Helen Daisy Wetherall (1885-?) and Frederick Davis.
My great-grand aunt and uncle.
Helen, or Daisy as she was usually known, was born on 8 April 1885 in Great Yarmouth and baptised in the town’s St Nicholas parish church on 23 June. Her parents were shipwright Benjamin Wetherall and Sarah Green.
She grew up surrounded by her siblings in Admiralty Road but by the 1901 census she was living at 34 Winifred Road, Gorleston, Norfolk, with her sister Emmeline and her family, and working as a draper’s assistant. This was the time when her father had moved to Kent with his wife and young son to work in the shipyards there. Ten years later Daisy was living and working at a drapery at 31 Thames Street, Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, with plenty of other young women. Her nephew, Leslie Woods, recalled that she also worked as a model/mannequin at Selfridge’s in London’s West End, parading up and down in the latest fashions. She’d apparently been spotted while working at another store. Surviving pictures of her certainly reveal a striking, tall and attractive woman with a fine figure. In the picture above, she’s on the left.
At some point after the 1911 census Daisy travelled to South Africa. A Miss D Wetherall aged 29 travelled on the Llandovery Castle of the Union-Castle Line from London on 6 March 1915 so it’s possible this was her. On 3 April 1915 she married storekeeper Frederick Davis at St James’s Church in Durban, Natal Province. He was 34 and she was 26, suggesting she was being a bit economical with the truth when it came to her age. I don’t know whether he was British or South African or whether the couple met in the UK or elsewhere.
They had at least one child, Gordon Thomas Davis, born in 1916. Passenger lists show Mrs Helen Davis and Gordon, aged two, arriving in the port of London on 1 June 1919 on board the Union-Castle Mail Steamship Company vessel Durham Castle, having boarded in Natal. There’s a departure record for 16 April 1920, with them both leaving Southampton on the same company’s Armadale Castle bound for South Africa. In the absence of other records, this suggests they stayed in Britain for almost a year, which is a long time considering Helen was married. Had that marriage broken up? Had Frederick died? Or were there other reasons for such a long break?
Another record shows Mrs H D Davis and Master Davis travelling third class from Southampton in England on the Edinburgh Castle, departing 23 November 1928. Heading for Natal province, the document shows that they had been staying at 115 Lichfield Road, Great Yarmouth – the home of her parents. I’ve not found a document recording their arrival in the UK before that date so how long they stayed in the UK this time is a mystery. Again Frederick is missing. Was he still alive or too busy with work to take such extended breaks abroad?
After the 1928 voyage the family’s trail goes cold. There aren’t enough records online for Natal province, which makes it hard to complete the story at such a distance… Perhaps you know?
Sources: Family memories. Photos courtesy of Wetherall relations. BMDs, passenger lists and census info at Ancestry.com, Familysearch.org and Findmypast.com. South Africa, Natal Province, Civil Marriages, 1845-1955. Records at Norfolk Family History Society