Florence Harriet Stolliday (1879-1973) and Hugh Gardiner Dalgleish (1867-1945).
My great-grand aunt and uncle.
Born on 4 April 1879 in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, to parents Edward Stoliday and Harriet Goulty, Florence was baptised on 7 September of that year in the parish church of St Nicholas.
She grew up in the town with her family but her father would’ve been away with the Yarmouth fishing fleet for periods of time. The 1901 census showed her living with her family at 46 Admiralty Road and working as a stocking machinest, but on 8 September 1902 she married Hugh Gardiner Dalgleish in Great Yarmouth. He’d been born on 4 September 1867 in Islington, Middlesex, his father John a Scottish-born stationer and his mother Jane from Staines in Middlesex. How Florence met Hugh is a mystery but could’ve been through his service with the Royal Artillery.
He signed on in 1893 while working as a clerk. His attestation papers showed he was 5ft 9ins tall with grey eyes and brown hair. Mostly based at home, he was initially a gunner but was promoted to bombardier and then to corporal – although he was reduced from bombardier to gunner for a period after a trial in 1896 for an unspecified offence. He was based in Gibraltar from 1897 to 1900, but doesn’t appear to have served in the Boer War. Otherwise he served on the home front. He left the military in 1909.
By the time of the 1911 Census, Hugh was working as a porter for the Midland & Great Northern Railway and the family was living at 12 Fox’s Passage, York Road, Great Yarmouth. The 1921 Census listed the family at 39 York Road, where they continued to live for many years. By this point Hugh was working as a clerk for the railway. The 1939 Register showed that Hugh had retired railway while Florence worked as a school caretaker. Hugh died in August 1945 and the funeral was held at Gorleston Old Cemetery on the 15th. Florence survived him for many years, dying aged 94 in 1973.
Florence and Hugh had at least four children:
- Hugh Raymond Dalgleish (1903-1971). Born in Great Yarmouth in 1903, Hugh worked as a pawnbroker’s assistant and then married Audrey Louise Lacey in 1926. She’d been born in Norwich in 1904. By the time of the 1939 Register they were living in Malling, Kent, and he was working as a fish merchant. He served with the East Surrey Regiment and the Special Operations Executive in the Second World War. There are several reports in newspapers and the London Gazette in the post-war years of Hugh, now of Balham in Surrey, going before the bankruptcy courts regarding a farm in Cardigan, Wales. He told the court that he had insufficient capital to run it despite the whole family working there. Before the war he’d also been involved in a coal merchant back in Norfolk that had gone under. In 1964 he was living in Kingston upon Thames in Surrey. I suspect Audrey and Hugh divorced. Audrey remarried in 1970. Hugh’s death was registered in Kingston in 1971.
- Florence Maud Marion Dalgleish (1906-1978) Born in Great Yarmouth in 1906, Florence married bricklayer William Edward Bentley in 1933. In 1939 they were living in Stroud, Gloucestershire, but they lived in Gorleston, Norfolk, for many years. Florence worked for the Post Office. She died in 1978, William in 1980. Both were cremated at Great Yarmouth Crematorium.
- Ivy Jeanette Dalgleish (1909-1999) was born in Great Yarmouth in 1909. In 1934 she married Harold Edward Howard, who also came from the town and was born in 1901. They continued to live in Yarmouth and he was working as a wood machinist at the time of the 1939 Register even though he’d had to have a finger amputated after an accident at work in the years before his marriage (Yarmouth Independent 1 June 1929). He died in 1970, many years before his wife, who was cremated in 1999.
- Irene Marjorie Dalgleish (1914-1992). Another Great Yarmouth native, born in 1914, Irene married George Edward Good in Bedfordshire in 1940. He was an electrician, born in Yarmouth in 1915, who served in that capacity in the RAF during the Second World War. They lived in Yarmouth. Irene died in 1992, George in 2003.
Sources: Birth, marriage, death and burial records including civil registrations from the General Register Office, census returns, military and other records at Ancestry.co.uk, Findmypast.co.uk and Norfolk Family History Society.
Royal Artillery service records at the National Archives.
London Gazette issues 38528, 40285 and 43050, Yarmouth Independent 25 December 1937, Western Mail 4 March 1949 for Hugh Raymond Dalgleish bankruptcies.
British Newspaper Archive (titles in text).