alfred henry mallindine + violet daisy emma thake

Alfred was born in Plaistow, Essex on 7 September 1889; he was the second son of Joseph Mallindine and his wife Alice Manhood. After his father died in 1898, his mother was unable to care for her three youngest children and placed Alfred and his brother Stephen in the care of Dr. Barnardo’s Home on 1 May 1899.

Alfred stayed in Barnardo’s Leopold House in Stepney for six months before sailing for Canada on the SS Arawa on 11 September. Two weeks after arriving, ten year old Alfred was placed with Marshall Armstrong on his farm near Maberley, Ontario and an update to Barnardo’s reported that Alfred was ’in good health, a bright lad, willing and useful.’ He stayed on the Armstrong farm for four years before being moved to Robert Donald’s farm in Mount Forest but this placement was not a happy one and Alfred was moved on again six months later.

In November 1904, Alfred was placed with Edward D. Foster in Ingersoll but this was another short stay and he was moved again in February 1905 and sent to work for Thomas Adams who had a farm in Hawthorne in Gloucester Township near Ottawa. He remained there for almost three years before moving to his last placement under Barnardo’s guardianship on a farm in Bolton. Once he reached legal age, he was no longer bound to Barnardo’s and was free to make his own decisions.

In January 1910, he was working in a lumber camp, operated by the V.A. Lumber Company, in Wahnipitae near Sudbury but later that year, he returned to the Ottawa area when he obtained a position as a moulder with the Findlays Foundry in Carleton Place. On 4 October 1911, twenty-two year old Alfred married Violet Thake at St John’s Church in Weston, now a suburb of Toronto, with Violet’s aunt Daisy and uncle Charles acting as witnesses. Violet was born in Putney, south London on 30 September 1893, the daughter of Henry Thomas Thake and Flora Wacey, but she was raised by her maternal grandmother and emigrated to Canada in 1908.

Alfred returned to Carleton Place with Violet following their wedding and on 25 July 1912, Violet gave birth to their first daughter, Eleanore Emma. Their second daughter, Kathleen Violet, was born in Carleton Place on 13 January 1914 but she lived only one hour. On 5 April 1915, their son Frederick Alfred was born followed by daughter Evelyn Lillian on 3 October 1916.

The family suffered a devastating loss when Violet died of Typhoid Fever on 5 September 1917 at the public hospital in Smiths Falls, about 30 kms south of Carleton Place. Typhoid is an infection caused by the salmonella typhi bacteria and it is most often contracted by drinking water or milk contaminated with feces carrying the bacteria. In 1911, a typhoid epidemic in Ottawa left 987 people ill and 83 dead and a second epidemic in July 1912 affected 1391 people and left 91 dead. The epidemics were traced to raw sewage that had been released into the Ottawa River and later entered the city’s drinking supply and it was typhoid epidemics like this that forced many cities and towns to improve city sewers and build water treatment plants.

Violet was sick for five weeks before her death and she may have been moved to a hospital in Smiths Falls in the hope of better treatment and an eventual recovery. She was only 24 years old when she died and left three children aged five, three and 11 months; Violet was buried in the cemetery at St James’ Anglican Church in Carleton Place on 7 September — Alfred’s twenty-seventh birthday.

In a letter dated 14 February 1969, Alfred explained that he did not know what to do following Violet’s death but eventually hired a housekeeper from Ottawa to help care for their children. The arrangement worked well until Alfred fell ill with influenza and pneumonia and despite an initial recovery, he was told by doctors that he only had six months to live. After his experience in the Barnardo’s Home in London and as a home child in Canada, he had no wish for his children to be placed in an orphanage and so in 1918, he agreed to let neighbours, Dan and Tilley Bennett, have his youngest daughter Evelyn while son Fred was placed with another local family, Harris and Katherine Bennett, although they were not related to Dan and Tilley. Alfred’s eldest daughter, Eleanore, came home from school to discover her brother and sister were no longer there but had been given up for adoption and she was told not to speak about them or her mother — a traumatic experience for a six year old who had lost her mother only one year before.

Alfred left Eleanore with her great-grandmother, Emma Wacey, in Weston and despite the prognosis from the doctor, he took a physically demanding job in a lumber camp near Blind River on Lake Huron and worked on the river drive where the raw logs are floated down the river to the sawmill for processing. With his health seemingly restored, he returned to Carleton Place and claims that he tried to get his two youngest children back but the Bennett families were not willing to return them. He left the town and got a job as an Iron Moulder in Guelph, 100 kms west of Toronto, but he occasionally returned to Weston to visit his daughter and on one of these visits, while travelling on the street car with Eleanore, he met Lilian Richardson.

lillian nellie richardson

Lil agreed to correspond with Alfred and after a time they decided to get married; they married on 25 February 1920 at the home of a Baptist minister, Andrew Imrie, at 189 Humberside Avenue in Toronto. Lillian Nellie Richardson was born on 27 August 1896 in Toronto to Norman Richardson and Nellie Bryce and she worked as a clerk and book-keeper before her marriage. Alfred was often away from home working in northern Ontario while Lil remained in Guelph with Eleanore but the relationship deteriorated badly, to the point where Lil was abusive towards her step-daughter. When the census was taken in 1921, Alfred and Lil were living at 50 Toronto Street in Guelph along with Eleanore and their two day old son who had not been named.

