florence maud mallindine + william edward killwick
Florence was born at 73 Marlborough Road in Haggerston on 26 January 1894, the fourth of five children born to William Thomas Mallindine and his second wife Ellen Sarah Smith. For ten years, her family lived in several houses in the neighbouring streets in an area of Haggerston that was bound by the Regent’s Canal to the south, Queen’s Road (now Queensbridge Road) to the west and London Fields to the East. Haggerston was originally a ward in the Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch but with realignment in 1965, it became part of the London Borough of Hackney.
By 1901, her family had moved west across the Queens Road and lived at 8 Frederick Place near the present day intersection of Mayfield Street and Haggerston Road but following her father’s third marriage in 1909, they moved south of the Regent’s Canal to a terraced house at 78 Rushton Street in Hoxton, a ward in the Borough of Shoreditch. A portion of Rushton Street exists today but most of the street was destroyed during the Blitz and was eventually cleared and redeveloped to create Shoreditch Park.
Florence was living with her family and working as a Shop Girl when the 1911 census was taken and two years later, at the age of nineteen Florence gave birth to a son, Alfred Alexander, at her father’s house at 78 Rushton Road. Alfred was born on 28 January 1913 and when Florence registered his birth one month later, she listed her occupation as a Card Board Box Factor but the father’s name was not entered in the register. The legislation governing civil registration initially introduced in 1836 did not require the father’s name to be entered on illegitimate births but in 1850, the law was amended to prohibit the name of ‘putative fathers’ to sign the register. Another change in 1875, allowed the father to sign if he attended the registry office when the birth was registered and this law remained in effect until 1953 when the father’s name could be entered regardless of his attendance.
On 2 May 1920, Florence married William Edward Killwick at St Saviour in Hoxton on 2 May 1920 with Richard and Rosina Woolf as witnesses. She was two years older than William and both were living at 8 Branch Place which ran along the southern bank of the Regent’s Canal and was several streets north of her family home on Rushton Street. William was working as a Skin Dresser’s Labourer and listed his father as William Edward, a Carman.
Six months after they married, Florence gave birth to their first child, Florence Maud, on 2 November 1920 but no birth registration or baptism record has been found however, electoral registers place William at 8 Branch Place in 1920 and 12 Branch Place in 1921. His father, William, lived at 8 Branch Place from 1918 until the early 1930s while William Edward and Florence lived at number 12 until 1931.
Florence and William had four more children while living on Branch Place: Edward Thomas was born on 13 October 1922, Violet Emily on 26 March 1925, Dorothy Henrietta in 1926, and Queenie on 21 June 1928. They left Branch Place and moved to 59 Clarissa Street which was north of the Regent’s Canal and not far from where Florence grew up. Their sixth child, Ronald William, was born there on 4 September 1933.
Almost all records relating to William, from his marriage certificate to electoral registers, reflect the Killwick spelling of his surname but his children were all registered under the spelling Kelwick or Kellwick and it is the latter that was used by Florence and her children consistently for the rest of their lives. Whether this was a conscious choice or a spelling mistake is not known.
They appear in the electoral registers at Clarissa Street until 1935 when William is recorded at 20 Wenlock Street along with his sister Clara and her husband Charles Manley. According to the oral family history, Florence separated from William not long after Ron was born because she discovered he was having an affair.
Florence’s son Alfred grew up with his half-siblings and when he turned 21 in 1934, he appeared in the electoral register under the name Mallindine along with his mother and step-father at Clarissa Street. In 1935, he married Alexandra Rose Taylor in Stepney and they went on to have seven children. Alexandra was born in the parish of St George in the East in Stepney on 24 June 1914.
In 1936, Florence and her children moved into a council flat at 19 Council Dwellings on Nile Street in Shoreditch where she remained for the next 20 years. Their home was part of the Provost Street public housing scheme built by the local authority in 1900. William was still living at 20 Wenlock Street which was only a few streets north of Nile Street but it is not known if he saw his children or was involved in their lives in any way. In the 1939 Register, three households are recorded at 20 Wenlock Street including William who was living alone and working as a Carman, his sister Clara and her husband, and the Gunter family.
In 1939, Florence was working as an Office Cleaner and living with daughter Florence, a Milliner and Packer, and son Edward an Order Clerk at a Printer’s office. One record in the register is closed and could relate to Dorothy, Violet or Ronald who have not been found elsewhere. Eleven year old Queenie was living at 3 Melworth Holly Walk in Harpenden, Hertfordshire with Hilda Rigby and attending school so it appears she may have been evacuated from London. Eldest son Alfred and his wife Alexandra had moved to a house in Dagenham at 3 Harrison Road along with their three children where he worked as a Glass Decorator and Sandblaster.
Daughter Florence married Walter George Struckmyre in Shoreditch in 1941 and they had one son, Frederick Alan, born on 7 May 1943 in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. Walter was born in Hackney on 8 September 1918 to George Struckmyre and Elizabeth Oliver. Florence and Walter moved to Aylesbury where Walter died in 1981 and Florence in 1988; their son Frederick died in Aylesbury on 22 April 2012.
In 1945, Violet married an American serviceman named William Edward Bumann in Shoreditch and their first child, Viola, was born on 31 March 1946 in Loughborough, Leicestershire which was home to an RAF base during the Second World War. That same year, Violet appears in an electoral register at the family home in Shoreditch but it is not clear if this was before or after her daughter was born. William returned to the United States on 31 August 1945 and Violet and their daughter followed on 17 October 1946. The family settled in William’s home state of Illinois and they had two more children. In 1955, Violet returned to England with her three children for a six week visit and she listed her intended address as her mother’s home on Nile Street. Violet and William later divorced but she remained in Illinois where she died on 20 April 2000.
The family celebrated two weddings in 1946 when Dorothy married Alfred James Davies in the spring and Edward married Jessica Jane Davies in the fall. After their marriage Dorothy and Alfred remained in the Kellwick family home until 1949 but there is no record of them after that date. Edward and Jessica had three children and moved to Epping in Essex in the early 1950s. Jessica was born in Shoreditch on 10 February 1923 to George Davies and Lily Wells and she was living on Whiston Street with her family and working as a Tailoress when they married.
Queenie married Thomas Charles Shorter in Shoreditch in 1949 and they also moved into 19 Council Dwellings after their marriage and remained there until 1957. Thomas was born in Shoreditch on 25 June 1923 to Thomas Shorter and Frances Dring. Queenie and Thomas had one daughter and later moved to Cheshire where she died in 2004, pre-deceased by Thomas in 2000.
Youngest son Ronald married Jean Clarke in Shoreditch in 1955 but they divorced and he married a second time to Grace Dockrell in Edmonton in 1962. They had six children and later moved to Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. Ronald died on 9 May 2009 and Grace on 3 July 2010.
After his wife’s death in Romford in 1964, Alfred married a second time to Valerie Irene Baker in Waltham Forest in 1965. Alfred died in Milton Keynes in February 1986 and it was the first of three deaths in the family that year – Edward died on 12 May in Epping Forest and the matriarch of the family, Florence Maud died in Northampton on 17 July, aged 92 years.
William Edward Killwick disappears from the records after 1939 and his life beyond that date remains a mystery.