Routinely recording a wedding on the tree – Dorothy marries Peter in 1955 in Hemsworth, Yorkshire – I noticed something unusual. Peter had been born in Munich in 1923.
Upon investigation, I found that – in 23 Nov 1941 – his parents Siegfried and Paula has been deported by train from Munich, bound for a ghetto in Riga. There was apparently some controversy on how 59,000 deportees would be accommodated, and whether Reich jews were as inhuman as Ostjuden.
Eventually, five of the trains – 5000 people – were diverted to Kaunus in Lithuania. When the train reached the late C19 fortification on the outskirts of the city, the train was emptied and the SS shot everyone.
Mum has a third cousin, Dorothy, last known in Nottingham about 20 years ago. The picture is her mother’s wartime registration card showing that she was married in Jersey in 1942. It also shows that she was transported to Germany in 1943 with two children.
Phyllis Blampied Streader’s Registration Card
Hitler had ordered the first batch of over 5000 mainland-British-born deportations and their families in 1941 as reprisal for Britain holding German ex-pats in Persia. In 1943, 201 more – including Phyllis and her British-born husband Sydney and their daughters Dorothy and Marcia – were deported in reprisal for a commando raid on Sark.
The family were interned at a former Hitler youth summer camp, with a view of the Bavarian alps, at Biberach an der Riß. Conditions were overcrowded and unsanitary, and twenty died of disease, including – in October 1944 Sydney and, just before Christmas, Marcia. The camp was liberated on St George’s Day, 1945, and the internees flown to England in May. Phyllis died in Sheffield in July 1945. Dorothy was seven years old.
Facebook post #058 (updated in Oct 2025 to merge with former page contents with it largely duplicated).
1938. Alfred Squire (post #057) is 53, a director and shareholder in a successful paper company. A relative once asked if, as his great-grandson, I’d inherited his Rolex (I didn’t). Eighty years later, I thought I could afford a trip to New York to celebrate but I didn’t come close to matching the style of the trip of Alfred and Elsie’s which I’ve since managed to reconstruct. Alfred may have been used to dealing with the American side of the Reeve Angel business but – judging by the ephemera collected – it’s not hard to see that they were thrilled.
Outward At 15:47 BST on 20 April, the RMS Queen Mary steamed out of Southampton Harbour with Alfred and Elsie onboard. Each day, they selected from the menu, and, on each of the five evenings on board, found a personally printed version with their choices on their table.
RMS Queen Mary, their souvenir
Presumably as an aide memoire, they ticked – on the list of cabin passengers – those they met on the voyage. I can’t help noticing that Sir Harry Bellman MBE, chairman of Abbey National Building Society, was ticked. Abbey National were big rivals of C&G and Nationwide whose history I have shared. Air Commander A. T. “Bomber Harris”, was not ticked. Harris may have been busy – it turns out that he was in New York to place the largest foreign order ever placed with an American Aircraft Company – for 200 Lockheed Hudsons.
But my attention was initially drawn to the List by a yellowing newspaper clipping tucked inside. “Samuel Goldwyn and Mary Pickford [“America’s sweetheart”] returned yesterday on the Queen Mary from England, where they formulated plans with Alexander Korda and Douglas Fairbanks for the reorganization of the operating policy of the United Artists Distributing Company of which they and Charlie Chaplin are the owner-producers.” Both were ticked. Chaplin of course, started work on The Great Dictator the following year.
Queen Mary – list of cabin passengers
New York At 05:30 on the 24 April, the ship docked in New York. They didn’t initially stay long, perhaps a night or two to get their land legs back. They did keep a programme from Radio City Music Hall for that week, suggesting they caught the show there.
The running order was first the Music Hall Grand Organ, played by Richard Leibert, then the Music Hall Symphony Orchestra, The Glory of Easter, an annual religious pageant by Anton Rubinstein (music here). Then this Disney cartoon Silly Symphony:
Then, a live Music Hall extravaganza, bringing to life Walt Disney’s beloved characters. Mickey Mouse’s stage debut, apparently. Then this, the 1938 Samuel Goldwyn film starring Gary Cooper, The Adventures of Marco Polo:
New York Central System The next day, they caught the train. In fact, Alfred and Elsie would have quite literally walked the red carpet, a concept which originated with the “Century”, the train of tycoons. This was the flagship operation of the NYC, the luxurious first-class Twentieth Century Limited, operated on a crack 16-hour schedule between New York’s Grand Central Terminal and Chicago’s LaSalle Street Station (It’s 700 miles, and these days takes about 23 hours). It was one of America’s premiere passenger services (1902-1967), and the subject of pop culture lore (e.g. North by Northwest). In early 1938, the locomotive would have been Commodore Vanderbilt or similar. Later in the year, a streamlined art deco version took over. There is a film from the very early 1950s about the railroad here.
