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 was born on 4 September 1867 in Islington, North London, 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, doesn’t appear to have served in the Boer War and 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 1939 register showed them at 39 York Road, Hugh now a retired railway clerk and Florence working as a school caretaker. Hugh died in August 1945 and was buried in Great Yarmouth 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, as a teenager he worked as a pawnbroker’s assistant and then married Audrey Lacey in 1926. By the time of the 1939 Register they were living in Malling, Kent, and he was a fish merchant. He served with Special Operations Executive in the Second World War, although initially with the East Surrey Regiment. There are several reports in newspapers and bankruptcy courts of a man matching him, one involving a farm in Cardigan, Wales, and another a coal merchant in Norfolk, but whether they are the same reamains to be proved. The coupled lived in the London area after the war but I suspect they separated, with Audrey remarrying in 1970.
- Florence Maud Marion Dalgleish (1906-1978) Born in Great Yarmouth, Florence married bricklayer William Edward Bentley in 1933. In 1939 they were living in Stroud, Gloucestershire. They later lived in Gorleston.
- Ivy Jeanette Dalgleish (1909-1999), who married Harold Edward Howard and lived and died in Great Yarmouth. He was working as a wood machinist at the time of the 1939 Register and died in 1970, many years before his wife.
- Irene Marjorie Dalgleish (1914-1992). Another Great Yarmouth native, she married George Edward Good in Bedfordshire in 1940. He was an electrician who served in the RAF during the Second World War. They lived in Yarmouth and he died in 2003.
Sources: BMDs, military and census info at Ancestry.co.uk, and Findmypast.co.uk. British Newspaper Archive. Records at Norfolk Family History Society