My great aunt Maisie married Cedric Alfred Beacon in 1914. He was dead before I was born, but their story turns out to be quite a tumultuous one that I didn’t know much about until a week or so ago.
Cedric worked for a local store in Portsmouth, Wallace Ash Ltd., as a Publicist and Staff manager. On the marriage certificate, he’s a “Furniture Dealer” – not entirely false, but somewhat puffed up in my opinion.
Cedric’s dead father, listed on the marriage certificate as a Clergyman and in the newspaper announcement as “…the late Rev. A. A. Beacon, Ph.D., M.A., etc….” was variously a schoolmaster and Train Inspector (assuming this is the right Mr. Beacon; this is a tangled family tree).
Perhaps it is how someone behaves that matters, not a minor gloss over awkward details or a little bit of aggrandizement. By that yardstick, Cedric doesn’t fare well at all.
Cedric’s pattern seems to be stretching the truth to the very edge of a breaking point. If this picture (courtesy of a relative of Cedric’s youngest brother) is actually him, one can imagine a smooth talking, good looking con artist. 28 years old, newly out of the Royal Field Artillery, Cedric bought his way out after 10 years of a 12 year commitment for the sum of £18 (about £2,000 today) – it was called discharge by purchase. He left the army 2 July 1913 and on July 10th, the Evening News had an ad from Cedric’s new employer, the publisher of the weekly Hampshire Post. Cedric was the new assistant advertising manager: “Mr. Beacon is a specialist in matters connected with successful publicity, and has a practical knowledge of modern advertisement design.”.
I currently have no clue how Cedric could have that expertise given a 10-year stint in the army, but perhaps he was a persuasive story teller. The Hampshire Post didn’t survive long, however – on 19 Dec 1913 it was bought by the Hampshire Telegraph. Possibly Cedric was retained for a while after the merger and moved on to Wallace Ash when the papers shed duplicate employees. By the following September, he and Maisie were married. Apparently the story his grandchildren heard growing up was that Maisie & Cedric met at the newspaper they both worked at, Maisie as a shorthand typist and Cedric as the Advertisement Manager (close – only a small stretch of the truth assuming they met at the Hampshire Post versus the Telegraph.).
The Williams family – including 5 children from ages 14 to 5 – returned from Bermuda to England and Ernest Henry retired with his army pension and opened a tobacconist shop at 274 Commercial Road, Portsmouth some time before May 1907 (they apparently leased the home & shop and the deceased owner was selling his properties). Nothing fancy, but an honest way to earn a living to supplement his pension and house his family of five children.
I knew Aunty Sis (Nanny’s sister Edith Maud) a little, but as far as I know I never met Aunty Maisie – May Williams, the oldest child of Clara Anne and Ernest Henry Williams, born a scant 5-6 months after their 1892 wedding. The Felixstowe location probably indicates Ernest Henry was stationed at the Territorial Army Garrison located there at the time. The family moved as Ernest Henry was reassigned: to Portsmouth where Edith Maud (Sis) was born in 1894, Fort Ricasoli, Malta, where Lilian Melita (Billie) was born in 1897 and Fort George, Bermuda where Walter Richard (Dick) was born in 1899 and Ernest Henry Jr (Joe) in 1901.
In photo albums I rescued from my father’s garden shed, Nanny (Billie) had many pictures of five good friends – Nanny & Gamps, Ernie & Sis with Gamps’ sister Goggie (Doris) – but there were a few of a more careworn face that was clearly a Williams relative. Knowing nothing at all about her, I uncharitably had mentally filed her as the successor to her mother, Clara Anne Williams, marked in the albums by my Dad as the sourpuss Grandma! In the picture heading this post, a smiling Sis has Maisie’s two girls standing on either side of her and a rather somber Maisie stands next to them. To paraphrase a quote, Maisie had a lot to be somber about at the time.
Portsmouth newspapers and historical records provide small insights into Cedric and Maisie’s early married life – two daughters (born 1915 and 1917) and in 1916 a series of records of a military tribunal hearing requests for exemptions from service in the Great War, noting that it’s the employer (Wallace Ash) making the request as they need time to find a replacement. The request was granted, conditionally, if Cedric joined the Volunteer Training Corps.