Test run of streamlined 20th Century Limited, Chicago, 1938
Chicago Alfred and Elsie stayed at the Drake Hotel for perhaps a week (although I have found some conflicting snippets, so there is a bit of guesswork). They also visited the Cape Cod Room at the Drake, a seafood restaurant famous enough to issue its own postcards (of which they kept several). And they saw the sites.
Union Station, ChicagoThe Drake, ChicagoCape Cod Room, The Drake, Chicago
On 1 May, they watched a Broadway preview at the Grand Opera House, Chicago, of the Cole Porter musical “You Never Know“. The cast featured Clifton Webb, Lupe Vélez, Libby Holman, Toby Wing (later replaced by June Havoc), and Rex O’Malley. It may have been considered a flop but there is a 2001 recording (17 short tracks) made available in March 2020. Let’s Not Talk About Love is mainly about misbehaving, but mentions Nazis, and Sammy Goldwyn. ‘At Long Last Love’ from the show got to #3 in the charts.
They paid their bill at the Drake on Monday 2 May, the night after the show, and headed back to New York.
New York From 3 May to 7 May, they would (probably) have been at the Commodore Hotel, which was constructed in 1919 as part of “Terminal City,” a complex of palatial hotels and offices connected to Grand Central Terminal Railroad. It suffered the indignity of a makeover by Donald Trump in 1980.
Apart from some scraps from the hotel and an events guide, there is only a single postcard – an aerial view of the Statue of Liberty. Something may have happened to all the others, of course, or perhaps I have the dates wrong. As well as Liberty (Chapter 51.2a), I have been fortunate to see a few notable survivals of the time. And I can be confident that we ate at one place in common – the Grand Central Station restaurant!
Statue of Liberty, New YorkChrysler Building, New YorkEmpire State Building, New YorkEmpire State Building Interior, New YorkWisdom at the Rockefeller Centre, New YorkGrand Central Station, New YorkMcSorley’s Old Ale House, New YorkCyclone Roller Coaster, New YorkMy Photos of New York
Niagara
On 8 May, they spent one night upstate at the Hotel Niagara, Niagara Falls, where Captain Webb met his end in Chapter 50.1d. The bridge familiar to the Captain was the world’s first working railway suspension bridge. It was replaced in 1898 by the Honeymoon Bridge, the largest steel arch bridge in the world. On 27 January, 1938, the bridge collapsed. There is a film of that too. Demolition of what was left of the bridge took place from February to April 1938.
In fact, the couple probably flew over the Falls. We know that Alfred was familiar with planes, and the Douglas DC-3 was making it a practical proposition. (Smithsonian Magazine). Niagara Falls Airport had opened ten years earlier. They probably flew back to New York on 9 May.
New York It seems likely that they had five nights in Washington before returning for a final night in New York. This might have been at the Waldorf-Astoria – they did at least call in, as Elsie kept a paper serviette! It was behind scaffolding when I was there, and is being refurbished again in 2020 but apparently has conserved its 1930s aura.
Washington DC Judging from the souvenir postcards, the couple also visited Washington DC (and Mount Vernon and Arlington?). This would have been another DC-3, from Newark Airport.
There is a bill from the William Pitt Tavern, Chatham, New Jersey on 12 May. This was known at least until the 1970s for its reasonably priced home-cooked food. In 1938, it was 85¢!
William Pitt Restaurant, Chatham (postcard for sale)
There are few clues from the last part of the trip – just a couple of collections of souvenir collections of views.
Return
On 18 May, they returned to Southampton on the Normandie, holder of the Blue Riband for the fastest Atlantic crossing. (the title was regained by Queen Mary later in the year).
SS Normandie, from the welcome booklet
Whilst on board the couple attended a Charity Gala Concert compered by the actor Brian Aherne (Oscar-nominated the following year), and featuring Arthur Rubinstein on piano, both of whom were on the passenger list. Scanning through the rest of the passenger list, the name of the actor David Niven jumps out. I found a picture of him waving to fans as he disembarked (pic).
