Thursday 21 January 2010

The secret illegitimate child

After getting fucking soaked in London it was a bit of a relief to be in the Imperial War Museum, apart from some weird little man following us around and standing way too close to us for about an hour (to the point where I was about to inform security) it was rad.
I got home and told my Mum I'd been to the IWM museum and she then started telling me about my Great-Grandparents on my Grandma's side (her Mum).
I had never known this story before but my Great Grandmother had been living with her sister and her sister's husband in the 1920s and had an affair with the husband and got pregnant. When the family found out everybody cast her out and she was sent to have her baby in the workhouse.
From what I know her family never contacted her again.
She had her baby and managed to earn enough money to get out of the workhouse and rent a room in a house.
Cutting a long story short, her baby grew up and eventually became my Grandma. About 10 years ago my Grandma, in her 70s by then, discovered she had half brothers that her mother's sister and husband had had children and no-one had ever told them about my Grandma, the secret illegitimate half sister.
Anyway, this story is turning out to be alot longer then intended, my Grandma learned that her father was one of the longest surviving soldiers of WW1 and had been asked by the IWM to record his memories on tape to be played there at the museum.
Now that I know I'm going to look for this recording next time I go to the museum. I think the way he treated my Great Grandmother is terrible and apparently he was a womaniser all his life and had absolutely no contact with me Grandma.
Lightening the mood slightly here are some photos from the museum, I wasn't allowed to take any photos in the Holocaust exhibition but to be honest I was concentrating to much to think about photos.















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