Whatever Remains

by Penny F. Graham

  The Rathbones were a large, close and loving family. The parents, Henry William and Isabella, had eight children, five of whom lived to adulthood. Henry, a potter by trade, died in 1920 at the early age of 52. Isabella, his wife, was left to bring up the children the best way she could. The Emerson family considered Isabella ‘eccentric’ but I am not sure about the truth of that as, eccentric or not, she managed to bring up her family quite successfully and then helped raise a granddaughter as well. She was a strong and forthright woman with a passion for playing cards. The whole family, I have been told, would spend most evenings in the parlour playing card games well into the night.

  When Doris told Len she was pregnant, they were both only 20. The implications must have come as a dreadful shock to them both. Doris was unworldly and young and desperately romantic. Len was ambitious, full of plans for his future life and definitely not ready to marry and settle down with a family. We look at pregnancy before marriage very differently today. But this was 1926 when the male was generally seen, with a wink and a nudge, as ‘sowing his wild oats’ while the woman was seen as having done something shameful. So, when they realised a baby was on the way, Len did what was then regarded as ‘the honourable thing’. He offered to marry her, and they were married on 12 June 1926 at the Brixton Registry Office in the Brixton Town Hall. They were both then 21 years old.

  Brixton Town Hall is still standing. It is an impressive building with an ornate clock tower and imposing entrance, not far up the road from the Emersons’ electrical shop. Len could have easily walked there on his wedding day. Did Doris wear a traditional wedding dress of the times of slipper silk overlaid with lace? I think probably not; the Rathbones were not a wealthy family and under the circumstances, she would have probably chosen her best going-out dress or maybe something new and summery that would do as ‘best’ after the baby came. If there were photos taken of that rather hurried wedding, I know of none that have survived.

  The young couple were married in the presence of Thomas and Sylvia Rathbone, Doris’s older siblings. The occupations of both Len and his father were shown as mechanical engineer. Pat has told me that, at the time of the marriage, Len was not working; I assume therefore that because the family was living above the Emerson Bros electrical shop and probably helping out when and if needed, they believed that they could legitimately call themselves mechanical engineers. Three weeks later, after what must have been a rather strained honeymoon (if indeed there was a honeymoon), Len left the country.

  On 1 July 1926, Len sailed from the Port of London on the Kalyan bound for Singapore. Under ‘Occupation’, he was listed as ‘Merchant’. He sailed under the name Leslie D. Elliott and gave his age as 22. This listing of passengers leaving the UK is the first record we have of his change of name.

  No living family member has any concrete knowledge of why he changed his name though they were aware that he had. Nor are there any logical explanations as to why he chose the name Elliott. Was it a coincidence that one of his close friends at the MCC was called Bill Elliot? Did Len fancy the name Elliott or use Bill’s or Bill’s family’s details when he applied for a passport? We believe the requirements to obtain a passport were not as strict in those days.

  His birth and marriage certificates, of course, show his original name. The few pre-1942 documents we have managed to obtain, and the many newspaper references we have from his early days in the Far East, start by showing his name as Leslie D. Elliott and change around 1934 to Leslie Denis Emerson-Elliott. The whys and wherefores are, for now, all speculation.

  On 22 October 1926, three and a half months after Len left Britain for Singapore, Patricia Doris Emerson was born. Her birth certificate shows Len’s occupation as Sports Outfitters, Manager. This suggests to me that he told Doris before he left or by letter subsequently, that he was working as a sports outfitter in Singapore.

  Even after Pat and her father met many decades later, he never discussed his relationship with Doris with her or with me. Nor have I been able to find anyone who could tell me of the courtship days between the two. Pat has told me that despite his sudden departure from her life so soon after their marriage, Doris loved young Len totally and completely from the time they met until her death in 1990.