On their first day on board Normandie, Alfred and Elsie may well have heard reports of military concentrations close to Czechoslovak boarder, and fears of an imminent German attack. The next day, Czechoslovakia mobilised military reservists and strengthened its border defences. Britain and France warned Germany that they would come to Czechoslovakia’s aid in the event of an attack.
Whilst on board they attended a Charity Gala Concert compered by the actor Brian Aherne (Oscar-nominated the following year), and featuring Arthur Rubinstein on piano, both of whom were on the passenger list. Scanning through the rest of the passenger list, the name David Niven jumps out – but was it that David Niven? Yes – Getty Images have a picture of him waving to fans as he disembarked. In 1942, he starred in First of the Few (aka Spitfire), a Samuel Goldwyn picture which was enthusiastically endorsed by Churchill.
‘Spitfire’ Poster, 1943
Aftermath
Britain and France failed to come to Czechoslovakia’s aid when the invasion came, but War, of course, did come. Both ships were interned in New York, and moored up with The Queen Mary’s sister ship, RMS Queen Elizabeth. After a pause, the ships were refitted as troop carriers. Normandie was lost to fire during this process. Through the War, Queens Mary and Elizabeth often travelled out of convoy and without escort with as many as 15,000 men on board.
Alfred and Elsie’s son John joined the army (post 52) and was posted to the South-East Asia Command. He was given command of the Allied Land Forces biological research section in South-East Asia , where he was a Major, and temporary Lieutenant-Colonel. Alfred died at Esher on 16 April 1944.
RMS Queen Mary returned to civilian service and was retired early in my own lifetime. She is still moored in Long Beach, and still has the mural in the restaurant on which a crystal model tracked progress. The same artwork can be seen in the back of the postcard of the restaurant, and is also on the cover of the Squires’ farewell dinner menu.
1911 census: ‘Keresforth’, Brunswick Road, Kingston, Surrey. The home of Harriet Squire, widow (post 56). The house was named after a hamlet in Barnsley.
At the other end of the country a cousin on the other side of the family, had just become principal of Birkenhead Technical College. He had once filed a patent for safety devices for hitching horses, and went on to be the president of the Chartered Institute of Patent Agents.
At home in Kingston was daughter Phyllis Margaret, a 24-year-old kindergarten teacher at a poor law school. In 1912, she married Albert Clayton at the local church.
Also in 1912, Sopwith built an aircraft factory on a skating rink less than half a mile away from the family home in Kingston. The famous Sopwith Camel biplane (see post #004) was made here in WWI.
Sopwith Camel (my photo)
Albert and Phyllis lived in Cheadle and had three children. He was an electrical engineer – later a consultant and university lecturer – who wrote several textbooks.
Dad is a retired electrical engineer. Once, while working for GEC, he came up with idea behind a patent involving baking a thermistor into the resin insulation of a motor winding.
Absent from Kingston was eldest son Cecil Edward. He had attended Kingston Grammar School but was then apprenticed in Sheffield, where he settled, although he spent time at both London and Sheffield Universities. He was a keen motorist and built his own motor cycle before 1906 (a contemporary pictured). At the 1911 census, he was 30, and boarding with a scissor manufacturer (and patent holder). He was already a manager at Willford’s, where he would spend his whole career, having started as a fitter. In 1915, he married Dorothy Bingley – they went on to have three children.
Humber motorcycle, 1904 (my photo)
Willford’s made railway springs, and it won’t be a coincidence that his grandfather William Green (the ironfounder and patent holder from post 53) had also been in this line of work in Sheffield. By this time the business had been inherited by Henry Green, who had married Cecil’s aunt Annie Squire. Walter Green, cutler and penknife maker named Cecil in his will. At Willford’s, Cecil was ‘entirely responsible for the design and manufacturing side of the business, in addition to the carrying out of tests and inspection of materials’.
Walter Green penknife
Astonishingly, Cecil invented, constructed, and (in 1918) patented a mechanical computer! (a calculating machine for equations with multiple variables, concerning springs). He was Managing Director from 1926 until one day in 1942, when he dropped dead leaving the office for a technical meeting in London. The business was eventually closed by final owners ThyssenKrupp in 2016, after it flooded.
C. E. Squire Patent
At home in 1911 was middle son, Rupert Henry (whose first name I have inherited as a middle name). He was a 27-year-old engineer’s draughtsman at a steelworks and rolling mill. Kingston is not known for its rolling mills so perhaps this was a visit. During the war, Rupert was a pottery manager. In 1918, he married Vera Paton, daughter of a colliery manager, in Calcutta. The flu pandemic reached India that year, killing at least 12 million people.
