I was perusing the above, looking for photos of Ian’s great-grand children to correct errors on the site and came across memories of Aunty Pumphrey, so I collated them publish for reference.

“Fascinating to see the name “Pumphrey”. She was more than simply “Visitor” in the Census paper. My mother often talked about her as her great-aunt by marriage (I think she was a Brown), and closely related to Aunty Annie, Granny’s sister who lived near us. Pumphrey is listed as born in Saltley, Birmingham – my school was in Saltley, next door parish. Mother used to hear Aunty Pumphrey talk about old times and the family. That’s where she got the idea about being descended from Queen Victoria’s John Brown’s brother. Aunty Pumphrey used to tell the tale of when she was very small she was taken by John Brown to see the royal train being built in Birmingham and was given “a piece of blue cloth” to remember it. After my mother died I found in a little wooden box some old things, including, in a sealed white envelope, a blue ribbon, neatly stitched into a roll, and when I unwound it it looked like it was a child’s hair ribbon twisted where the knot would have been. There was a John Brown in our granny’s ancestry – but not that one.”. Sent from my iPhone

I wondered if you would pick that up. So Aunty Pumphrey was an Aunt to Emily and perforce of circumstances lived with her and Walter? Annie was a sister of Emily?

“Do you know about the portraits? Aunty Annie had them, and they came to my mother – then they came to me. Head and shoulders, beautifully painted on copper sheets; nobody I asked in our family knew who they were. I think they were Mr and Mrs Pumphrey; the clothing fits the dates, and the lady’s big hooked nose was exactly like my mother’s. When Patricia nee Espin visited us from Australia she was interested in family history and I gave them to her. She was the one who could find no evidence of my mother’s story about being descended from QV’s JB’s brother.

Aunty Annie came and lived with us after George Field died. After a while she developed what we would now call Alzheimer’s disease. Mother herself wasn’t too well, and Annie was moved to a care home. I remember our visiting her there: it was a cold day, and the old-fashioned gas fire was belting it out. There was a sort of shelf just below the burners, and she had been putting pennies on it, thinking how she used to put pennies in the meter.

When my Dad got a job in Alum Rock just after the depression, we were living in a new house in Hall Green. Getting to work and back was a nightmare. At about the same time, Aunty Annie married George Field. He wanted her to live in his house, so my dad bought hers – a bike ride to the factory, and eventually my school in Saltley. No plumbing, no electricity, no bathroom, outside WC.
George wanted to go to his bank in town one day, so I offered him a lift. Having come out of the bank, getting into the car, he had a stroke and died. His family wanted his wife out – so she came to us.

Funny is it? What did I do? When he collapsed? Somebody helped me to drag him into a shop, lying for dead, with the shopkeeper rather annoyed and standing with his legs apart to try and hide the body from potential shoppers. Somebody (probably the shopkeeper) phoned for an ambulance. Aunty Annie stayed in the car till somehow it was pronounced he died in the hospital to avoid awkward police investigations if he’d died in the street. So I took her home, when she probably stayed the rest of her time. Both she and George were pretty old and feeble. My mother said more than once that George was a miser, and his family turned out no different as to settling up finance and property and what to do with his widow. There wasn’t much laughter in the house”.