What Happened to Gladys?

 

Gladys PARROCK has been mentioned in this blog before.  Although she was my Great Aunt I never knew her – nor did I know that she existed.  Likewise,  her brother Alfred.  I was surprised that this ignorance is shared by my more mature siblings.

In the 1921 Census (see blog entry) she was living with her parents; Alfred and Minnie (Nee COWLAND), her sister Minnie and her brother, Alfred John, at 5 Hickling Road, Ilford.  She was the youngest in the family having been born in 1901.  She was a Book Keeper at James Copeland Marine Insurers.

Like her sister Minnie she was musical.  There are a couple of newspaper reports of her singing at local concerts with her sister and her Father.  These little performances were mostly ‘popular’ songs of the day.  One has a title that modern sensibilities prevents me from repeating!

She married William Harold WILLOUGHBY (B1897) on 29 October 1921 in Ilford (a couple of months after the census).  He was a bank clerk working for the Midland Bank.  A career he continued until his retirement. 

They had a least two children: Muriel Gladys was born in 1922 and her brother William Eric in 1925.  Both married and there is another generation or two of distant cousins to add to our tree.

In 1939 Gladys and her family were living in Hornchurch.

When Gladys’s husband William Harold died in 1979 they were living in the New Forest.

Gladys was the informant on the death registration of her sister Minnie (‘Great Aunt Min’) in 1984.  We don’t know if this is evidence that the sisters were in touch or how close they were.  Gladys was still living in Hampshire at the time.

The last we see of Gladys is her death in 1998 in Axminster Devon.   She was 97.    Her death was registered by her son Eric William who lived until he was 92, dying in 2017.  The PARROCKS are a family that have seen many of their number reach old age.

The mystery remains.  Why don’t the grandchildren of Nellie PARROCK know anything of her siblings with the exception of Great Aunt Min?  When Nellie PARROCK (later TRENDALL) died in the US in 1970 there was no mention of her sister Gladys and brother Alfred.  If there was any contact with Great Aunt Min I was not aware of it, but it is possible.  Was she still in touch with her brother and sisters? and if not why not?  Was there some great schism from which Great Aunt Min was exempt?  Or is this a case of families drifting apart.  Probably the latter, we will probably never know.