John Charles McShane is my wife Lorna’s grandfather. She and her sisters Kay and Ruth knew him and his wife Alice Hatton for several years before Alice died in 1966 and John Charles in 1971. Both were relatively young, Alice was 50 and her husband just 60.
There are several mysteries surrounding their lives together. The sisters’ mother Patricia was brought up in a convent in Preston. But when and why exactly. The family story is that John Charles and Alice split up during the war after the death of their baby son Shaun (Born and registered as Shuan). Rumour was that Alice had an affair while John Charles was away in the war. Was that true? Eventually it has been possible to put flesh on the bones of these alleged events. Let us see.
John Charles was born in 1911 in Belfast, Northern Ireland into a Catholic family that nevertheless intermarried with Protestant neighbours. Alice was brought up in a Wesleyan household, so a Protestant. A marriage unthinkable around the times of their deaths. They married in 1937 at Preston Registry Office – neutral ground.
John Charles came over to England around 1930. He had brothers and sisters who had mostly emigrated to America after the Troubles around 1922 that led to the partition of Ireland. One story was that a family member had been shot by the IRA, possibly an Edgar who married a McShane sister of John Charles. It was possible to verify that a McShane had in fact been shot on the Short Strand area where they lived. This turned out to be Sarah McShane, John Charles’ sister, who was shot in the violence that followed the infamous McMahon murders. A three-year-old girl was injured, presumably while in the care of Sarah. There is some confusion in that many reports show Sarah to have been killed. That may have been to bolster Republican propaganda. A reliable history timeline of Belfast shows that she was wounded in the thigh. We do know that Sarah went on to raise a family and lived to a good old age. Her family line continued in America when her daughter Sarah emigrated.
There are other reports that Sarah survived. This one from a book on IRA activities in the Short Strand area:
Peter Murphy aged 61, was the first to be shot followed by Sarah Mc Shane aged 15, before they turned their guns on three years old Mary McCabe. As they ran from the house they fired at, and wounded Nellie Whelan. It was nothing short of a miracle that all those shot survived the ordeal.
The age in the reports of Sarah is correct and the area is exactly where she lived. There are no other Sarah McShanes that this could possibly fit. It has to be John Charles’ sister.
Sarah was apparently widowed in 1941 when her husband Patrick Edgar died. There is no evidence of his death in the records other than other family trees showing this to be the case. Around this time things are going wrong in John Charles marriage in Preston, Lancashire.
Lorna, Kay and Ruth’s mother Patricia was born in 1939. She was soon followed by twins Alice and Maureen in 1941. A brother to these, Shaun, was born in 1942. At the time of the births of these three siblings to Patricia their father John Charles was in the army. Initially enlisted into a Territorial Army regiment he is soon posted to a Royal Artillery Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment as a gunner. John Charles appears to have been a Tool Fitter before his call up showing he had some engineering skills that may have suited this posting. He is classed as B-1 fit ‘unfit for general service abroad but fit for base or garrison service at home and abroad’ Therefore he never serves overseas or in the D-Day operations. His army service number is 11252413. In fact his service record shows several visits to hospital during the war. One family story is that he had a head injury, possibly caused by diving as he was a known swimming enthusiast who won many competitions. One of his hospital visits is indeed to a neurological hospital in Edinburgh.
The family story is that there is some breakup between John Charles and Alice around this mid war period. The likely time for this is when Shaun dies on the 25th May 1943 around the time of his first birthday. You may read into the circumstances of his death to indicate a degree of neglect by Alice who would be alone with the four children at this time. On May 26th, 1943, John Charles registered the death, being on compassionate leave from his regiment. By the 28th he is back with his regiment in Middlesborough. We can assume he must at the latest have travelled on the 27th which would mean he spent a maximum of two days comforting his wife. Most likely it would have been less than that. It does not give the impression that the marriage was a loving one at that point. The following year on June 15th the surviving sisters are placed in a convent by Alice’s sister Evelyn Gaughan. They will stay there until the 19th of June 1948 when they are reunited with their parents. Patricia says this is when she is introduced to her sisters. It does however according to the records seem that she was with her sisters when they entered the convent. Alice will not go home but will spend the rest of her life in Whittingham Mental Hospital.
Remarkably we appear to have a photo of Patricia in Moorfield Convent on Ribbleton Lane. In this photo she is shown sat at the front of a group of children receiving Christmas presents in 1945. From the comments on the posting of this photo and other references it seem certain that Moorfield Convent was a monstrous place to have left children. There are no redeeming features about it in any of the many recollections of children of descendants that were in this dreadful institution. One story surrounding this photo that would tell you all you may wish to know is that several corroborate the fact that these presents were taken from them as soon as the photographer left, to be used again for the next years photo session perhaps.
So, what caused the fracture in the family. There is finally a bit of clarity about this with the release of John Charles’ war records. It took a lot of unravelling but the evidence is there to be followed in the detail.
