It occurs to me, that perhaps I ought to write the family history. We are all descended from James Edward Coleman, and his wife Cecilia Tighe. They were married in Ireland, one of my aunts told me that James Coleman, came from Sligo Town, whereas Cecilia Tighe came from somewhere in County Mayo. James Edward joined the Munster Fusiliers, a regiment in the British Army who were posted to Chatham in Kent, where their eldest daughter Cecilia was born in 1852. A couple of years later, they had a second daughter, Mary Anne. In 1859 the Munster Fusiliers were sent to India to help to quell the Indian Mutiny, but when reached India the Mutiny was over, so the wives and families were sent out, in 1860 when my Grandmother was eight years old, she had very vivid recollections of the journey, which lasted weeks, because they went round the Cape of Good Hope, the Suez had not been cut. They landed at Karachi, but the Regiment was in Lahore, there was no means of transport in those days, not even roads, all travel was done by water, to get to Lahore meant traveling up the River Indus, which was in flood. As they could not get away from Karachi the families were dumped in any building the Army could get hold of, and it was not long before there was plenty of ill health amongst them. There was a small Military Hospital there, run by some of the nurses who had worked with Florence Nightingale in the Crimea, naturally they were run off their feet so the call went out for volunteers to help with the nursing. Mrs. Coleman was voted by the women, as the most suitable to help out, so our Great Grandmother was taught nursing and midwifery by Florence Nightingale’s nurses. Eventually the River went down, and the women and children went up by boat, they were flat bottomed boats, and they were poled up, it took weeks. In the end they reached their menfolk, but after a couple years, James Edward left the Army, and got a small pension. Unfortunately he spent it on drink, giving his wife very little money indeed, she was in desperate straits, she had just had a baby boy, and then she heard that Mrs. Ballard the wife of the Governor of Bombay, had had a baby boy, but she could not nurse him, and was looking for a wet nurse for her boy George. Great Grandmother applied for the post, and found herself wet nursing little George Ballard. Unfortunately she had to put her own boy on the bottle, very little was known about sterilization in those days, and the little Coleman baby died. The Ballards were terribly upset, that Mrs. Coleman should lose her own baby and did all they could to help her, as a start General Ballard used his influence to get James Edward a job, he got him the job of caretaker of the Mint in Bombay, living quarters went with the job, so for the first time in her married life, Great Grandmother had a home and an adequate income. Her youngest child Jane was born in 1865. Although she had quite a large family, only three of her children grew to adult life, Cecilia, Mary Anne, and Jane. Jane never married, and she died in her early thirties of bubonic plague. Cecilia married Charles Lauder, an Army man in December 1868, when she was sixteen, and he was thirty eight, he doted on her for the rest of his life. My Mother was very fond of her Father-in-Law, he had a wonderful sense of humour, she hoped his son Charles William, would have the same sense of humour, but unfortunately my Father inherited his Mother’s very great lack of humour. After a few years of marriage Charles Lauder left the Army, and got the job of Warden of the Sailor’s Home in Bombay. Some years earlier, a fund had been started in England, it was called the Royal Alfred Sailors Society, its patron was Queen Victoria’s second son the Duke of Edinburgh. The idea was to provide homes in foreign ports where sailors could stay when they left ship, instead of staying with prostitutes as they usually did, and getting V.D. It was called the Royal Alfred Sailors Home, and Charles Lauder was the first warden. He had been a Sergeant in the Army and ran the Home on military lines. I have heard from other sources, that he was so good, that all the other sailors homes built since, have copied his methods. The warden had very good quarters, which came in handy, as Cecilia had twelve children. It included two bathrooms one for the males and one for the females. Mary Anne married Patrick Gallagher, when he left the Army, he started a printing business, he did not publish a newspaper, he just printed what his clients wanted, anything from a book to a pamphlett. General Ballard was very helpful, he got his friends to have anything they wanted printed at Gallagher’s printing press. Mary Anne died when her youngest Nora was three years old [1887]. She left four children, Helen, Patrick, Gerald, and Nora, they all four went to live in the Sailors Home with their Lauder Uncle and Aunt and Cousins. Then Patrick