Family tree
From Claire Ozel Wiki
[edit] THE FAMILY OF CLAIRE THOMAS, WIFE OF OKTAY OZEL
GREATGRANDPARENTS
Henry Thomas, (d.1888 aged 60) of Brynmair House, Llanelly, Carmarthenshire, South Wales. Director of the Old Castle Tin Works. Born at Cwmbach, Llanelly, on his father’s farm. ‘The family is an old Carmarthenshire one, being traceable as freeholders for many generations back.’ See obituary.
Mary? née Jones. Parents of Vaughan.
Herbert Jameson Waterlow (1846-1921), Sheriff of London. His family was of Huguenot extraction and the family business was printing (postage stamps, bank notes, etc.).
Marion (Polly), daughter of Robert Burton and his wife Elizabeth, nee Stewart, who were married on 31 Dec. 1846 in the Parish Church of St Mary le Strand in London. Robert was a fishmonger and his father was a compositor. Elizabeth’s father was a bootmaker. Marion was a singer with the Carl Rosa Opera Company. See the revue by George Bernard Shaw of 1885. Parents of Hinemoa.
Edward Poultney (II) (7 Feb 1851-1930) son of Edward Poultney (I) (1811-1853) and his wife Jane, nee Holman , (1809-1904). Edward (I) was variously a dressing-case maker, a pocketbook maker and a schoolteacher, who founded ‘The Home in the East for the reformation of Juvenile Male Criminals’. See Chambers’s Journal, vol.IV, July-Dec 1855, p.119-121.
The grandfathers of Edward (II) were William Poultney, a hatter, and William Holman, a builder.
Edward (II) was a wholesale stationer, director of Dailley & Co.Ltd.
Emily Caroline (1853 - 10 March 1945), daughter of Joseph Martin (1819-18??), coach builder, and his wife Mary Gillman Francis. Parents of Frank Poultney.
John (Jack) Gough Taylor (21 March 1880-1969) son of William Richard Taylor (1854-1923), photographic printer, and his wife Ellen Gough (1856-1914). Jack was in the Royal Naval Air Service in World War I and served at Gallipoli and in India, Egypt and on the Western Front. He was Mentioned in Despatches for bravery in the Aegean. See certificate, signed by Churchill. His peacetime occupation was chief law clerk to a firm of London solicitors, and he worked part-time after retirement until he was about 80, because he enjoyed it - and they enjoyed him!
Helena (Nell) (1884-early 1960s), daughter of Ben Hoyle (1846-1924), angora yarn spinner and later woollen mill manager, and Ellen (1850-1904), his wife. They married at Netherthong, Holmfirth, Yorkshire. See Jack’s memoir written early 1960s. Parents of Con
GRANDPARENTS
Penry Vaughan Thomas (1875? - 1930), son of Henry Thomas. Known as Vaughan. Educated and much travelled in Euruope and North America. Lectured at London University and the University College of Aberystwyth in Wales. Army officer in World War, translating for the Italian army. Became a barrister at law, 20 June 1928.
Hinemoa Pakora (1890? - 1950?), artist. Born in New Zealand where her mother was on tour with the Carl Rosa Opera Company. Parents of Michael
Leonard Frank Poultney (19 March 1896 - 24 July 1963). In the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve at the outbreak of war with Germany in 1914. As part of the Royal Naval Division (formed to reinforce the army) he was sent to the battle front at Antwerp, arriving in time for the British retreat into Holland, where his division was interned at Gronigen by the neutral Dutch until the Armistice in 1918. He went to Hertford College, Oxford University, to study theology but left without graduating due to ill-health caused by the war. Doctors advised an outdoor life, so he worked in Canada on the prairies. Tried a bit of journalism. From the late 20s was employed in Manchester by a prominent textile (cotton) firm, Tootal Broadhurst Lee. He was in the Territorial Army (the army reserve) throughout the 1930s and enlisted in 1939 at the outbreak of World War II with the rank of Major, soon being promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. Due to his relatively old age he was relieved of the command of his men when they were posted to the Far East. As they were over-run by the Japanese in Java and subsequently imprisoned in Japan until 1945, he was fortunate. His army service was in England and Scotland in command of an anti-aircraft regiment. From 1945 till his retirement in 1961(?) he was a business consultant with a company making office systems, a Justice of the Peace, on the board of the Star & Garter Home in Richmond for injured war veterans, and chairman of the Richmond Conservative Association.
Constance Helena (30 March 1907 - 3 Oct 1999) was a primary school teacher until her marriage in 1930. At that time only unmarried women were allowed to teach. Parents of Ruth, Sue, Anna and Edward.
PARENTS
Antony Michael Thomas (3 Oct. 1913 - 29 June 1971), doctor of medicine, pathologist, photographer.
