Perhaps luckily, neither of Edward’s parents lived long enough to see him jailed. Thomas died at 65 of consumption on 29 December 1860, and Amy followed her husband to the grave four years later, dying of ‘natural decay’ and jaundice. Edward moved into 1 Bartholomew Lane, taking over his father’s job, but things appear to have gone awry, as he ended up on the wrong side of the law.
He would likely have been taken to prison in a Black Maria. There he would have been photographed and examined for distinguishing marks, have had to hand over his personal property and remove his clothes. He would have had his head shaved and been bathed in filthy water before being dressed in prison garb, with the number of his cell stitched on the back of his shirt.
Meanwhile, his beleaguered wife Charlotte, 55, to whom he had been married for 33 years and with whom he had five sons and two daughters, was left at the family home in the East End of London to care for their four youngest children, Amy, 24, Kate’s great-great-grandfather Frederick, a 22-year-old commercial clerk, 16-year-old Charles and Herbert, 14, who was still at school. Their two eldest sons, Edward, 32, and William, 26, had long since left home. Their daughter Charlotte, a milliner, had died of typhoid fever at home five years earlier at the age of 25. The family had moved from Bartholomew Lane, in the heart of the City, to a run-down house in Nelson Terrace, Trafalgar Road, Haggerston, in the parish of the ancient church of St Leonard’s, Shoreditch, made famous by the line from the children’s nursery rhyme ‘oranges and Lemons’: ‘When I grow rich, say the bells of Shoreditch.’
Fourteen years after Edward Glassborow’s spell in Holloway, the renowned playwright and novelist oscar Wilde would follow him through the portcullis gate. It was in Holloway that he was held on remand, awaiting trial for gross indecency. The author of The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest had issued a writ for libel against the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his lover, Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas, after he accused him of being homosexual. Although Wilde withdrew the case when it became clear that he could not win, he was arrested in the wake of the trial and spent several months on remand at Holloway before being sentenced to two years’ hard labour in Reading Gaol.
By then, of course, Kate’s great-great-great-grandfather had long been released, and he had moved to Leyton, Essex, to build a new life. By the time his third son, Frederick, 27, got married on 1 June 1886 to 23-year-old Emily Elliott at the parish church in Leyton, he was describing himself as a ‘gentleman’, an extraordinary turnaround for a former crook. Edward lived long enough to see all his children settled, quite a feat in those days, although it is not known whether he was invited to their weddings or whether he was ostracised by the family as a result of his past.
His son Charles, 23 years old and a stockbroker’s clerk, married Florence Alderton, who was five years his senior, at Hackney Parish Church on 13 August 1887, but chose his younger brother Herbert to be his witness. Five years later, it was the turn of Edward’s only daughter, Amy, who married a widower twice her age. She was 36 years old and would have been deemed to be on the shelf in those days when she tied the knot with Samuel Alderton, a 65-year-old ivory turner, at Hackney Register office. Again, it was Herbert who witnessed the ceremony. Finally, Herbert himself, a stockbroker of 29 years of age, tied the knot in 1896 at St Andrew’s Church, Leytonstone, with local manufacturer’s daughter Catherine Monahan, 28.
Edward and Charlotte must have been delighted that all their children were married, but they lived barely long enough to meet their grandchildren. On 11 August 1898, Edward died of apoplexy, in other words, following a sudden loss of consciousness, at home in Vicarage Road, Leyton, having suffered from chronic rheumatism. His son Frederick – Kate’s great-great-grandfather – was at his bedside, so the family was certainly reconciled at his death. Less than two years later, on 21 July 1900, Charlotte died peacefully at home of natural causes, at the age of 75. Her daughter-in-law Emily, who was married to her second-eldest son, William, another stockbroker’s clerk, was holding her hand.
After his mother’s death, Frederick, 41 years old and a shipowner’s clerk, moved into his parents’ home in Vicarage Road with his wife Emily and their two children, Amy, 14, and Frederick, 11. Their third child, a son Wilfred, was born in 1905.