Gallagher died when my Father Charles William was in his early twenties, after some weeks of illness Patrick Gallagher died. There was nothing left to sell of his printing business, except the equipment, the order books were empty, however nothing daunted my Grandmother, she told my Father Charles William, to take a years leave of absence from his Government job and manage his uncle’s printing press, which he did, the Ballards helped with getting orders, and by the end of the year, the press was a going concern again and the order books were full, as the business was sold at a very good price, and the four Gallaghers had a very comfortable sum of money banked in their name with my Grandmother as guardian. In the Summer of 1897, Helen was 21, she had made up her mind she would marry a chap called Michael Tye, the Lauders did not approve of him, he had T.B. he was not in work, he was considered a sponge but Helen wanted to marry him, which she did. My Mother supplied the family history from the middle of the 1890s onwards, she was engaged to my Father, and was waiting for his promotion, so that they could get married, which they did in December 1897. Helen was rather fond of boasting to my Mother, that she was married first, which Mother considered somewhat unfair, considering that Charles William’s promotion was delayed for a year, because he took a year off, while he earned the Gallaghers their money. As soon as Helen got married, she demanded that my Grandmother should hand over all the Gallagher money to her but my Grandmother refused, she had given Helen her share, a quarter of the total, but Helen was not satisfied, she wanted to have the lot under her control, and she got a lawyer to take my Grandmother to court, he handed her over to his clerk Henry Joseph Hemming, who worked on the case with Helen. My Grandmother also got a lawyer to defend her case. It went to court, and the judge gave his verdict in my Grandmother’s favour, he said it was absurd to hand over such a large sum of money to such a young girl, when the older relative had looked after the money so well, up till then. Helen was furious at losing the case, she went round to the Sailors Home, and called her aunt, my Grandmother every rude word she could think of, then sailed away. She and Michael Tye spent the capital as though it was Income. They shocked the white population of Bombay by the way they threw the money around. They had a boy, Arthur, who died six months later, then Helen got pregnant again, half way through this pregnancy, the money ran out, and Michael Tye walked out on her, she had nothing no cash, no husband, so she went round to the Sailors Home and asked her Aunt Cecilia to have her back. My Grandmother who was very fond of all her sister’s children, was quite willing to let bygones be bygones, and have her back, but my GrandFather for the first and only time in his married life put his foot down and said "No." Any girl who had used the language to his wife as Helen had, was not going to set foot in his house again, and he had his way.

According to my Mother, my Grandmother although she was 22 years younger, bullied my Grandfather about unmercifully, but this time he had his way, Grandmother had to capitulate, so Helen was sent packing, and she went to Joseph Hemming, the only person who would have her, as she had offended the rest of the white population, with her attitude of I have got more money than you. When her daughter Mary Cecilia, (Queen) was born, she was brought up as Hemming’s child, according to Helen’s youngest sister Nora, Hemming was very unkind to Queen, he used to put her up in top of a tall cupboard, and tell her to stay there until she was good, and the poor little girl was so frightened of the height she dare not look down. Nora disliked Hemming intensely. Both Queen and Nora believe that Hemming was a Barrister, Joseph Hemming was never a Barrister, my parents knew him well, but not to speak to, no Lauder would speak to Joseph Hemming, he was never more than a clerk in a solicitor’s office, but he had a very acute legal mind. to make quite sure I asked my lawyer to look him up in the Barrister’s Inns of Court, but his name is not there. He and Helen came to England, and Norah was born here in South East London. Norah told me the name of the Church in SE London, I went there and got a copy of her baptismal certificate. I took her there when she and Trish came to England. Norah got busy with her camera, and took photos of the Church, and the font. After a few years with Hemming, Helen got tired of him and ...... with another man, he married her, husband no. 3 took her to the U.S.A. I am not sure who went first, Nora or Helen, but I understand Nora went to California first. Helen changed husbands twice more, in all she had five .... Cousin Nora kept a correspondence with my Grandmother, giving her all news of Helen and her