‘Sad letters to soldier husband’ is the story of how war tore apart a marriage. And how looking closely at census returns can provide or lead to surprising information.
It’s also the story of a man who triumphed over circumstances. And how another war brought tragedy.
Alfred James Richardson
It’s funny how a single letter on a census can lead to a wealth of stories (after a lot of digging!).
In this case, the Cumbrian connection is only a small part of things, but it was the starting point.
Alfred James Richardson was born in 1883 in Penrith, the only child of James Richardson and Elizabeth, née Harrison.
The family lived in Arthur Street, but James, who was a draper, had a shop at no 8 Little Dockray. To this day, you can see the name ‘Richardson’ on the floor tiles as you walk in. It’s a floristry shop today.
By 1911, Alfred was working for his father as an assistant draper. But by 1921, when his father had retired, he was recorded as being an organist, working from home.
It was the 1921 census that caught my eye, because under marital status, it had the letter D.
D = divorced. And in those days, a divorce was unusual enough to make the local papers and beyond.
‘Sad letters to soldier husband’
Sure enough, the divorce DID make the press.
It turned out that in December 1913, aged 30, Alfred had married 23-year-old Dorothy Ann de Lacy, the only surviving child (of three) of restaurateur Hardill de Lacy and his wife Mary, who ran a boarding house in Morecambe, Lancashire.
Perhaps Alfred had gone there on holiday, maybe even stayed at their boarding house. Or perhaps it was connected to his father’s business.
However they met, they were married, in Morecambe. And might have stayed so had the First World War not intervened.
For in June 1916, Alfred James Richardson was called up for military service which was to keep him away from home for more than two years.
And during that time, Dorothy ‘did her bit’ for the war effort by going to France as a vocalist with a concert party.
The account of the divorce proceedings tells us that while there, she met a man called Edward Lionel Johnson. And they fell in love.
Alfred came home on leave in November 1918 and noticed his wife was ‘rather cool to him’.
He can’t have been very observant, or she must have been really ‘cool’ to him – because by then, she must have been three months’ pregnant with Edward’s child.
Alfred went back to finish his service. and Dorothy and Edward Lionel Johnson went to live in Bath together.
Their son Guy Boris was born in Bath on May 25, 1919.
And when Alfred wrote home, saying he’d been demobbed from the Army and would soon be home, she wrote back: the ‘sad letters to soldier husband’ of the newspaper headlines.
The divorce
Alfred was prepared to take Dorothy back. But while she said she was very sorry for what she’d done, and she was ‘placing her happiness in his hands,’ she made it clear she would go with Edward, divorce or no divorce.
Edward said he didn’t ask for Alfred’s forgiveness as he didn’t deserve it. Dorothy had told him when they first met that she was married and it was all his fault.
Edward Lionel Johnson is described as a Lieutenant Colonel. And in later years as a geological engineer.
Back to Alfred
So that was that for Alfred. Married at 30, divorced at 37. Back living with his parents at 38. And there is potentially an Alfred James Richardson died in Penrith in 1932, aged 49.
Dorothy Ann de Lacy
I ‘had’ to find out more about Dorothy and Edward.
Well, they married in London in 1921, and show up on the census as living in Saltburn, Yorkshire, with baby Guy. (They don’t seem to have had any further children)
But on the 1939 register, she and Guy were back in Morecambe, living with her (widowed) mother. Dorothy and her mother were running a boarding house together.
She was listed as ‘married’. But her husband Edward was in lodgings in Acton, in the south east of England.
Was that a ‘work thing?’
In 1959, Dorothy A de Lacy Johnson was listed living an a block of flats in London. Along with seven other women.
Guy Boris Johnson
Guy was registered as Richardson, as his parents weren’t married at the time. In 1939, living with his mother and grandmother, he is listed as an actor (theatre).
But the Second World War saw him join the Fleet Air Arm, as an Air Mechanic, 2nd Class.
On January 17, 1941, the liner/cargo ship Almeda Star was sailing from Liverpool to the River Plate with some 360 people on board, of whom 142 were officers and men from 749, 750 and 752 Fleet Air Arm Squadrons.
Three torpedoes from a U-boat, and there were no survivors.
Edward Lionel Johnson
Edward is perhaps the most interesting lifestory here. Because it’s a triumph over circumstances: from the illegitimate child of a lady’s maid to a Lieutenant Colonel and director of a technical institute.
He was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, on April 13, 1890: the son of Arthur Edward Johnson, mechanical engineer, and Marion Elizabeth Glassor, lady’s maid. Arthur and Marion registered the birth together, giving him the Johnson name. But they weren’t married and Marion never did.
At one year old, Edward and his mother were lodging with a family in Cheltenham. No sign of his father.
Aged ten, in 1901, Edward was staying with his mother’s cousin William Herbert and his family in Swindon.
In 1905, aged 15, he’d got a job with the Great Western Railway, working in their stores. By 1914, he was a lab assistant (analyst) and when he (unless it was another Edward Lionel Johnson) joined the Freemasons at Swindon in 1916, he is down as a mining student.
So how did he become a Lieutenant Colonel by 1920?!
Well, in 1915, he left the GWR to join the Royal Engineers – specifically one of their Railway Construction Companies, tasked with building standard gauge railways as close to the front line as possible, to move troops and supplies.
He was in France in 1915, and while he may have had time to ‘pop home’ and join the Freemasons, we know it was in France at some point after June 1916 that he met Dorothy.
In 1915, he was made a temporary lieutenant. By March 1919, he was a temporary captain. And then temporary lieutenant colonel. Which was formalised when he left the regular service and joined the Reserves in 1921.
On the 1921 census, his occupation was given as geological engineer and Director of the Cleveland Technical Institute.
On the 1939 register, it’s chemical engineer, with Lieutenant Colonel, regular Army in the notes.
And after? Sadly, not found.
Footnote: Arthur Edward Johnson
I suspect he was the Arthur Edward Johnson who had already fathered an illegitimate daughter in 1887 by another young woman!*
If so, he did finally marry a woman 17 years younger than him, and had five more, legitimate children.
*Prudence Charlesworth, who seems to have had five children before marriage, to at least four men, with Ruth being the third.
‘Prudence’ not being a case of nominative determinism!