  Chapter 16

  Continuing true stories: Singapore to Australia 1926–1942

  The Emerson family believed Len left the country partly to escape what they saw as an unwanted and unsuitable marriage and partly to carve out a career for himself in a country that had economic opportunity. Singapore was also far enough away from home and family that it gave him the opportunity to reinvent himself as the man he wanted to be. With a new name and a new family background anything was possible.

  The 1927, 1928 and 1929 editions of the Singapore and Malayan Directory list LD Elliott as ‘Assistant’ with John Little and Co., Ltd in Singapore. Whether he went to Singapore with a contract to work for John Little & Co. in 1926 or secured the position after he got to Singapore (where their head office was located) is unclear. It is probably safe to assume that John Little & Co. was his only employer prior to returning to Britain in late 1929. We do not know what work he did at Littles. The store had diverse interests, including being listed at that time as Sports Outfitter and Suppliers of Electrical and Wireless Goods — perhaps Len’s obvious athleticism or his experience in the electrical business his brothers had started gave him an entrée to one of those two departments.

  John Little & Co. was the oldest department store in the Far East. The first store was established in Singapore in 1845. It was founded by John M. Little at Raffles Place, then known as Commercial Square. They were general merchants who supplied or manufactured a wide range of goods, including alcohol, jewellery, house furnishings, crockery and hardware, tobacco products and many other items. As Singapore grew as a trading port in the late 19th century, John Little & Co. expanded. In addition to retail, the firm also operated a car business, a motor garage, a furniture factory, a café and a beauty salon.

  In the early 20th century, the firm set up branches in Malaya at Kuala Lumpur (1914), Penang (1926) and Ipoh (1929). However, the advent of World War II and the subsequent Japanese occupation resulted in the closure of these branches. In 1955, Robinsons, another large retail company, acquired John Little & Co. and the store was relaunched as JL. Six of their stores in and around Singapore’s central business district are still operating.

  As history will show, Len’s experience with Littles will encourage him to try his own hand at buying and selling goods and commodities in the commercially fertile environment of Malaya and Singapore. Twice he will fail, but on the family’s return to Singapore in 1946 he will once again make buying and selling his livelihood and over the next few years he will make a small fortune. But that is well in the future.

  From Singapore newspaper reports from late 1926 to early 1929, it is evident that Len was an active and competent sportsman. Almost every week, L D Elliott is listed in the sporting section of the main Singapore newspapers, the Straits Times and Singapore Free Press & Mercantile Advertiser, as playing a variety of sports including rugby, football (soccer), cricket and lacrosse. We first see him as a member of the John Little & Co. team in the Singapore Inter-Commercial Cup football competition that began in February 1927. In later newspaper reports, he played a season in the YMCA cricket team and then for various Singapore Cricket Club teams in what clearly became his favoured sport, rugby. And he is good! He sometimes captains his team and is noted for his clever footwork and dexterity on the field. There are many references to ‘Elliott played well in last week’s game on the Padang’, the Padang being the playing fields in front of the Singapore Cricket Club, one of the main sporting fields in Singapore at that time.

  During the first three years he was away from Britain, we know he did correspond with his mother and his sister Helen. Cousin Eileen remembers her mother telling of the embarrassment poor Doris suffered when she came to the house at Brixton Road to ask if any
letters had arrived from Len, only to be told that there was no mail or message for her. On other occasions her mother-in-law would read to her from a letter she had recently received from her son in Singapore telling of his exploits and adventures, but there would be no message for his wife. Doris would often return to the sanctuary of her mother’s house distressed and in tears.

  Len was, as he must have explained to Doris as he prepared to leave her after only a few weeks of marriage, travelling to the Far East to make something of himself. Pat has told me that Doris understood his need to find work. At the time of their marriage, Len was unemployed. Not having a permanent job must have been galling for him. The impact of World War I was still being felt all around the country and jobs in London were hard to find especially for young inexperienced men. Malaya, on the other hand, was a place of great opportunity. Malaya was emerging as a major supplier of rubber to the world. Here was a chance to find work and prosper. When he was in a position to support a wife and child, he would probably have told her, he would send for her and their child.

