Tag Archives: business

Two young actors start a repertory theatre

New Theatre Bromley
New Theatre Bromley

Peter Goss, my godfather, and David Poulson, my Dad, met while working as actors in repertory theatre at the Theatre Royal, Bath in August 1954. Both had been in weekly rep for several years, long enough to have some idea about how to produce a play as well as act in it. When I asked my mother, actress Yvonne Forster, whether it was Dad’s youthful good looks that attracted her, she said it was his ability to bring order to a chaotic production she was acting in (in Dartford). In some scribbled notes Dad made for a memoir (which he never completed), he described a performance where he was acting as a human door hinge for a broken part of a set (in between being fired by a furious producer!) – the show must go on…

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Aunty Suzanne from Leeds

Ethel Suzanne as a young woman
Ethel Suzanne as a young woman

I don’t remember meeting Aunty Suzanne, but I do remember getting birthday presents of pretty – fancy – dresses from her, the sorts of clothes I didn’t normally have. Ethel Suzanne Poulson was actually a great aunt, the youngest of my grandfather’s (Gamps) five sisters.

I haven’t yet done a blog post on wife v2.0 for John Walden Poulson – the Wastrel – but Ethel Suzanne was born March 9, 1905, in Knottingley, Yorkshire, and her Mum was Emily, the Wastrel’s second wife. Just after her fifth birthday, her Dad took off for Canada and she spent a large chunk of her childhood with her maternal grandfather, John Henry Shepherd in Ferrybridge – he had variously been an inn keeper, horse dealer and farmer over the years. Continue reading Aunty Suzanne from Leeds