Year 2016 With the help of a stranger on Find My Past I found the missing piece of the jigsaw.
East Sale: Maintenance Squadron 1966
Source: Dick Tracy reprinted by Lyn Mitchell
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Inspired by guest lecturer today. Started her first blog and hung from the trees. I feel I’ve been doing that my whole life, so I should feel at home.
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PARR-KYTE-MITCHELL (Post 4 of 4) MY JOURNEY TO YOU – DAUGHTER OF THE BARNARDO’S BOY – MY ENGLISH FAMILY-ALL DESCENDANT FROM EMMA & WILLIAM KITE
If you wish click here to go to post 1 of 4
This is not my last post to this blog, but it is my 4th post dedicated to my course subject this semester which gave me this opportunity to put into place something I have procrastinated about all these years of new technology. So my English family, wherever you are, please allow me just a few lines to explain why it has become so important to me to find you.
When I was a very tiny girl, my father would come home sometimes before we were in bed. They were the good times. I’ll tell you a bit about the bad times but it would take many words to put all that down here on a blog.
We would be enticed by his ability to intrigue and jump into bed with him, all three of us, so that he would take us to the blanket show and tell stories. Of course the blanket show was a precursor to the time for bed for little people. My sister still remembers being let down by the promise of something special.
They were special. They were the times when he cherished his three children, even drunk he could still spin a yarn. He would then go ahead to tell us tales of his childhood in England. He lived in a village called Shouldham, but I did not know this for many, many years but he did talk about Kingslyn, Norfolk and Boadicea, queen of the Iceni, who led a famous revolt against Roman rule in Britain in AD 60. I really believed I was named Lynette after the ‘lyn’ in Kingslyn, in honour of this great warrior. Who can say now but it does give me a sense that there was a fondness for that area of the world, the place of his childhood. He talked about being a Barnardo’s Boy and I never got a feeling of shame about being so, it was actually pride, that he had lived through it all and become a family man. In some way it became him. He did not know very much about his past, though I now know he knew more than he let on and I guess that was his way of drowning his feeling of abandonment. He drowned that feeling also by becoming an alcoholic. The 2nd World War did not help his depression. Today we would call it PTSD.
His life in the Barnardo’s Scheme was eventful, hard, emotional and his wish to be reunited with his sisters in Canada was strong, but like many others in this system he never saw his birth family again. There were good times and he met a family called Kesby, who ‘kinda’ adopted him informally. He lived with the Kesby family and worked for their uncle, Vic Jefferies in a place called Kempsey in New South Wales. Cliff Kesby became our Uncle Cliff and our families united on holidays at various times throughout our young lives. By now Dad had married my mum Norma, and I had a brother Peter and a sister Judith. Dad worked his way through various jobs and by the time I was ten years old he was a taxi driver, later to become an owner.
Why I became so obsessed about finding my family is a question I have asked myself over these years. I think it comes from his stories of the church where he sang in the choir, of the ghost stories I thought he made up and the fact that I did not understand why he bashed my mother almost every night, along with myself. I never knew my parent’s wedding date until I was older but I always knew I was a month too early and that was why they married. As I grew, I blamed myself for making them marry and questioned why I was born. We look back now and know that this bias and bigotry and downright sexism marginalized women all over western worlds, but the world didn’t want change and the war dragged it into the modern world kicking and screaming. Some men of that time didn’t want change at all and did some horrible things to their wives. Changing society has been a difficult process with such fast and vast progress in the way we live, in spite of the technology that abounds.
My mum was like me, and was never short about saying what she thought. She loved us with a love I can only understand in the most complete way now as an older woman. She signed the paper for me to join the Womens Royal Australian Air Force. I found freedom from being beaten and learned about life and friendship. Also finding happiness with the most devoted husband any woman could be blessed with and three beautiful children. She confided in me as a friend as well as a daughter; she was so lonely, despite having many friends. She told me very early on in my childhood, a babe really, that she tried to abort me. As stubborn now as I was then, I did not obey. I’ve probably been trying to prove my worth to the world ever since. That being said however, I needed to understand why Dad was so abusive and so damaged. I kept asking him about his family; I never stopped; never. He tired of it and would put me off by saying his sisters were Pansy and Daisy but there were hints in among the stories (he got the cuts for lying at school by the way: way too many times, and was never promoted in the Army because of insubordination), that he knew some things. The names of Chuck and Bud came into his drunken conversations and we were somehow aware the sisters were still in Canada. There was also a photo of a young nephew Jimmy, whom he thought died in the war. I think it was his link to his family.
