Doris was my father Edward Morgan’s first wife who tragically died of TB in Rednal Hospital in 1930 after only 2 years of marriage. They were childless although Doris yearned for children and they lived in Middlemore Road, Northfield, perhaps to be close to her father Walter who, I was told, had a butcher’s shop on the Bristol Rd In Northfield.
My mother – typically of second wives referring to first ones – was a bit patronising about Doris, giving the impression she was a girl trying hard to improve herself. Which is why I am so interested in the story of her mandolin and her LLCM in music. We were told nothing about a mandolin or music. The picture handed down was of a girl slaving in the typing pool at Cadbury’s in Bourneville, trying to educate herself by doing evening classes at the Midland Institute in B’ham where she and my father probably first met.
Edward, my father, worked as an insurance clerk at the Alliance in B’ham and they would have gone in together on the train fro Northfield. He hated his job as much as she hated hers and they went for hiking and camping trips whenever they could although I get the impression he may have been bullying her into roughing it. He also forced his vegetarianism on her although she had been used to hearty meat meals as a butcher’s daughter. Both these things – camping in wet tents and having to copy his eccentric diet probably brought on her incipient TB. And for this I feel guilty on his behalf.
On the happy side, which she must have enjoyed, they joined things like the Middlemore Rd Tennis and Badminton clubs and I have several photos of them in white with their tennis rackets.
I also have photos of their courting days where they went in for high jinks – like her hiding from him in piles of hay and even wearing fancy dress as a dustman. These photos show her as physically tiny, with a 1920’s bob and very simple straight up and down dresses which were the fashion of the time. I haven’t seen photos of her many sisters, but my impression is that she was dark-haired and brown-eyed, which they may all have shared. She comes across as shy, sweet and docile and it’s a shame she didn’t stand up for herself more with him.
Her carried the urn with her ashes from lodgings to lodgings in B’ham until her sisters objected and insisted that they were scattered in Yardley Cemetery on other Raybould graves.
Throughout his marriage to my mother, he kept Doris’s handbag, her silver bangle and a little dried-up bottle of perfume called ‘Ashes of Violets’ hidden in a drawer. They intrigued me as a boy which is why I have wanted to now so much more about her.