Family secrets.

[Scrumpy]

I remember hearing ,when I was very young , that my Auntie Annie married young and had two children.. She wasn't completely happy and took a lover.. My Uncle Percy accepted this and stayed married to Annie until his death..
But.. The lover was allowed to live in an old brick shelter that was a couple of steps away from the back door..
Amazing !!! and we think the young of today are loose living.. !!!
Those old air raid shelters certainly had their uses.. 
 Any skeletons in your cupboard.. or sheds .. ?

[klondike]

My own family was either very clean living or very secretive. 

Mind you there weren't vast numbers as my father was an only child and my maternal grandmother died young. As was common in those days her father left the children to be cared for by their grandparents and apart from my mother's older sister who brought her up they emigrated to New Zealand.

[Scrumpy]

Only the wealthy were able to divorce... It wasn't heard of within in the working classes.They couldn't afford it.
My mates dad was a bigamist.. A secret that was well kept in the family..

[Ashy]

owing to the war there were several second marriages in my family but I never met any of the first lot.

[Alex]

My Mum was one of 5 kids, her mother had 2 with her first hubby who died after WWI and two with her second hubby.  There was a child in between those marriages and rumour has it, Grandma had a fling with a GPO telegram delivery boy who was married apparently.  Nobody talked about it of course.  

[GrannyMac]

My paternal grandparents separated when my father was 17 in 1921.  That must have created a scandal! Instead of going to university to become a pharmacist and work in the family business, dad left school and became a clerk.  He and his mother lived in a rented cottage. My aunt stayed with their father. After my grandmother's death, my grandfather remarried - his daughter's friend!

When he died, there was a lot of haggling as he'd made a very complicated will. My father and his sister handed back the properties they'd been left, and took a legitum of around £1k each.  The tenements were in poor repair, the rents were very low, and neither had the capital needed to bring them up to scratch.  Recently I sent for my step grandmother's (out of nosiness) will to see what she'd done with my grandfather's money. Apart from a small personal bequest, the lot went to animal charities.   And there was a lot!

[Scrumpy]

I had a cousin that turned out to be my brother.. !! 
My mother never ever mentioned it.. Took her secrets to the grave..

[1955vintage]

After I retired, I did some genealogy research on my grandparents. My grandfather met my grandmother during WW1, when he was posted to Sheppey with the Kings Royal Rifles. They got married and he died when she was carrying her ninth child, Mum was No 8.

I pulled some birth and marriage certificates and told mum some difficult news. They had married two months after grandma's 16th birthday, and four months after Uncle Cliff had been born. His birth was not registered until he was 13. He had been gassed as a sniper during the war and we were very proud of his service. Further checking showed he never left Kent and saw no active service. Mum was very disappointed and told me not to dig anymore.

[Scrumpy]

1955vintage... How interesting..
 My daughter started digging into our family past.. Not good at all.. They were all rogues..
I asked her to stop.. or not mention the results to me..

[Raven]

One of my sisters is a great fan of the Ancestry Site, she has done a hell of a lot of digging on both sides of our family. Got a bit of a shock though when our Aunts son turned out to not be 😲. He was actually my mother's half brother, our granny's son from before she was married. Can you imagine how that went down with her parents, back in the early 1900s.😬 So Uncle Harold was still Uncle Harold but different somehow.

[Scrumpy]

Exactly like my mum..  She had a child and her sister raised him..  I think that happened many times way back.. It was looked upon as a disgrace/shameful to have a child out of wedlock and so young..
 Even family members looked down on this.. 
Now days people don't seem to care that a child is not raised by both parents.. 
I matters not to me about who has a dad and who doesn't.. They are just children..
I just don't like supporting the mother out of my taxes..

[Alex]

Suicide is something that wasn't spoke about either. My Mum's younger brother committed suicide, I didn't know about this until I was an adult.  Never knew the reason, he was in the RAF met a girl from York and moved over there to live. I can only imagine it was something to do with their marriage ? they didn't have any kids.

[klondike]

My wife's great or maybe great great grandfather has a plaque mounted in his village.

http://www.littlehoughtonvillage.co.uk/village-stocks/

It is next to the village stocks and commemorates his being the last user,

But to return to our own village stocks and whipping post in Little Houghton. It is not known exactly how long a set of stocks has stood in its present location outside the Post Office. Records show that Williams Deacon was paid £2.7s. 6d for new stocks and 2s. 0d for a new lock in 1836. However in 1833 a William Baucott was put in the stocks for being drunk and beating his wife – the last time the stocks seemed to have been used.

[Silver Tabby]

My 4 x Great grandmother (paternal) served time in Dorset gaol for assault.  She was also find £10 and had to write a letter of apology to her victim before she could be released!

My 3 x Great grandmother (paternal) also served time in Dorset gaol - twice.  First time for stealing two mourning dresses from a pawn broker, second time for stealing embroidery silks from her employer.   The sentence after the second offence was deportation for 12 months but this was commuted to time in gaol as she had young children.

[Scrumpy]

Silver Tabby..  Ten pounds fine..!! That was so much money back then.. and write a letter of apology.. !!  There was little education way back.. I wonder how she managed that.

Interesting characters..  I see them all in black and white.. no colour in their lives back then..