Sometimes you don't need television to be entertained in Tasmania. Back in May we had a spectacular Aurora which was highlighted in all the papers. Marilyn and I missed it, of course, because we went to bed early but, thankfully, all the local night owls were out with their cameras and the local Facebook page was a riot of colour the next morning. Yesterday, we had a hailstorm; the hailstones weren't very big and when they gathered on the ground they looked like snow. Most of them melted very quickly but, in the shadow of the fences, they lay there for hours just like snowdrifts. I wonder what will be next.
Todays story is very recent and I've called it A Dark Family Secret.
Mum showed me an album of old photographs once and told me my father had brought them with him on his voyage to Australia. He had never even told my brother and me that he had come by ship; I just assumed he had flown here. In the back of the album was a bundle of photographs in a faded Kodak folder. They were shots taken in the various ports he had visited on the voyage: Aden, Port Said, Colombo, Perth and so on. There were so many stories he could have told us and I had never heard them. Of course, I felt guilty about that.
The research was straightforward, at first. Looking back through the UK census I found a mention of him. At that time, his family was living in Glasgow and, listed in the household were his parents, his brother and two sisters, and another person named James Kirby. I had heard that name casually mentioned a few times over the years but I wasn’t sure of the relationship and, of course, I hadn’t had the good manners to ask about him.
My interest was aroused now so I determined to look further. In an earlier census, my grandmother was there, noted as married but my father and his siblings had not yet been born. James Kirby was there, though, listed as ‘son’. Who was this person?
I found the answer in an even earlier census in a listing of a family named Howard, with an address in one of the more well-to-do suburbs. Among the list of those present in the house on the census date was Elizabeth McNair, housemaid and James Kirby, child. Elizabeth McNair was my grandmother. I hadn’t realised that she had worked as a servant but I could now start to understand how the details fitted together.
My grandmother, in service, had become pregnant, probably by another of the staff and her employers, instead of throwing her out on the street, had allowed her to remain in the house while she was carrying the child. At some point after the child was born, she had married my grandfather and he had agreed to bring up the child as his own. That child was James Kirby. His name hadn’t been changed to my family’s name, for some reason.
Some twist of fate had brought my father to Australia where he had met my mother, married and, in due course, my brother and I were born. His life in Australia had been positive. He had been proud of his family, fulfilled by his occupation, and content with his circle of good friendships.
Now, I was in possession of new information about his beginnings and his early life, and I wondered what I should do with that information. Would it honour his memory if I announced to the world that his mother had been a housemaid to a wealthy family, that she had become pregnant without being married and had an illegitimate child?
In today’s society, those revelations would hardly raise an eyebrow but, on balance, I decided that it was information I didn’t need to share. I couldn’t believe that I heard myself thinking, ‘Best to let sleeping dogs lie.’
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