Kate’s great-grandfather Frederick Glassborow, a 24-year-old banker at the London and Westminster Bank, 5 ft 9 in. Tall with brown hair and brown eyes, was conscripted into the Royal Navy as an ordinary seaman on 12 August 1914 and attached to Benbow battalion ten days later. The battalion formed part of the First Royal Naval Brigade in the Royal Naval Division, known as ‘Winston’s Little Army’ and created when the navy formed a division of surplus sailors to fight alongside the army.
Military records state that Frederick was one of 2,000 raw recruits to be sent to a training camp in Walmer, Kent – at most he had two days’ musketry training – before being dispatched to Belgium to support the Belgian army in their defence of Antwerp, a cause close to Churchill’s heart. Churchill himself was at the city’s Hotel de Ville, not far from the front line at Vieux Dieu, on 6 October 1914, when he ordered the Naval Division to hold the line of forts forming the inner defences of the city. But while the Belgian troops manned the forts, the British were positioned in shallow, flooded trenches, with 500 yards of cleared land in front of them, making them perfect targets for German gunfire. After two days, Churchill gave the order to withdraw, but it failed to reach the division commander, Commodore Wilfred Henderson, and the brigade was bombarded by heavy shelling. In the confusion, some battalions withdrew by train. Others, including Benbow, were left stranded, without transport, unable to cross the bridge over the River Schelde because it had been destroyed by the retreating Belgians and unable to catch a train as the line had been cut by the Germans. In order to evade capture, Commodore Henderson decided to take his exhausted men across the border into Holland, which was neutral.
Frederick was one of 545 men and officers from Benbow battalion, led by Commander Fargus, to be interned by the Dutch at the English Camp in the city of Groningen, after making it into the Netherlands. This proved to be his saviour. Billeted in a purpose-built wooden hut in the place he and his fellow soldiers dubbed ‘Timbertown’, he was able to use a gym, recreation hall, library, classroom and post office. A football pavilion was converted into a bar, where the men could entertain visitors. They produced their own newspaper, had sports teams who played against local clubs, an orchestra and a theatre company named Timberland Follies, and they were even allowed out of camp on the strict condition they did not try to escape.
Two weeks after he and his men had been forced to flee to Holland, Commodore Henderson sent a letter to the adjutant general of the Royal Marines, Sir William Nicholls, describing the fiasco. He reported that the men arrived at the front on 6 October and had begun digging trenches but were hampered by lack of equipment, the fact that some of the men had never handled a pick or shovel, and the absence of food, water, communications and orders. Two of the battalions had suffered without water for 24 hours in the trenches and four battalions had no food for 36 hours other than a quarter-pound ration of meat. The men had been issued with charger-loading rifles three days before leaving Britain but had never been trained to use them. There was no organised transport, no signalling equipment apart from a few semaphore flags, one bicycle per battalion for messengers and no horses for the officers. ‘The men had not received their khaki clothing and were still in their blue jumpers, and therefore without pockets in which to carry food and ammunition,’ he added. ‘only a small proportion had received greatcoats . . . and [the men] suffered very considerably from the cold. The absence of haversacks, mess tins and water bottles proved a great disadvantage.’
Frederick was granted leave from Holland on 22 March 1917, which was extended until 26 May 1918. His file notes: ‘Appreciation for the excellent work done at Consulate General, Rotterdam.’ He arrived back in England on 4 March 1919 and was demobbed six da
ys later, remaining with the 2nd reserve battalion.
Frederick survived the war but some of his cousins were not so fortunate. Herbert, a clerk and father of two from Leytonstone, who enlisted at the age of 36 on 2 December 1915 as gunner No. 86318 in the Royal Garrison Artillery and was sent to France, was disciplined for neglect of duty at the end of the war. He was sentenced to 14 days’ field punishment No. 2, and was shackled in irons for up to two hours a day, a penalty generally considered harsh and humiliating by the men. His record states: ‘While on active service. Neglect to the prejudice of good order and military discipline.’