During one of Alfred’s absences, Lil made ten year old Eleanore write a letter to her father asking to be adopted and when he agreed, she was placed with Archie and Flora McEachern. The McEachern’s farmed near Palmerston, Ontario but were friends with neighbours of Alf and Lil and it was through this connection that they adopted Eleanore. Eleanore’s middle name was changed to Jeanne and took the McEachern name; she enjoyed a happy and stable family life with her adoptive parents and the two other girls they adopted, Peg and Isla, but she was particularly close to Archie. She also kept in contact with her maternal grandmother, Emma Wacey, and uncle Charles and his family but Alfred’s willingness to let his daughter go irreparably damaged their relationship and even as an adult, Eleanore had little contact with her father.

Alfred and Lil had two more sons, James Leonard born on 26 March 1923 and William on 1 September 1924, followed by two daughters, their first in 1928 and Eileen in 1931. Alfred’s younger brother, Stephen, who was also sent to Canada through the Barnardo’s organization, died in Chapleau, Ontario on 17 February 1930. Alfred attended his funeral and was given Stephen’s coat, likely by his wife Ethel. Stephen was interested in contacting his family and Barnardo’s may have provided him with Alfred’s address in Canada allowing them to re-establish contact but the details of when they met or how often they kept in contact is sadly not known.

Eleanore McEachern married Roy Reuben Nickel on 5 October 1935 in Palmerston and they had two children. Roy was born on a farm near Gowanstown on 8 October 1906 to Reuben Nickel and Anna Youn. They moved to Mt Forest where Roy ran a garage for many years before becoming a General Motors dealer. Fred had moved from Carleton Place to Hudson Township in 1920 when his adoptive father took up farming near New Liskeard. He grew up in the Temiskaming area and enjoyed fishing, hunting and trapping and although he was happy with the Bennett’s, Fred remained bitter and resentful of being given up for adoption by his father.

In 1936, Fred was able to reconnect with his family when he traced his younger sister Evelyn. He knew very little about his family, not even his mother’s name, and only discovered his maternal grandmother lived in Toronto when he was 21 years old but he found out from friends in Carleton Place that the Bennetts had adopted Evelyn and they were living in Billings Bridge near Ottawa. Roy Bennett drove him up to Ottawa and Fred walked up, knocked on the door and met his younger sister for the first time in almost 20 years. He was also able to make contact with his elder sister Eleanore but the details on how they found each other are not known.

Fred married Beatrice Philips in Uno Park near New Liskeard on 24 August 1939 and they went on to have nine children. Beatrice was born in nearby Milberta on 11 June 1920 to Charles and Sarah Phillips. They left New Liskeard in 1941 when Fred took a job at the O’Grien Gold Mine in Cadillac, Quebec and they lived there for almost ten years before moving back to a farm in Kerns Township near Temiskaming. He worked at the Wabi Iron Works in New Liskeard for 25 years before he was forced to retire due to ill health.

Evelyn married Norman Clark in Ottawa on 24 October 1936. He was born in Ottawa on 1 July 1911. Evelyn met her father again when she was an adult and they were able reconcile to some extent. Evelyn and Norman stayed in Ottawa after their marriage but later moved to Carleton Place where they raised their five children and Fred and his wife Beatrice regularly made the 500km journey from New Liskeard to visit them.

By 1945, Alfred and Lil had moved to Weston and settled their family in a home at 53a Dennison Road West where Alf worked as an electrician until his retirement. Two of their sons enlisted in the Canadian Armed Forces — his eldest son in the Army and Jim in the Navy — and served in the second World War. Jim met Jennie Isobel Puddicombe while in port in Halifax, Nova Scotia and they married in Toronto on 16 November 1946. Jennie was born in Sydney, Nova Scotia on 8 October 1925 to William Puddicombe and May Carson. After their marriage, they remained in Toronto where three of their six children were born but later moved to Detroit, Michigan when Jim accepted a job with General Motors as a tool and die maker in 1953. He later started his own company and moved to Greenville, Michigan before retiring to Florida in the 1970s. Jim died in a car accident in Alachua County, Florida on 31 May 1977.

In 1946, Alfred travelled back to Carleton Place to visit his youngest daughter Evelyn and her family and brought two of his sons along to meet their half-sister and a year or so later, Eleanore also made contact with Evelyn and visited her along with her husband and two children. Alfred remained in contact with his daughter Evelyn and attended her daughter’s wedding in 1965. Tragically, Evelyn died in a house fire on 31 January 1969, aged only 53 years.

Alfred died on 6 May 1981 and was buried at St Philip’s Church cemetery in Weston; his wife Lil died on 11 November 1989 and was buried next to him. His son, William, married and had one son but he too moved to the US where he died in 2011. Alfred’s eldest son and his two daughters remained in Toronto where they married and raised their families.

Fred Bennett and his wife Beatrice retired to a house on Scott Street in New Liskeard until his death on 21 May 1987; Beatrice Philips died at Temiskaming Hospital on 27 January 2012 and her personality was beautifully captured in her obituary:

Mrs. Bennett was a housewife and mother who also babysat and took in boarders. She loved children and she loved laughing and practical jokes, playing cards, quilting, sewing, crafts, knitting, gardening, canning and spending time with family. The more people around her, the happier she was.

Eleanore McEachern died on 7 March 1993 at Mt Forest and she was buried next to her husband Roy at the Fairview Cemetery in nearby Listowel. Despite the early trauma of being separated from her family, Eleanore found a loving home with the McEacherns and she worked hard to ensure that her own children grew up in a happy, stable home.

Copyright (c) 2017 All rights reserved