The Family’s Black Sheep

To begin with, all I knew of my great grandfather, Edward Alfred Parsons, came from the birth & marriage certificates I obtained soon after starting my family research and, more recently, the 1891 & 1901 censuses. He was born in Westminster in 1864 and married Annie Elizabeth Leigh in 1884. They had four children including the eldest, my grandfather Edward James Leigh Parsons in 1887 and the youngest, Doris Ada Parsons born in July 1900. On the 1901 census, his profession was a pottery storekeeper.

So far, so ordinary.

However, in 2000, I tracked down a cousin of my father's, and the son of Doris Ada. When I first spoke to him, the conversation quickly turned to whether I was aware of the family scandal…

Scandal? What scandal?

According to the story, Annie discovered that Edward had an illegitimate family in North London, including another Doris Ada Parsons presumably to minimize the risk of being found out.

But that turned out to be only the half of it…

I was to discover that Edward was a serial adulterer, a practised liar, (possibly) a bigamist, a perjurer, an imposter and a wife beater..

As well as the life he shared with his real wife in Lambeth, I discovered that, from at least 1897, he was also living together as husband and wife with Eulalie Annie Hawken in Camberwell, both under the pseudonym Pearson - but there is no evidence that they were bigamously married.

In August 1898 they had a daughter, Doris Mary Pearson. On her birth certificate, Edward described himself as a “Stoker-Steamer” – a classic cover for someone who was often away from home – suggesting that he was also deceiving Eulalie and that, at that stage, Eulalie knew nothing of his real wife.

For some time, I’d been in intrigued by the apparent gap of eight years between Edward’s first two children with Annie, his wife. A possible explanation came to light whilst watching an episode of the BBC’s “Who Do You Think You Are?”.

According to an expert in sexual health, any gap of 5 to 8 years between the births of children, particularly in the late 19th century, is probably due to congenital syphilis. Once infected, there is a period of up to ten years where the infection works its way out; initially causing stillbirths, followed by very early mortality, then unhealthy infants and finally healthy children. At the end of the 19th century, it is estimated that 10% of the population had the infection.

Given what we know of Edward Parsons' character, it is quite possible that he contracted syphilis in the late 1880s and passed the infection to Annie, causing a series of infant deaths in the 8 year gap between Edward James and Harold.

Using Ancestry’s online parish records for Lambeth, I found the baptisms of two more children of Edward and Annie - Maude Annie in November 1889 and Minnie Agnes in November in 1891. As expected, they both died tragically young: Maude died in 1890, aged one, and Minnie died aged five in 1896. This could well support the syphilis theory.

Edward hid his second family until around 1906 when Annie somehow discovered his secret and her sons threw him out of their house and their lives. She divorced him in 1907.

According to the Divorce Proceedings, Edward also had an affair with Sophia Cook in Brighton in October 1899 and another child, as yet unidentified, was born in July 1900, the same month that his daughter Doris Ada was born to Annie. But the documents make it clear that, seven years after the affair, Sophia was now respectably married - yet Eulalie is barely mentioned; she’s not given a forename, her affair with Edward is said to have begun only in 1906 and her surname was spelt wrong. I guess Edward chose to lie to the Court in order to protect Eulalie and keep her out of the divorce. I also find it strange that no mention is made of the fate of Sophia’s child.

More worryingly, the Proceedings also describe how, from 1903 to 1905, Edward repeatedly threatened, punched, kicked and abused Annie, eventually threatening to decapitate her with a razor held at her throat.

The Divorce was granted in October 1907 and, now free of Edward, Annie married her lodger one Charles Frederick Chinnery, the Stable Manager for the Daulton pottery company in Lambeth. My grandfather and his siblings (or, at least, the ones we know about) apparently regarded Chinnery as their father and we don’t know whether they ever kept in contact with Edward.

Edward finally married Eulalie Hawken in late 1907 under the name Parsons. He lied again on the marriage certificate, claiming to be a widower. On the 1911 census, they were living in Camberwell with their daughter, Doris Mary - now aged 12, and Eulalie’s mother. True to form, they falsely claimed to have been married for 13 years.

Edward died of tuberculosis in the Newington Workhouse Infirmary in Westmoreland Road, in 1917, but I have found no trace of Eulalie or her daughter after that.

I wonder whether the cruelty was exaggerated to facilitate Annie’s plea for divorce – but perhaps that seems like I’m trying to convince myself he wasn’t that bad – something I have no intention of doing. But at that time, a woman could only gain a divorce (a very rare occurrence in those days) by demonstrating cruelty - adultery would not have been sufficient grounds.

I guess every family has a dark character and I suppose he could have been so much worse. As well as repeatedly lying on official records, he openly admitted in court to serial adultery, cruelty, assault, battery and, arguably, grievous bodily harm. But, since these admissions were made in a Divorce Court, there is no suggestion or evidence that he ever faced criminal charges.

 

Annie Leigh

Edward James Parsons