Arne Mjåland
Member
Thank you to Geoff and Colleen for reply to my message,
Here is the rest of the story:
Her grandfather, Tom Phillips was chief engineer for the Severn locks at Worcester but could not stand the local scandal after his daughter Kate returned from the Titanic disaster and gave birth at his Waterworks Road home.
Tom took his wife together Kate and her baby and set up in exile at Chesterfield. Ellen remained there for a few years until her mother married and went to live in Ramsgate.
Ellen recalls that her stepfather, a seaside cafe owner, treated her very kindly but her mother seemed always to resent her and was "spiteful", often hitting her.
In fact, her mother went on to suffer mental problems for some years, once trying to commit suicide and eventually dying at the age of 64.
Though not knowing the ecact details. Ellen says Henry Morleys brother or family paid a quarterly sum to her mother through a Sheffield solicitor for her upbringing until she was 16. It enabled Ellen to be sent to several private schools.
Ellen has since lived in London most of her life, is a retired cicil servant from the passport Office and was married to a London bus driver , though he died several years ago.
Late last year she felt a great urge to return to her roots, even through she left Worcester 72 years ago at the age of four.So it was that she moved home to St. Agathas road, Pershore and feels she is "back home"".
Her fathers deaath in the Titanic, together with three other Worcestershire men , was reported by Berrows Journal on April 20 1912 and I used the information as the basis of a "Memory Lane" feature in August 1986. It was reproduced in our "Memory Lane" Volume One book and recently, quite by chance, Ellen bought a copy to be confronted on one page by a photograph of her father, taken from a Barrows pictorial supplement of April 1912.
"I cried because I had never known what he looked like before. All I knew was that he had been good looking, about 6ft 4in tall and had some Spanish ancestry", says Ellen.
She stresses that one of the reasons for her return to this area is her dearest wish that she may be able to findsome relatives still living from her fathers family, especially his first daughter who would be 89 now.
Ellen, known to her friends nowadays as "Betty" points out that the Titanic disaster clearly had a great impact on her own life. It robbed her of her father and of being born and brought up in California "And had my mother not been one of the last people rescued that dreasful night, I obviously would not be here to-day"
Here is the rest of the story:
Her grandfather, Tom Phillips was chief engineer for the Severn locks at Worcester but could not stand the local scandal after his daughter Kate returned from the Titanic disaster and gave birth at his Waterworks Road home.
Tom took his wife together Kate and her baby and set up in exile at Chesterfield. Ellen remained there for a few years until her mother married and went to live in Ramsgate.
Ellen recalls that her stepfather, a seaside cafe owner, treated her very kindly but her mother seemed always to resent her and was "spiteful", often hitting her.
In fact, her mother went on to suffer mental problems for some years, once trying to commit suicide and eventually dying at the age of 64.
Though not knowing the ecact details. Ellen says Henry Morleys brother or family paid a quarterly sum to her mother through a Sheffield solicitor for her upbringing until she was 16. It enabled Ellen to be sent to several private schools.
Ellen has since lived in London most of her life, is a retired cicil servant from the passport Office and was married to a London bus driver , though he died several years ago.
Late last year she felt a great urge to return to her roots, even through she left Worcester 72 years ago at the age of four.So it was that she moved home to St. Agathas road, Pershore and feels she is "back home"".
Her fathers deaath in the Titanic, together with three other Worcestershire men , was reported by Berrows Journal on April 20 1912 and I used the information as the basis of a "Memory Lane" feature in August 1986. It was reproduced in our "Memory Lane" Volume One book and recently, quite by chance, Ellen bought a copy to be confronted on one page by a photograph of her father, taken from a Barrows pictorial supplement of April 1912.
"I cried because I had never known what he looked like before. All I knew was that he had been good looking, about 6ft 4in tall and had some Spanish ancestry", says Ellen.
She stresses that one of the reasons for her return to this area is her dearest wish that she may be able to findsome relatives still living from her fathers family, especially his first daughter who would be 89 now.
Ellen, known to her friends nowadays as "Betty" points out that the Titanic disaster clearly had a great impact on her own life. It robbed her of her father and of being born and brought up in California "And had my mother not been one of the last people rescued that dreasful night, I obviously would not be here to-day"