  When Len left Doris in the care of her family, she believed that she and baby Pat would one day be asked to follow him to Malaya when he had secured a good job and had appropriate accommodation organised. I wonder how long she waited before realising the letter asking her to follow was never going to come? It is also consistent with Len’s personality that he would have found it difficult to tell Doris to her face that he was leaving her for good. As he saw it, he was letting her down gently. He was never the one to tell it how it really was.

  I believe that whatever he told Doris before he left for Malaya was not the whole story. I think he was not only looking for career opportunities, he was looking to escape an unwanted marriage and the responsibility of an unwanted pregnancy. I also believe he left Doris and his parents with the blessing of his mother, and probably most of his family. From what I have gathered from family, there was always a feeling that Len had been ‘trapped’ into marriage. His mother Fanny’s subsequent rather offhand and sometimes quite cruel behaviour towards the pregnant Doris and then her disinterest in her new granddaughter leads me to believe that Len’s escape to Singapore was actively encouraged by his family.

  Len was ambitious and there were not many job opportunities in the London of 1926. With his limited education and no ‘old school tie’ strings to pull, finding what he would consider suitable employment was not going to happen. During 1926, Britain was experiencing great economic turmoil and civil unrest.

  During World War I, the heavy domestic use of coal meant that Britain’s rich seams of coal were depleted. Britain exported less coal during the war than it would have in peacetime, allowing other countries to fill the gap. The United States, Poland and Germany and their strong coal industries benefited in particular. After the war, Britain’s coal mines were in direct competition with countries that could produce coal at a cheaper rate. Productivity in Britain was at its lowest ebb. It was this climate of repressed wages, high unemployment and social unrest in the country that made the decision by Len to seek his fortune elsewhere, not only quite believable, but understandable.

  Len was not only ambitious, he was astute. With limited work opportunities in Britain and a social class system that could hinder his aspirations to market himself as a member of the upper middle class, a new life in a new country with a new name could be just the spring board he needed to succeed. And, of course, being out of the country removed the obligation for him to ‘settle down’ to become a husband and father.

  Over the next few years the letters and any pretence at child support from Len slowly dried up. The only way Doris was to get news of her absent husband was to visit her mother-in-law at Brixton Road in the hope that she had received a letter and would tell her of his doings in faraway Singapore. Usually Doris was disappointed. Fanny, by her coolness of manner and lack of welcome, would send her home with no new information and very little comfort.

  In August 1929, a second class passenger, L Davis (sic) Elliott, left Singapore on the Suwa Maru bound for London. He is listed as ‘Merchant’ and his ‘Proposed Address in the United Kingdom’ is given as John Little & Co., 9 Pancias (sic) Lane, London. Len was heading back to London on his first furlough after three years in the tropics. In one of the photo albums kept by Helen, Daphne’s mother, and given to us by Daphne on our first meeting, there is a series of photos of Len aboard the Suwa Maru.

  He looks as if he is having a jolly time larking around with a group of happy fellow passengers. Luckily for us, one of the photos has the group clustered around a lifebuoy clearly identifying the ship’s name. Little things like that can make the researcher’s life so much easier. It is also interesting to note that Len gives his employer’s address as place of residence rather than either his parents’ address in Brixton Road or his wife’s address in Kennington. Maybe anonymity was the order of the day.

  On this visit ‘home’ we do not know if he visited Doris to see his little daughter or not. I suspect not, because by then he had stopped all direct communication with Doris and any pretence that he would send for her to join him overseas. I am pretty sure, however, that he spent at least some of his time in England in Taunton, staying with his sister Helen. Whether this was to spend time with a favourite sister, or to keep out of Doris’s line of sight, I can only speculate. The Dunlop contract that gave us the first clue to his true identity gives Helen’s address in Taunton as his address. It is during this time he spent in Taunton that the photo I have of Len and three-year-old Daphne was taken.