I never gave up hope of finding my family and about 1991 I met a mother at the school mother’s club and we talked about genealogy. She helped me find my dad’s real birthday and real name (he changed it in the Army). After Dad died in 1997, Barnado’s finally gave me his file (I was next of kin). We, rather she, found the Canadian sisters in 1999. We were well on the way to finding the English piece of the jigsaw when Judy passed away from ovarian cancer. I miss her still and always will, not because she helped me find my relatives; I miss her because we laughed and told each other the truth and had the most intense love of all things English.So for ten years as my journey in life has taken side tracks such as my devotion to the promotion and recording of the exWRAAF movement. With growing children and the mountains of joy and the valleys of despair that sometimes goes with life, Dad’s story slipped back into wishful thinking. I also felt completely inadequate about my education and lack of knowledge of grammar. That fact is still a ‘bummer’ but after enrolling in my current Diploma course, I have learned a bit more about the English language.
So here I am, asking anyone who reads these four posts and after assessment I will continue to keep writing and adding photos and upgrading the site; anyone who by chance knows of Christopher Parr son of Jack and Patricia Parr or Lynda who would have changed her name upon marriage or even Patricia who would be of similar age to myself, please contact me. My dream of completing the puzzle, the challenge, the obsession but most of all the reason I stubbornly clung to life so many years ago.
It must have been to reunite the Barnardo’s Boy’s Family.
Looking forward to meeting you.
Lyn (Lynette) Mitchell (Kyte aka Kite)
Return to Home Page or Post Number 1
Photos of THEN and NOW
PARR-KITE-STATHAM-BROWN-OUR CANADIAN COUSINS (Post 3 of 4) ALL DESCENDANT FROM WILLIAM & EMMA KITE
Kite girls got together in Canada. They searched and found each other
On the 1st July 1998, I started a probationary period in a new job. I had achieved another ambition and had become a real estate person, albeit for three months only. However, I did sell one house in that time and I felt I had carried out my job in a professional way. After being driven around all day and enjoying that first day feeling, we had drinks at the office (there were two other rookies that day). I was called to the phone (which in itself was unusual being my first day). With trepidation of something amiss at home I took the call. My girlfriend Judy, whom had helped me with my quest of finding my long lost family was on the other end of the phone.
Unbeknown to me she had taken it upon herself to write to the 12 addresses in the Barnardo’s files I had received upon my father’s death. Until he died, Barnardo’s were unable to divulge any information. I still remember the day I had the envelope handed to me. I spent two hours at a McDonald’s burger outlet pouring over 500 sheets of paper and feeling numb with the realization that I was finding the truth. All those years of asking and being dissuaded finally had come to the contents of one envelope. But those stories are for another day, and another post and for the book that may now get written.
That day in 1998, my friend had rung to tell me, she had an email from a Chuck Statham to say that he was indeed the son of Dorothy Kite and that my dad’s eldest sister Elizabeth was still alive. I burst into tears that could have flooded the Mississippi River and my new boss walked in to see me red-faced and crying on my first day as a cool, supposedly, suave business woman. I do believe he may have doubted his decision to hire me that night… I loved that job and had it not been a sensitive time in my personal journey, it may have had a longer life, but our journeys are never straight forward and losing that employment funneled me into a contact center place that helped later down the years. I earned enough money to go to Canada in the summer of the next year.
It took 30 hours to arrive in Toronto and when I walked out of customs I saw my dad’s eyes in the body of my cousin Charles Statham. The next day I met my Aunt Elizabeth. We were in the car together and though I can’t remember exactly what she said, it was something like, ‘I think I love you’.
I remember my words well. I said back without any musing about how I felt. It stays with me in my heart. I had found my Aunt Elizabeth, the person my middle name could have been after. ‘I loved you before I met you Elizabeth’, I answered. She had remained in her small house in Galt, north of Toronto since the war and if she had not, I would never have found her, or known of what had happened to Dad’s sisters.
