How I came to discover it is of no importance, however, I have found a grave error in one of the stories I submitted to the Blog last year.
This was in the story of the Pownall family of 67, High Lane posted on the 17th June, 2020. In the interests of historical accuracy, I thought I should own my mistake and put the record straight.
The story concerned Dr. Arthur Edward Pownall and his wife Marianne Elizabeth Ada (née Du Terreaux) but more especially the subsequent lives of their five children. It is in one of these that the error was made. The fourth child, George Noel Du Terreaux was born on Boxing Day, 1887. He studied engineering at The University of Manchester, qualifying in July 1914 and moved to Bristol to work in its fledgling aircraft manufacturing industry.
He returned to Manchester to marry his first wife Dorothy Marguerite Heslop, the daughter of a prominent Manchester surgeon, at St. Gabriel’s, Hulme on the 23rd December, 1915. This is where I went astray! I discovered that George Noel had married a second wife, Gladys Winifred Stokes the former wife of Edward Stanley Roe, in Headington, Oxfordshire in the December quarter of 1927. I then erroneously assumed, as divorces were still quite rare in the 1920s, that Dorothy Marguerite had died and looked for a likely entry in the death records.
Compounding my mistake, I went on to misread the name of the young lady who had died in the West Ham area of London in the March quarter of 1925. Her name was actually Dorothy May Penniall and, I state with some little trepidation, she was born in the September quarter of 1894 in the Richmond (Surrey) registration district. Her father, Arthur, was a lithographic artist and poster designer and her mother was Minnie (née Jennings).
George Noel and Dorothy Marguerite were in fact divorced at the Bristol Assizes on Monday 15th November, 1926. His wife had petitioned for a divorce on the grounds that George had deserted her and their 5-years-old daughter, Margaret, and was residing with another woman at 34, St. Paul’s Road, Clifton, Bristol.
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| The Avon Gorge, Clifton, Bristol |
Dorothy Marguerite was granted a decree with costs and awarded custody of the child.
Both parties of the divorce had remarried within a year. The ex-Mrs. Pownall married William Moore in Lewisham, London in the September quarter of 1927.
To complete the story after George Noel’s second wife, Gladys Winifred, died in Honiton, Devon early in 1941, he married for the third time a shorthand typist, Edith Marjorie Chambers in the December quarter of 1942 in Bristol. The following year a son, Michael Du Terreaux Pownall, was born on the 12th August, 1943.
The moral of this story – never make assumptions and always double check your data.
Pictures: -Beulah House, High Lane (1959) by A. E. Landers (m 17922) Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information, and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass andThe Avon Gorge, Clifton, Bristol,By Arpingstone - Own work, Public Domain, File:Avon gorge and cave arp.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
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