Walter at about 20 (Ashford studio)

Walter at about 30 (Pretoria studio)

According to the recollection of his daughter Anne Bridge, Walter's first job was for the railway company in Ashford (but he could have worked as a telegraph clerk for the railway). In any case, he soon emigrated, going in the first place to Canada and working in the salmon trapping industry - presumably in British Columbia and probably in a canning factory, rather than fishing! Then he got a job as an engineer on the shipping routes between Canada and Japan. He used to claim that he had had a close encounter with a shark while swimming near Tokyo: "my fastest swim ever"! Then he settled in South Africa, following the lead of two married sisters, and got a job with the government irrigation department, drilling water wells. The studio photograph taken in Pretoria shows him looking still relatively young, as if taken in the mid 1890's. The pose seems to say "I'm doing nicely now"!

According to his daughter-in-law Masie (my mother) Walter's emigration was the result of an affair with a girl and had brought considerable grief to his mother. This sounds quite plausible but is not confirmed by any other source.

Walter continued to work in S. Africa though he did visit England in 1926, taking James to stay with his brother's family in Kent. He paid the school fees and provided a sufficient income for the family until George left school in 1929. Then Walter sent a ticket for George to go to Australia, to work for his uncle Horace; not a bad idea on paper, but George wanted to go to theological college and Mary would certainly have supported him (and probably resented the interference). So George went to Kelham College to train for ordination and his father cut off all funding. In consequence, Mary had to move to a tiny cottage in Pavenham, a village outside Bedford, and money was very tight.

Walter probably retired from his position as a Government Inspector when he reached 60, in 1924. However he continued working in S Africa at least until 1929 and when he finally returned to England he went first to live with with his sister Annie in Kent until she died, around 1935, when he returned to his family in Bedford, though hardly to the bosom of the family. I remember a visit to the little house (in 1944?): the water came from a well in the garden and Walter drew up a bucketful while I was watching. He maintained a large vegetable garden and grew much of the produce for the family, also giving some to my mother. Later Walter and Mary both lived with George, first in the vicarage at Wighton Wells, Norfolk and then in King's Lynn where George was rector of All Saints' Church.

According to the recollection of Anne Bridge, her mother Mary was adopted at the age of 3 by the Mother Superior of a convent in Fulham. At the time Mary was partly paralysed due to some problem with her back. Her mother had just died of TB and (in Anne's account) her father did not want the burden of looking after a sickly child. At that time, adoptions were entirely unregulated and there is no documentation. As shown by the 1891 census (below), the adoptive mother was in fact Paulina Granville. Paulina arranged consultations and treatment at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and despite at one stage being told that Mary was incurable, nevertheless effected a cure. (However, Anne recalled that her mother was always careful of her back.) Anne told the story of Mary and her adoptive mother meeting one of the doctors later and Paulina pointing to Mary, saying "that's the incurable one".

Paulina Granville

"Interesting as Normand House is in every particular, it contains nothing more interesting or attractive than the personality of the 'Mother Superior'... Miss Granville ... the terrible difficulties of earning a respectable living by girls once convicted of theft weighed so heavily upon her heart ... the foundation of the Order of St. Katherine was the result. For five years ...(they) worked in a hired house in Hammersmith, (before moving into Normand House.) ...for fourteen years (she) has been making additions to the original Tudor building ... the house now provides accomodation for 30 girls, who come straight from prison at the expiry of their first sentence and after two years' training in house, needle and laundry work are provided with outfits and situations, and sent forth to resume the battle of life under fair conditions."

Apparently she was somewhat eccentric and careless of her own safety. She used to walk in the garden at night, picking flowers (maybe she preferred the cooler air). But her friends were sufficiently concerned that they gave her a gun to keep in the house, which she did use on one occasion. Masie (daughter-in-law) recalled being told that a "native" had run amok and was seen as a threat to the children; Mary shot him. However, according to Anne, he was only hit in the foot.

Augustus Bozzi Granville

The Russian table

Anne Bridge gave me a little rosewood table which had belonged to her mother and which had been used to keep a copy of Dr. Granville's autobiography. In Anne's words "it has been around as long as I can remember". She said that the table had belonged to the same doctor who had written the book and he in turn had received the table as a gift from a patient. The style of the legs is English, William IV, which dates it to the 1830's; the table top contains a grid of polished stones mounted like panes of glass in a window. It was always called the "Russian table" because on opening up the top, the stones are seen to be numbered and labelled in Cyrillic script. Dr. Granville did indeed have Russian patients and even visited St. Petersburg in 1827, so the table could well have been a souvenir of that visit.

More about the table