They had been sent from the Barnardo’s holding cottages at Barkingside to various places in Canada as maids or servants. Elizabeth to a chicken farm and she would tell of the frozen hands and the scratches from the chickens. I was told by her granddaughter that she never ate chicken again in her life . The girls somehow found each other in Canada and when Maud was finally well enough she also was transported to Canada. Sometimes they ran away to have some time with each other and then rounded up again and sent to another place.
Each sister made a place for themselves in Canadian society and all married. I believe all but one had only one child (Grace adopted two) and a second cousin led me to believe the poverty they grew up in made them determined to give their child what they missed. This of course is what most parents want for their children since civilization stood on two legs, but the chill of a Canadian winter without shoes and warm clothes was never going to fade from their memories.
I spent three weeks with my cousins and found the other side of my presence in this world, even my weird and unfunny sense of humour. I have great sympathy for those among us who have not known their parents. I knew my father and I knew my mother’s background but even though I looked like her, my pale English skin and love of British history and the Royal family always made me want to know more.
Now I knew lots more and saying goodbye to Bud (Elizabeth’s son) was a moment that still can bring a tear or two and can linger. When I returned to Australia I was once more helped by my beautiful friend; who has since left our world and I let my quest slide because my journey was beginning to be complex. It is now 15 years since that emotional trip and each year it has been harder to get back and to focus.
My dad’s story is not unique. There are thousands of Barnardo’s children all over the world and not just Barnardo’s Homes were sending children to the colonies. Britain had prison ships moored at the docks only 50 years before my dad was born. They were overrun by the poverty the industrial revolution brought upon the country. Australia wanted lads of good British and white stock who could work the farms and didn’t have a formal education. Canada, their own reason for servant girls and I will one day understand that.
There are many boxes of papers and photos in my home and I now have more confidence in my ability to express what is in my heart and soul on paper in a way I am comfortable with. I have great hope that this blog will reach you Patricia, if you are still alive, or Christopher and Lynda.
I believe Emma died in 1977 and that she did make one trip to Canada to rejoin her sisters. They did try to reunite with my father but he always felt abandoned and that his sisters only wanted financial help thinking he was a rich Aussie in the land of riches. Sadly he never found peace, even in his last moments with his son beside him. He was, as my mum used to say, ‘a street angel and a house devil’. His inner demons never let him free, but there were times when he would smile and laugh, perhaps when he caught a fish or playing with our dog Trixie among the daisy weeds on the front lawn. When I visual those rare moments, even the night he put a skyrocket through the back windows into the house (he was drunk), even then his real self would emerge and his eyes would dance and the world would light up.
I was 41 years old when he called me on the phone to wish me happy birthday. I will never forget that night. Whether he was intoxicated I can’t remember, but he said, ‘I love you Bub’. It was the first time he had told me he loved me.
I loved him but I never realized how much I missed his love until these last few years. His life affected his children in so many ways and perhaps that has been the case in both the English and Canadian arms of the family. It was a blight upon the social and political culture of the time and though there have been apologies from our Prime Minister in recent times the damage cannot be reversed.
I have told you a bit of the Canadian link but the English link, Emma and descendants, are the last piece of the jigsaw. Keep reading my post Number 4.
Please find me.
Lynette
PARR CHRISTOPHER LYNDA PATRICIA – THIS IS OUR HISTORY
White Australia Policy
Prime Minister Arthur Caldwell’s address to the Nation … We need immigration.
Funeral for Doctor Barnardo 1900
Barnardo’s children to Canada … four aunts went to Canada
The workhouse – a fate our family avoided by going to Barnardo’s Family
This link is attached to an array of information to research
BARNARDOS TOOK IN THE KITE FAMILY (Post 2 of 4) ALL BUT EMMA
IF YOU HAVE STARTED AT THIS POST PLEASE CLICK HERE TO GO TO POST 1 AND FOLLOW THE LINKS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POST
Kite Family on day of admittance with Emma 1919
BARNARDO’S TOOK IN THE KITE FAMILY, ALL BUT EMMA
On the 23rd January 1919, Barnardo’s Homes accepted the Kite family all bar Emma. She was already fourteen years of age. This photo which is a rarity because not all whom were admitted were photographed in the early days of photography. It shows happy well covered children. William with round cheeks, seemingly well fed.