10 May 1918, Cedric Beacon (no middle name) enlisted in the Royal Marine Artillery, serving without incident until he was demobilized less than a year later on Feb 12th 1919. There’s some name and birthdate fuzziness over these two periods of military service which appear to have been by the same man – Cedric Archibald Beacon enlisted in the Royal Field Artillery in 1903 (and apparently lied about his age, although many men did that, including my grandfather who needed to appear a year older than he was to serve) and said he was born in Landport, Portsmouth;
Cedric Alfred Beacon married Maisie in 1914. Cedric Beacon’s RMA records make no reference to any prior service, and possibly a different name and birthdate and being born in Bow, Middlesex ensure that. I don’t know why that would be as other than a brief demotion and loss of pay, his prior service ended honorably. Possibly he wouldn’t have received the War Gratuity of £5 if he was re-enlisting?
I have no information about work for Cedric Beacon after he left the RMA, but within about 2 months, Maisie was pregnant with their third child. My family spent time with Sis & Ernie over the years – their daughter Betty was my godmother and we’d see her every now and then. I don’t recall ever spending time with Maisie or her daughters – my father referred in a note on an album to “Auntie Muriel” although Muriel Beacon was his cousin and only 11 years older. After Billie died in 1961 and Sis in 1963 I don’t think there was any news from the Williams family passed on to us by anyone.
That background is to set the context for it being a horrible surprise to read this article the other day when searching for information about Maisie in old newspapers – I had no idea about this part of her life. Nanny must have known and she and my mother talked about all sorts of things that Nanny and my father never did, but I don’t recall my mother ever mentioning it either. This awful treatment by Cedric would well account for any glum face I’d seen in early photos of Maisie.
There is a birth certificate for Charles Archibald Beacon, Landport, 13 April 1886, and a death certificate for Cedric Alfred Archibald Amos Beacon for 28 Jan 1933 in Uxbridge – died of heart failure, pneumonia, and the ‘flu.
There is no birth record for anyone for Bow, Middlesex 6 April 1885 (what he claimed on his 1918 enlistment in the Royal Marine Artillery). The death was reported by his second wife Nora, and she probably only knew what he told her and duly reported it when she reported the death. Unless someone challenges a record, there was no cross checking to ensure accuracy. The age at death was given as 47, which maps to the 1885 birth.
The name on the marriage certificate to May Williams doesn’t match birth or death certificate, although the age – 28 – maps to the 1886 birth date. Mrs. Maisie Beacon and their address is given as next of kin in the RMA paperwork, so I know that isn’t some “other” Cedric Beacon running around Portsmouth causing trouble.
Via my Ancestry connection, the story Maisie Ethel’s children heard was that after the divorce Cedric took Muriel Maisie and Maisie Ethel and May had to fight to get them back, so afterward they never saw their father and had been told he died in the ‘flu epidemic (presumably 1918). They remember their Nan (May Williams) warmly.
I think when you have an untruthful con artist who beats his wife and causes a miscarriage, perhaps you just stop trying to pull on the threads to see what happens – you are just thankful that your great aunt survived the experience and was able to move on to better things. I would love to unravel this tangle nevertheless!
From a newspaper story and the 1939 register, I know that Maisie returned to her mother and worked at the tobacconist shop – a scam artist conned Clara out of 17s in April 1922 (about £50 today) and it was covered when the case came to trial.
In the 1939 register, Clara, May and Maisie Ethel were living in a rooming house, run by Mrs. Etty Martin, I think a widow of a Royal Field Artillery soldier who was with Clara in the RA Association. May was listed as housekeeper, and Maisie Ethel as a children’s nurse (I can’t find her in the Nursing register, so I think she was not a registered nurse).
The happier side of this story is that there are some lovely pictures of Maisie with Billie, Goggie and my grandfather (John) where she looks genuinely happy. It was in or after 1923 as my grandfather is wearing a wedding ring (Gamps & Nanny married in April 1923)
Maisie became known some time later as May Hill, possibly when she was with James Alfred Hill, a man who wasn’t divorced and had five children. He was older than her and died in 1944, but other than being a housekeeper for someone known as Uncle Kit to family, I know of no more romantic misadventures. She died as May Hill in Portsmouth in 1972, apparently found by Kit on the kitchen floor. She had outlived all her brothers and sisters, and I have to hope had long forgotten Cedric-the-brute.
