Somewhere in the early 1900s, Upstanding Edwin’s oldest son – John Walden Poulson, the Wastrel – transitioned from promising oldest son of a local family to an intractable problem that defied family attempts to help him.

John Walden was captain of the Knottingley cricket team – younger brother Thomas played too. When Thomas married Lily Taylor in September 1901, the newspaper write up talked of the crowds outside the Wesleyan chapel. John Walden was there with his new wife Emily, and daughters Emily, 11, and Nellie, 10, were bridesmaids. But by the time his youngest brother Charles married in 1909, John Walden had vanished, although Doris (Aunty Goggie), 13,  was a bridesmaid and Ernest (I think Gamps, who was John Ernest Llewellyn), 12,  was a page. Something had changed… Continue reading John Walden’s unraveling starts with a boat trip →