The admittance form is self-explanatory. That she, our grandmother had to sell her body to feed her children is heart wrenching; that her wounded soldier husband William Sr had no choice, but to put them in Barnardo’s homes is desperation at its lowest. At that time many children from the streets were being rescued. It is some consolation that William Sr could see the sense in institutionalizing his children. In the photo below he is an old man and still in the hospital for returned soldiers. He died in June 1948. What recriminations did he have or did he somehow absolve himself from any guilt at the end knowing he probably saved the lives of his children.
My dad had a horrible time throughout his fostered life and his early years in the back blocks of New South Wales etched with the harshest of conditions and with a loneliness that echoes through the diaries and files I received in 1997. I traveled to Britain in 1999 thinking I could somehow magically find my Aunts descendants. I didn’t, but I did meet a school mate of Dad’s, more than 70 years after he left Shouldham, the Norfolk town he grew up in until he was old enough to Australia. Ted remembered him as a good boy and well liked, though quiet.
William Francis Snr after WW2 in Nursing home for wounded. Died 1948
Having met Elizabeth (top left in the photo above) at the age of 91, I am of the opinion the family is descendant from nice, well-meaning folk, who have faced the toughest of times.
The children were split after this day in 1919. The girls to the cottage settlement at Barkingside, a farm Dr Barnardo’s was given as a wedding present I believe. William to his first foster home.
Maud was held back because of ill-health, the others sent directly to Canada to serve as maids and farm helpers. Elizabeth to a chicken farm. She never ate a chicken again in her life.
I stayed a night with her in 1999 soon after I arrived in Toronto. We watched country singing. This is when she told me of the morning she and the family were taken to the Barnardo’s building. The smell of onion pie. Their mother with raven colored hair and wavy. The rickety steps, the children around her and Willie over her left shoulder. No mention from Elizabeth about her father and yet the paperwork said he had signed them over. Where did Emma go then? William went into the hospital home for wounded soldiers. Emma died about 1930 in a lunatic asylum. The thought that all who went to Australia made millions of pounds was a falsehood but stories of that nature prevailed in England for life was hard and the fantasy was a way of escaping what they were facing each day. The governments did nothing to dissuade this notion as they wanted more workers in Australia and England. It was all about reducing the numbers of poverty-stricken families in London.
Around the time my dad had found the Kesby family of Kempsey, a New South Wales town famous for making rabbit skin hats called the ‘Australian Akubra’; about 1932, he received an account for her funeral; such was the thinking that Willie had made good…
Ted on the left with Emmie holding Christopher. Lynda and then Patricia. On the back of the photograph it says the date is 1961 and Christopher is 6 months old. That means Christopher you are 53 years old and I desperately want to meet you. If anyone is reading this and may know the family please reach out and connect these two families. Emma and Ted Parr, daughter-in-law Patricia, Lynda & Christopher 1961 (Christopher 6 months) (Lynda born 1947)
Barnardo’s Admittance Form signed on 23rd January 1919. To see this in more detail click here.
But he hadn’t. His wage was 7 shillings and 6 pence and money taken out for expenses. I doubt he paid any money towards the account and she was probably buried a pauper. However the Barnardo’s people did bank some of his money and with this in 1941 he was able to buy his horse and saddle and join the Lighthorse Brigade. He had wanted to go to Canada to meet with his sisters. What changes in his character and life would there have been, had he been able to join them?
My friend found our family went way back to the 1770s and sadly I am not sure of my facts to write here but I now have the determination to put our house in order and will find all the paperwork and photos put into box upon box. But please read on just a bit more and then go to the next post. I do know that the family were involved in the beginnings of the Hackney Cab industry and in 1841 one of the Kite brothers went to court to testify against a man who had bomb making equipment in his cab. As a woman I would not fit into the British life of servility and deprivation, but it would be fascinating to visit and feel the atmosphere. The might of the British Empire and all the anguish that accompanied unemployment during the evolution of the manufacturing era. It resonates deep within the English part of my heritage.
For the last five years Mitch (my husband Ian) and I have planned to return to England to somehow find the last piece of my family jigsaw, the Emma part of the family picture. In fact I have cancelled accommodation twice due to ill-health. However, I’m a believe in que-sera-sera and in a destiny that is sometimes not entirely of our making and so to the cousins in Canada and in England I’m hoping the power of technology and social media will help glue the Kite Family back into one piece.
Keep reading Post Number 3.
Images of THEN and NOW
kite.daughter.lynette.william.brother.emma.parr 