Another cousin, James, who was a gunner in the Royal Horse Artillery, was only 21 years old when he was wounded in a mustard gas attack on 6 October 1917. He was treated at Bradford War Hospital and the injury affected the rest of his life. He was awarded a temporary pension on discharge because of his general weakness, having been categorised as ‘20 per cent disabled’. James’s older brother Charles, a 24-year-old corporal in the 11th Australian Light Trench Mortar Battery, was killed on 14 March 1917, and is remembered with honour at the cemetery in Armentières where he is buried.
After the end of the Great War, Frederick returned to his job as a manager with the London and Westminster Bank, where he met Constance Robison, a bank manager’s daughter from Leytonstone. The couple, both 30, sealed their union on 24 June 1920 at Holy Trinity Church, Marylebone, an Anglican church built by Sir John Soane. They shared a love of travelling and when a job came up managing the bank’s Valencia branch, Frederick was the first to volunteer. It was there that their son Maurice was born on 16 April 1922. Nearly two years later, on 5 January 1924, the family was completed with the birth of Kate’s grandmother Valerie and her twin sister Mary. By then, Frederick was the sub-manager of the bank in Marseilles, on the south-east coast of France. It was an idyllic place in which to bring up children, but, as was traditional, Maurice was sent to prep school and public school in England. His second wife, Helen, remembers him telling her that the tour operator Thomas Cook used to make sure he arrived safely at his destination. ‘He was sent off with a label with his name on it round his neck,’ she recalls. ‘That wouldn’t happen nowadays.’
On 21 December 1932, when Valerie was just eight years old, Frederick senior died at the age of 73 while his son and his family were visiting. Frederick suffered a brain haemorrhage at his home in Lismore Road, Herne Bay, Kent. His son was at his bedside. He left £1,000 to his three children, a reasonable sum in those days but not one that made their fortune. It was the next generation of Glassborows who would gain real financial security when they married into one of Leeds’ wealthiest families.
It was two months before Frederick Glassborow’s 50th birthday when England declared war on Germany and he faced the prospect of living through another world war. While he was too old to fight, Maurice, who was just 17, was desperate to join the navy. Too young to join the British Royal Navy, he signed up to the French navy, where he would have taken part in the Battle of the Atlantic against the Axis powers, later transferring to the Royal Navy when the family returned from Marseilles to Britain. Frederick escaped on a ship, with the bank’s records stuffed into sacks, shortly before Marseilles was occupied by enemy forces in November 1942. As his ship was waiting to leave the port, it was heavily bombed by German aircraft. It must have been a terrifying experience, but he coped with it with typical composure.
On his return to Britain, Frederick was transferred to the North, where he became manager of the Leeds branch of the Westminster Bank, in Park Row. He was active in the life of the city, being appointed chairman of the Institute of Bankers and of the Banking Advisory Committee of the Leeds College of Commerce, a member of the Council of the Leeds Chamber of Commerce, treasurer of the Economic League in the West yorkshire region, as well as a Freeman of the City of London. These networking skills would eventually have beneficial repercussions for all his children.
While Maurice married into one of the country’s most illustrious theatrical dynasties, Valerie and Mary landed the sons of one of Leeds’ richest and most influential families. Frederick saw all three of his children happily settled and retired to Folkestone, Kent, where he died suddenly on 10 June 1954, at the age of 64, from a stroke caused by high blood pressure. He left his wife the equivalent of £323,000 – comfortably off but a widow in her 60s. She lived another two decades, long enough to see all her grandchildren grow up but not long enough to see her pilot grandson Michael marry air hostess Carole Goldsmith, or to meet her great-granddaughter Kate.
Chapter 10
Peter Middleton and Valerie Glassborow
Described by Sir Winston Churchill as the ‘first splash of colour’ after the long years of war, the wedding of Princess Elizabeth to the Duke of Edinburgh on 20 November 1947 heralded a new age of peace and optimism for Britain in the aftermath of the conflict.
The 21-year-old princess had saved up her clothing coupons to buy the fabric for her dress: ivory duchesse satin woven from silk created by Chinese silkworms. Designed by couturier Norman Hartnell, it was embroidered with seed pearls in patterns inspired by the Botticelli masterpiece Primavera. Wearing a silk-tulle veil and diamond tiara lent to her by her mother, Queen Elizabeth, she walked down the aisle of Westminster Abbey in front of 2,000 dignitaries and guests on the arm of her father, King George VI.