Ruth Wendy Thomas (b. 24 May 1931)
[edit] Extract from John Gough Taylor’s memoirs, written in the early 1960s.
My father’s brother Tom was a gas engineer and went to Yorkshire where he became Manager of Halifax Gas Works. I remember my father telling me that there was a strike of the workmen at the gasworks and that Tom pressed the claim of the men at his meeting with the Directors and so lost his job there and retired to the little village of Netherthong where a small gasworks was being started for the village.
It was on my first visit to Netherthong to stay with my Uncle Tom that I first met Helena Hoyle of Netherthong, then 16½ . I was about a year older. My father had given me the names of three Netherthong men who had accompanied my Uncle Tom on a visit to us at Ealing for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. One was Mr Ben Hoyle, one of the Founders of Co-operative trading in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Helena was a well-known soprano in the Huddersfield district and a soloist with the Choral Societies. You may be interested in my first introduction to her.
I introduced myself to Mr and Mrs Hoyle in their big kitchen and then they took me into the lounge where they left me with “This is Helena - our other three girls and our son Jack are out this evening” and left us together. My first impression was that she was very pretty and very self-possessed, for her first words were “Are you Mr Tom Taylor’s nephew from London?” then “Can you sing?” She called me over to the piano where she was sitting and found me a song I knew. Then she told me she was singing at a Sunday afternoon concert (the next day) - “It’s the Messiah” - and she was singing the solo ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’. “If you would care to come, here’s a ticket.” The next question was “Have you brought a bike?”. I said “No” but she said “That doesn’t matter, my brother has two. I’ve got a holiday on Monday. Shall we go for a run together so that you can see the Moors?”.
That started our almost 62 years.
I went to Netherthong every holiday after that, staying sometimes with my uncle and sometimes with Mr and Mrs Hoyle. Mrs Hoyle was a sister of James Lancaster who was well-known amongst the woollen cloth mill owners of the Huddersfield district and was the proprietor of a ‘Finishing Mill’ at Mytholmbridge where the cloth came to be scoured, mended and finally made ready after any defects had been put right and ready for wholesalers.
The Lancasters’ house was near the Mill and where Nell and I were often playing cards with her two cousins Amy and Edith and eating enormous high teas. The Mill is still run by the present generation of Lancasters.
[edit] English Opera at Drury Lane
(The Dramatic Review, 11th April 1885; signed ‘Ignotus’. Although this was the pseudonym of editor Edward Paget Palmer, George Bernard Shaw identified himself as the author in his diary entry for 8th April 1885.)
On Monday last, the Carl Rosa Company opened their campaign at Drury Lane. They are as happy healthy and respectable as ever. They knock their voices about with their old confident robustness; … The Opera performed on the opening night was Maritana.
Madame Georgina Burns as Maritana and Mr Ludwig as Don Jose obtained the usual encores for ‘Scenes that are brightest’ and ‘In Happy Moments’. They were less successful in the duets of the first act, the soprano being hard and hurried and toneless. In the concerted music they were far surpassed by Mr Maas and Miss Marion Burton, who listened to the voices with which they had to blend their own. Madame Georgina Burns and Mr Ludwig sang throughout as if they were stone deaf to every part except those of Maritana and Don Jose.
Miss Marion Burton, though her voice is not yet quite solid, and although she appended a dreadful ‘ornament’ to ‘Hark, those Chimes’, made a very favorable impression as Lazarillo by her appearance, her intelligent acting, and her sympathetic singing. Her phrasing is sometimes that of a not over-conscientious ballad singer, and, if not remedied, will prove a serious disqualification for parts of a higher order than Lazarillo; but Miss Marion Burton does not seem the sort of person to persist in bad habits when she is once made aware of them.
Lazarillo, by the way, is an armourer’s apprentice, a grimy, coaly, rusty person with stains of the smithy on his shirt and skin, and with a scorched leathern apron on. Miss Marion Burton, however, turned out like the pastrycook in Genevieve de Brabant, in spotless lawn, impossibly dainty and clean. Now, as she has an opportunity of appearing in the last act at her very prettiest, in blue satin and lace, might she not sacrifice a little to realism by putting on the leathern apron and a touch or so of rust and soot during her apprenticeship to the brutal armourer? Surely the opera is unreal enough without such utterly incredible details as those of the costume and complexion she adopted on Monday night.
Maritana does not tax the ingenuity of the stage manager very heavily. Nevertheless . . . And the gymnastic feats of Miss Marion Burton with the muskets from which she has to withdraw the bullets should not be performed under the immediate supervision of the firing party.
Culled from pages 67-68 of How to become a Musical Critic by Bernard Shaw. Edited by Dan H. Laurence and published by Rupert Hart-Davis, Soho Square, London, 1960.