A year later, Rupert filed a patent – for a ‘Direct liquid-pressure apparatus. – Solid material such as sand for filling mine workings &c. [later cited in an application for moving rocks and coal] is elevated and transported from a river bed &c. by means of a vessel which is placed in or sunk into the material so that the latter may enter therein, after which water is forced into the vessel to expel the material through a delivery pipe.’ The couple had three children and migrated back to Kingston in 1923. Later, he was a Chartered Structural Engineer, still in Kingston.
Also at home in 1911, was younger son Alfred Eustace, a 26-year-old manager at a paper merchant’s office. He married Elsie Le Brun in 1913 and they had one surviving son, John Rupert Squire, my grandad (post 51). During WWI, Alfred was a 2nd Lieutenant with the Royal Flying Corps.
Alfred Squire in uniform
His duties appear to have been ground-based and technical. He was stationed at Farnborough, where the Royal Aircraft Factory had developed from the Army Balloon Factory (my pic).
RAE, Farnborough
This is where Britain’s first military airship was built and where Britain’s first aeroplane flight took place in 1908. It was also home to another famous WWI fighter, the SE5A (my pic).
Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5A
In 1918, Ivo Little, on the other side of the family (posts #015 and #042) invented and patented gear for anchoring Sopwith Camels to airships.
R-23 Airship with Camel
Alfred had been with H. Reeve Angel & Co at the time of his enlistment, and he stayed with them for his whole career. Harry Reeve Angel had been a commercial traveller and agent in the paper trade, and founded his company in 1912. It served as agent for various papers and art supplies, including Whatman art paper, widely considered to be the finest available.
Jabez Barnard, purveyor of art supplies and paper on the other side of the family, patented the enamel slides shown in post #028 in about 1870.
By 1921, Alfred was a director and shareholder. Angel died in 1934, leaving an estate worth the considerable sum of £43,771. By then, the company’s range had extended to high-grade chemical filter papers. In 1937, (not to be outdone) Alfred patented a filtering device.
A. E. Squire Patent
In 1974, Reeve Angel merged with Whatman. Last production at the Springfield Mill, Maidstone was in 2014, and it was knocked down in 2018, after 200 years. The successor company still makes Whatman brand products – their filter papers are used in Covid-19 vaccine production.
We left Alfred Squire last week at the point he left the family farm at Rest Park to find his way in the world. By 1841, at age 20, he was apprenticed to a druggist in Brotherton, 6 miles south. Ten years later, he was one of four shopmen living in at a linen draper’s at 24 Briggate, Leeds, about 20 miles from the farm. (He was Alfred ‘Squires’ in both censuses.) I photo’d the shop (pic) before I knew of any connexion (actually because it is Grade II star listed for its gilded time ball and other features added after Alfred’s time).
Rather abruptly, Alfred relocated to the less obviously prosperous linen weaving and mining town of Barnsley, five miles further from home. Curious – perhaps there was an unmissable business opportunity…? But no, the scandalous truth emerged when I found a note posted online:
“There had been a family story implicating a member of the Squire family of Rest Park, Sherburn-in-Elmet in the birth of my Great Grandfather George (but always called ‘Squires’) Fowler [son of Sarah Fowler, 18]… I am now in possession of information that convinces me that George ‘Squires’ father was, in fact, Alfred Squire, [32] son of John Squire”!
Apparently, Sarah was born and raised at her father’s farm in Little Fenton, about two miles from Rest Park. When Alfred was in central Leeds, so was Sarah – she was a domestic for another druggist. The Fowler family story was that Alfred’s family refused to allow him to marry Sarah, and sent him away!
Presumably, the family were not delighted when – no sooner had he relocated – Alfred married another shopgirl. And only fourteen months after Squires Fowler was born… Sarah remarried – and had a son named Alfred (Britton); in due course, ‘Squires’ had a son named Squire Fowler.
Our Alfred married Agnes Green in July 1853 at St Mary Barnsley. She had been born in Wigan, and her father was John Green, a bleacher. There is a good candidate for this John, also born in Wigan but now living in Barnsley Old Town (see map), a hand loom weaver. Agnes, however, had been living with her uncle George Traviss, a local hatter, for at least twelve years.