Afterwards, the young couple, who received 2,500 wedding presents from across the globe, moved into their first home, a five-bedroom house in Sunningdale, Ascot, which they leased until they moved into Clarence House in London two years later. Their new home, Windlesham Moor, was set in 58-acre grounds, and had four reception rooms, including a dining room, a 50-ft drawing room and a Chinese room. This was where they were living when Prince Charles was born on 14 November 1948.
The royal wedding ushered in a new dawn for Britain as it emerged from the hardship of the Second World War. The lives of all British citizens, whether they had fought abroad or on the home front, had been turned upside down, and everyone was looking forward to a time of peace.
French couturier Christian Dior’s ultra-feminine 1947 collection echoed the turnaround as men returned to their old jobs and women were sent back to the traditional sphere of the home. Dubbed ‘the New Look’, after the term was used of the style in a Harper’s Bazaar editorial, Dior’s dresses and suits with soft shoulders, tiny waists and flowing skirts epitomised the mood of the post-war era. Scandalously extravagant and yet perfectly in tune with the times, the New Look caught the world’s imagination. Rita Hayworth wore one of the new dresses to the premiere of Gilda and Margot Fonteyn bought a Dior suit. Such was the furore surrounding the clothes that, although George VI would not allow his daughters to wear the luxurious new style while times were tough, the designer was nonetheless asked to give them a private view of his next collection.
The year 1947 was a time of great change. It spelled the end of the Commonwealth – the partition of India resulting in the creation of the sovereign states of India and Pakistan – the Paris Peace treaties were signed and the International Monetary Fund was launched. Cambridge University voted to allow women full membership for the first time and the French author André Gide won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The year also saw the deaths of Al Capone, car manufacturer Henry Ford and former prime minister Stanley Baldwin. It was an age of new technology: the first instant Polaroid camera appeared, Kalashnikov finalised the design of the AK-47 assault rifle, Hollywood mogul Howard Hughes piloted the enormous ‘Spruce Goose’ on its first and only flight – and there was the mysterious recovery by the US army of a crashed ‘flying disc’ from a ranch in Roswell, Texas.
It was also a year of celebrations for Kate’s grandparents Peter Middleton, 27, and his wife Valerie, 23, in Leeds. Virtually the same age as the royal couple – Peter nine months older than the Duke of Edinburgh and Valerie two years older than the Queen – they themselves had got married a year earlier, on 7 December 1946, and were coming up to their f
irst anniversary when Princess Elizabeth walked down the aisle. Their own wedding, of course, was not in the same league as that of Prince William’s grandparents, but it was a very happy occasion. Peter’s father Noel watched proudly as the young couple said their vows in front of friends and family at the Norman parish church in Adel, the oldest in Leeds, which rivals Westminster Abbey for beauty, and then witnessed their wedding signatures. He must have been sad that his wife olive, who had died of peritonitis before the war, could not be at his side. Still, his sister-in-law Anne took her place and three of his other children, Christopher (already married to builder’s daughter Dorothy), Anthony and Anne, were in the congregation along with Valerie’s parents, Frederick and Constance Glassborow, who were close family friends.
The Glassborow twins, Valerie and Mary, had been brought up in Marseilles, where their father was sub-manager of the Westminster Foreign Bank, between the wars, and they were both bilingual. They met the Middleton boys in their home town of Leeds after Frederick was transferred there in 1943, having fled the German invasion of France.
In an unusual twist, six months later, on 5 April 1947, when Valerie was four months pregnant with her first child, the two families were reunited once more for another wedding, this time that of Peter’s older brother Anthony and Valerie’s twin sister Mary. Tony, 29, who worked with his father Noel and brother Christopher at the family firm, William Lupton & Co., walked down the aisle with Mary, 23, at the Parish Church of St John in Moor Allerton, making them double brothers- and sisters-in-law.
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