  I also believe — no, let’s call it an inspired guess — that it was during his stay in Taunton that he visited a small village some 13 kilometres away called Milverton. There are long dead Dibbles scattered throughout the Register of St Michael’s Church in Milverton. I did not see them on my visit in 1984 because I was not looking for that name. I believe now that Fred Dibble, Helen’s husband, had relatives there, and Fred and Helen took Len to visit them while he was staying with them. And, as I well know, on a beautiful day, Milverton is an idyllic place to be. If one stands on the outskirts of the village looking down over the rich green pastures of the Taunton Vale, Milverton would appear to be the perfect place to be born and raised — wholesome, quintessentially British, a chocolate box village in Britain’s rural heartlands. And small, small enough that, hopefully, while living in Malaya, he was not likely to meet people who knew of the village and even less likely to meet anyone who lived there.

  So, I believe, was born the new Leslie Denis Elliott, who from then on would list Milverton as his birthplace.

  On 28 November 1929, Len left England on the SS Mantua, again bound for Singapore. This time he is listed as Leslie Denis Elliott and his occupation is ‘Planter’. His three years at Littles had paid off. He is not returning to his job as shop assistant, but is a young gentleman on the up and up. He carried with him that all important contract with Dunlop offering him a position as a trainee rubber planter on one of their large plantations in central Malaya. And it was there, a few years later, that he would meet a very young and beautiful Russian girl called Nona.

  In the 1931 Singapore and Malayan Directory (for 1930), L D Elliott is listed as working for Dunlop Plantations Ltd at the rubber plantations of Ladang Geddes Estate in Bahau in the south central area of Malaya. He is shown (with 12 others) as an Assistant. According to the same source, in the next year he was an Assistant on the Ladang Geddes Estate in Negri Sembilan. This estate is on the west coast of Malaya just south of Kuala Lumpur. It was one of the biggest of Dunlop’s plantations, being in excess of 17,600 acres, at its heart was ‘Centre Village’ (or Kosi in Chinese) containing the main administrative office. It had 15 plantation managers’ houses, a club house with swimming pool for senior managers and another swimming pool for middle management.

  It is while he is working here that he may have first met my mother. I have always believed the story of their first meeting on her 15th birthday, but not the bit about co
ming down the regal staircase of her home in Milverton. If they met when she was 15, then it is here, either in Kuala Lumpur itself, or on the outskirts of KL where Nona and her family were living at that time. She turned 15 in August 1933, and Len was not to finish his four-year contract with Dunlop until later that year. Julia, my grandmother, had almost certainly met Ernest Roberts by now and by all accounts was a great one for partying and loved to take her daughter out with her. Mother and daughter were more like sisters, according to my Perth aunts. Maybe, to celebrate her birthday, Julia took Nona to a hotel in Kuala Lumpur for a celebratory dinner and it was there that Len first saw her coming down a stairway. A charming story but was there any truth in it?

  On 12 October 1933, the P&O ship Carthage docked at Plymouth and one of the Second Class passengers, a 28-year-old planter from Malaya, listed as Leslie D Elliott, disembarked. Len Emerson was back in Britain.

  It was the custom of the time for employers of Britons working in the Far East for a period of three years or more to send their employees home for up to three months. This extended furlough was to compensate for the difficult conditions associated with a tropical climate and an overseas posting. Len had completed his four-year contract with Dunlop Plantations. Working conditions on the plantations would have been exhausting and difficult for a European not used to the moist and very hot climate which rubber trees require. Right to the end of his life, Len was always a hard worker and an inspired gardener. His job in those early years, supervising the planting of Dunlop’s large rubber plantations and the gathering of the sap from the established trees, would have been gruelling. For a European, no matter how young, strong and fit, the heat, humidity and tropical diseases prevalent in the swampy areas of central Malaya would have been punishing at best, deadly at worst. At some time during this period in Malaya, he contracted malaria and dysentery and would suffer recurring bouts for the rest of his life. He was probably glad, after four years of hard graft in tropical conditions, to see and feel a bit of English winter.