By the time John had arrived, Barnsley was a principal centre for linen weaving – flax spinning by water power having been introduced in the mid to late C18, and steam a century later. But much hand-looming still existed – perhaps half the output. Indeed the population was much expanded by an influx of such workers from Lancashire and Ireland, their higher quality and ‘fancy’ work giving Barnsley an edge over cheaper local competition.
The pic is The Loom (Tim Ward, 2015), Barnsley (photo: Barnsley Council)
Working conditions were poor though, and low rates for piece work meant long hours. From about 1839, unemployed weavers were begging in the street. I found this note from the Wigan authorities to those of Barnsley:
“I beg you will oblige by endeavouring to keep Wigan paupers who reside in your Township at the greatest distance imaginable. I fear your account will accumulate till we shall not be able to discharge it. I am of opinion that things are as bad here as they can possibly be with you at Barnsley. … I am sorry that you have very much trouble with our poor.”
Exports of ‘fancy’ goods to China helped, but the Crimean War led to a flax famine in the mid-1850s.
By the time Alfred arrived, the first of a large number of coal pits were opening, mostly in the villages surrounding the town. As time went on, the linen industry began to decline due to competition from Ireland and Scotland, and from cotton – a raw material produced with cheap labour – slave labour until the American Civil War of 1861. So coal eclipsed flax, as flax had overtaken wire drawing in earlier times. Notably the ratio of workers in the two industries in John’s neighbourhood in the Old Town tilted over this period – it was about even by 1861. Agnes’ family worked in both industries – see post #016 (‘Kes’) and the blog.
By then, Alfred was a master tailor, recorded in the census as a hatter and tailor employing eleven on Market Hill (pic – my photo, like the others of Barnsley). The eldest son, John Traviss Squire, was five years old. Ten years later, Alfred was still in business in Barnsley, but John was now a solicitor’s articled clerk, boarding with a dental surgeon in Sheffield city centre. More of this anon…
Alfred and Agnes remained in business in Market Street for many years. Their daughter Agnes married Alexander Brown Bell, a leader writer for the Sheffield Morning Telegraph and Yorkshire Evening Post. By the time he was 70, Alfred had become a coal agent, and Agnes let rooms.
After Alfred died, Agnes retired to a terraced house with her shopkeeper daughter, Sarah, whose fancy drapery suggesting that she bought from the hand-loomers. Poor John Bertram Harris (post 41) was staying with them in 1911. Agnes died late in WWI; according to other researchers, Sarah ended her days in Australia.
Another branch of the tree scaled. So, not only did my Gt-Grandfather Squire hold a patent but so did both his brothers, and all in quite separate fields. Sibling rivalry! By force of numbers, the coal miners took a long time to go through, but my favourite waste of time has been recreating Alfred and Elsie’s holiday of a lifetime, in 1938. I’ve found the liners, the Pullman trains and the pioneering aircraft they would have used, the sights they would have seen, even the music they listened to, the films they saw, and the meals they enjoyed together.
This chapter of the tree has been long and difficult. My gt-gt Grandad moved to London, and I’ve now documented his mother’s family that he left behind in Barnsley. 37 coal miners and 3 others underground, a handful of labourers and mill and factory hands, and a coffin maker. One got 14 days’ hard labour for stealing a pigeon when he was 16. He was 5ft tall with red hair, knock-knees and a squint. One worked in the paper mill which was the backdrop for the film ‘Kes’. One died in an explosion at Wharncliffe Woodmoor colliery – the last major disaster in the South Yorkshire coalfield. One escaped to the Forest of Dean – where he was… a miner. One moved to Kent, where he was killed in a rock fall at Betteshanger Colliery, Deal. Five died in WWI, and one in WWII, where the explosions and the poison gas were deliberate.
Facebook post #009 (Apr 2020 – 006-008 were progress updates)
OK, so we’ve reached the great war in the family history… the Great Chocolate War. With the younger sons in Mum’s family trying to make a living away from the family farm in Yorkshire at this time, and Dad’s moving out of Peaky Blinder country, it’s not too surprising that some of the cousins ended up working in chocolate factories. (See George Powell and Leonard Lambert). This was the start of cocoa for the masses. Who would win, Rowntree, or Cadbury?
The picture is of a tin in my collection, the result of a collaboration between the Quaker chocolate company founders, reluctant to support the actual war effort, but also reluctant to offend the Queen. It was a luxury Christmas present for troops in the Boer War.
By WWII, chocolate was considered an essential household food.