The first piece of detail in his war service records that stands out is in the sections where he states his next of kin. Clearly his next of kin is Alice McShane (Hatton). This he states when he is first called up in 1941. However on the next service sheet that contains details of his active service he names his mother Elizabeth McShane as his next of kin. She lives in Sherriff St, Belfast. This would have been around the start of 1942 when Alice would have been pregnant with Shaun. There is no reason stated as to why he does not list Alice as next of kin at this point. When the sheet of service goes to another form around early 1943 John Charles states his next of kin as being May McShane. The entry is clear and unmistakable so cannot be a mistake. He states this for some reason. The address is the one he shares with Alice. There is no May McShane but Alice does have a sister May who lives nearby. It is possible John Charles could have been having an affair with May but more likely it could be that May is looking after Alice and the house for some reason, perhaps relating to Alice not coping or in ill health. John Charles would not have been allowed home for an extended period from his regiment, so if Alice had some sort of breakdown or health issue she would need help with the children.
There is one final entry that unravels the story. It was only by going back to the first entry showing his wife Alice as next of kin that you could see an anomaly with this entry. There were actually pencil marks scribbling out this entry. From an adjacent date this would appear to have been done in October 1946 at the time of his discharge from the regiment. Next to the entry, in very faint capital letters, is another entry. It does clearly say ‘WIFE’ but with no name against that. There is though an address that can just be made out as 14, Grove Road, Basingstoke, Hants. Basingstoke is a long way from Preston and there could be no connection for a man from Belfast who had married three hundred miles away. However, on his service record he is shown as having spent a period of time on duty in Wareham, Hampshire which is close to Basingstoke. So, who lives at 14 Grove Road?
The closest we can get to information about that address is the mini census of 1939 that was taken to provide basic information for war purposes. However, that is searchable by name. It is not easy to search for an address. It is possible, as I proved, but it took a lot of frustrating effort to finally find the entry that contained 14, Grove Road. There resided a 36-year-old chef William Boulton with his ‘wife’ Dorothy Boulton, also aged 36. Underneath them are three blanked out entries which would have been their three young children. Helpfully, and uniquely, the 1939 census shows a later entry against the females on the page. This gives their married surname if they go on to marry or marry again, along with the registration certificate details. In Dorothy’s case she is shown to marry again, a man by the name of Stephenson.
So, who is Dorothy Boulton. Again this census is helpful in that it shows the exact birth date of the people listed. With this information it was possible to identify who Dorothy was and where she started her life. She was born Dorothy Starling on 2nd July 1902 (not 1903 as shown on the census). This would make her 37 years of age. She is shown as being baptized on May 14th, 1903, at the Jenny Lind Children’s Infirmary in Norwich, Norfolk. This was a charitable institution formed after a series of concerts in early Victorian times by Jenny Lind. Joanna Maria Lind was a Swedish Opera singer who was highly revered in Europe, particularly Great Britain and America. She was held in great regard by Chopin, Mendelssohn and Clara Shumann. In modern times she is better known as the character Jenny Lind in the movie The Greatest Showman where she is played by Rebecca Ferguson. The hospital is still in existence today as part of the NHS Hospital Trust in Norwich.
As Dorothy is baptized in hospital around 10 months after she was born it would be certain that she was not expected to live. But live she did. She is born into a large family whose father provided little if any care for them. He was a hawker who would rarely be home and Dorothy and at least one of her sisters end up in care at the Children’s Home in Botolph Street, Norwich. Two of her brothers go into the boys Children’s home and also change their surname to that of their mother which tells you a little about their feelings for their father. Their mother dies in 1904 and it would seem the father had the children placed in care. All round it appears to have been a dysfunctional, dreadful upbringing.
By 1921 Dorothy is a domestic servant to a household of an insurance broker in Plumstead, London. In 1926 she marries 31-year-old general labourer William Turner in Norwich, her home town. This marriage produces a daughter Lillian a few months later in February 1927.
By 1931 Dorothy has another daughter Bella Kathleen who is born in Lambeth, London. The father is the man on the 1939 census, William Boulton. There is no indication they ever married nor a divorce obtained from William Turner. Her firstborn daughter Lillian stays with William Turner until her own marriage. In 1936 she has another daughter by William Boulton, Iris Marguerita, also in Lambeth. Her final child William with William Boulton is born in Basingstoke in 1940.
William Boulton and Dorothy will never marry but Dorothy goes on to marry a George Andrews Stephenson in1948. For the purposes of our story this is where it start to get interesting. Dorothy becomes Dorothy Stephenson in Preston, Lancashire where John Charles McShane has his home. It would seem certain then that Dorothy is the woman John Charles considers to be his wife on the 1946 entry in his Service record. We would have to assume that Dorothy came back north with John Charles in 1946 bringing her children with her. All her children are to be found marrying in Preston and certainly many of her descendants are still in the area. It is difficult to see any other way that she would end up in the same town as John Charles some 300 miles away, a place she has no connection to at all.
Why she marries another man we can only speculate. Her marriage to George Stephenson coincides almost to the month with John Charles reclaiming his children from the convent. He must have wanted them back. We could perhaps see that maybe Dorothy was not prepared to have three more young children to care for and that possibly ended her relationship with John Charles. Or she simply met someone else.
So, in the end John Charles went back to Alice. He worked after the war at Bond Cars in Preston, a specialist well known manufacturer of three-wheel vehicles. As we mentioned both he and Alice died relatively young. There is not a lot of joy sadly that we can gloss onto this story but it is interesting to find out what occurs in your family. This one was definitely a surprise and several years in making a discovery as new information becomes available.
John Charles and Alice – 2nd and 3rd from right/front
And this is DOROTHY:
Probate of Dorothy Stephenson:
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