Daily Mail, Wednesday, August 21, 2019 Page 29teenager he saw it as a way of
restoring the family’s honour.
he survived Ypres, Passchen-
daele and the Menin Road Ridge
before being shot and left for dead
at Cambrai in the winter of 1917.
By a miracle, he survived, waking
up in the morgue, surrounded by
the mangled remains of his
comrades — a sight that haunted
him in nightmares for the rest of
his life.
Returning to Newcastle, harry
married a local girl, Ethel, got a job
as an engineer and they were soon
the delighted parents of a son.
for a time, life was good, but
harry was a vocal member of a
trade union and after the General
Strike in 1926, he found himself out
of a job. There was a stark choice:
stay in the North and starve, or go
to London and look for work.
The young family settled in
Clapham, South London, but
cracks began to appear in themarriage. Money was tight, and
the pressure to put food on the
table a challenge.
When harry was offered a better
job back in Newcastle, he followed
the money.
Ethel stayed in London and
began an affair with a milkman.
harry was delighted when she gave
birth to a little girl, knowing
nothing of her betrayal. however,
after harry paid her a surprise visit
from Newcastle one summer’safternoon, he found Ethel in bed
with her lover and the truth about
the child he believed was his
daughter sank in.
harry duly abandoned Ethel, the
baby and his nine-year-old son.
haunted by his father’s death
and his experiences in the
trenches, he suffered a mental
breakdown and lived rough in
King’s Cross for a year. It was his
sister Kitty who rescued him, find-
ing him a factory job and lodgingsin West London with a family who
worked in the laundries of Acton’s
‘Soapsud Island’.
harry fell in love with his land-
lady’s eldest daughter, Annie, my
gran, who herself had endured a
hard life, scrubbing at the
washtubs from the age of 12. As
World War II erupted and the
threat of German invasion gripped
the nation, harry slipped a ring on
Annie’s finger. In 1940, shortly
after Dunkirk, my mother,
Anita was born.
The only blight on their life
was harry’s failure to divorce
Ethel and he continued to keep
the existence of the family he’d
abandoned secret from Annie,
my gran.
he also kept his ‘new’ family
secret from his sister, Kitty, in
Newcastle, until the day, towards
the end of the war, that she
turned up on his doorstep.
She handed her bags to
Annie and said: ‘You must be
harry’s landlady!’
The three children — two
more had followed Anita — who
tumbled excitedly down the
stairs to greet their Aunt Kitty
were redirected into the
scullery and a row between
Kitty and harry ensued in the
parlour, while Annie was sent
to make tea.
A sweet, trusting woman, she
was in awe of harry because he
was educated; he was also a
good husband and father and
so she never questioned him.
Together, they raised a happy
family together and retired to
hertfordshire in the 1960s.
But when harry died in 1970, and
my gran tried to get a grant to help
with his funeral, she was told: ‘It’s
going to his wife, Ethel.’
his secret was out.
My mother tracked down
harry’s first son but, despite the
passage of time, he was too
hurt by his father’s sudden,
cruel abandonment to want
to know and he shut the door
in her face.
Meanwhile, back in New-
castle, Kitty had been
safeguarding the biggest
secret, the ‘murderer’ in
the family. She took
that with her to the
grave, destroying pho-
tos and letters which
might have left clues.
The fact that I
never got to meet
my half-uncle has
always weighed
heavily on me.
Then, two years
ago, I was con-
tacted by research-
ers for a BBC1
programme, Mur-
der, Mystery And
My family, and
together with my
uncle John, harry
and Annie’s son, I
got to meet my half-
uncle’s son, Rowan,
for the first time.
his father had
passed away. But
through Rowan, I also
met his cousin Michele,
the daughter of the little
girl my grandfather had
believed was his own all
those years before.
Piece by small piece, the story
began to fall in to place. I haven’t
given up hope of clearing my great-
grandfather’s name. I realise I may
never establish the truth about
Jack and the terrible crime he was
found guilty of.
In the meantime, I believe that
getting to know the members of
that ‘secret family’ is a kind of
justice for us — because family will
always find a way to survive.n HER Father’s Daughter: Two
Families. One Man’s Secret, by
Beezy Marsh, is published by
Pan at £7.99. To order a copy for
£6.40 (offer valid to 4/9/19; p&p
free on orders over £15), call
0844 571 0640.life
th
iConvicted: Court artist’s
drawing of Jack DickmanThat was the family secret Mail
writer BEEZY MARSH stumbled
on. But when she investigated,
she discovered a tale of bigamy,
a blood-soaked train robbery...
and a very twisted form of justice