June 1929.
|
Alfred in his uniform as a gunner in the Royal Artillery with his brother Edward, a coach painter in Oswestry who later owned his own coach building company. Photo dates c.1886. |
|
Both Catherine Liverton and Katherine Radford were from old Devon families, Catherine Liverton’s father William was the foreman sawyer of a Barnstable timber business, his was a large family with many descendents in the area to this day. Catherine probably never lost her broad Devon accent whilst Katherine Radford most likely, if she had any accent at all held traces of London. Katherine’s father was a carpenter, born in London but returned to Devon when James Radford moved his entire family back to the their hometown of Dawlish. The return to Dawlish may not have suited the whole family for just as soon as he was able Henry Giles Radford, a journeyman carpenter headed back to where he could find work. After the fiasco’s of the Crimean War the British army went through a major reconstruction, a key element being the establishment of the principle army barracks at Aldershot, for artisans such as Henry Giles it must have been the honey pot.
It was the age of Empire, a revolution of steam, of unprecedented social upheaval with the colonization of far off lands. In the village of Wobourn close by Aldershot Henry Giles soon had his girl friend in trouble, they were married in the nick of time before Katherine’s birth, two years later her sister Sophia Charlotte was born. Just exactly what then happened is unclear, (see The Radford Family) records were not always kept or have been lost but in the 1871 census for Aldershot Katherine and her sister Sophia were in an orphanage.
|