affairs, whenever my Grandmother heard of the latest ... she wept for days, if only she had given Helen a home, when she asked for one, this would never have happened etc., etc. My Mother would go about very tight lipped, we children would wonder what it was all about, but as I grew older, I have been able to put two and two together. Cousin Helen certainly did quite a bit of embroidery with the truth, according to ... she talked about her Aunt driving about in her carriage. My Grandparents never had a carriage, the whole family used the trams or walked, including the dog. They had a fox terrier bitch called Fanny, and she was a cute little thing. In Bombay the trams had coloured symbols on their fronts denoting their destinations. [Note: dogs are color-blind] Fanny learnt the symbols that passed the Sailors Home, she would go for a walk by herself, and when she got tired, would always hop onto the right tram. The conductors who all knew her, would stop the tram at her destination, and let her get off. Dogs were supposed to be paid for on the trams, so the conductor would wait until he saw one of the Lauders on his tram, and they were easy to recognize, as they all had bright red hair including the parents. He would go up to them and say "Your dog got onto my tram on such and such a day, at this or that bus stop," and the dog’s fare would be paid. I thought I had better tell you all I know of the family history, as I am the only one alive who knows it. Both my sisters have died, and so have the children of my Father’s sister, Aunt Mary Cecilia. She married Patrick Kelly, an Army Man. All the Kellys have died, but I remember my cousin Jack Kelly telling me of how his Father’s eyes would twinkle, when he talked about Helen Gallagher. He would have quite a twinkle, apparently she was quite a gal. He took Helen’s side when she had a row with her Aunt, which was often. My Grandmother had many good qualities: she had loads of common sense and many friends, who were very fond of her, but she had very little sense of humour, and no tact whatever. My Mother was very fond of her Father-in-Law, he was very good looking, with a very ... skin. My sister Helen inherited his fine skin, but Grandmother, who I can only remember from when she was sixty onward [1912] was very plain, with a skin that looked as though it was made out of some form of corduroy.

I had stopped there but I had better explain the enclosure. I have been trying for ages to get Queen’s baptismal certificate. I asked my lawyer to try and get a colleague to look up the registers, in the Cathedral of the Holy Name. He did not find anything there but went round the Bombay area hunting up registers without any luck. Quite by chance recently I found my own baptismal certificate. I was baptised in the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Fort, Bombay, and it all came back to me. I remember my Mother telling me about this little Church, it was always called the Fort Chapel. It was built on Government property, and was the only Catholic Church in Bombay for nearly a century, but around about 1910, the Government wanted the land, so they paid the diocese a very large sum, for the property, and compensation for dispossessing the Catholics. The cash built the Holy Name Cathedral, the Fort Chapel registers were all transferred there, but no one had told Mr. DeSouza about the fort Chapel, when he went looking through registers of Churches that had been built since the end of the First World war, but he kept sending accounts of his leg work, and bills for same, which I paid, so when I remembered about the Fort Chapel I asked my lawyer to try again. This time Mr. DeSouza has been through the Fort Chapel registers and he has found cousin Ellen’s [Helen’s] baptismal cert but not Queen’s and I am sure Queen was born in Bombay. I remember my Mother telling me that cousin Ellen had a little girl, about 1900, but now that I know the date of cousin Ellen’s birth, I know the date of marriage to Michael Tye, the day after she was twenty-one, August 27th, 1897, and I believe she announced it in the paper, and she may have mentioned the name of the Church, so I have asked for a search to be made in the newspaper records of the wedding announcement. That means going back to 1897, and like all Indians, Mr. De S. is a take it easy gentleman. I never met cousin Ellen, but her two brothers, Patrick and Gerald, I knew very well. We saw a lot of them in the 1920’s, then Paddy had a lung removed, he got over that operation but died about a year later, and his wife, another Nelly wrote to my parents and asked that she would not be contacted again, as she did not want to have anything more to do with us. Well, it was her decision. Gerald, I knew very well. After he left the Colonial Medical Service, he went ship doctoring, and was torpedoed during the war. When he got his share of the Gallagher money, he went to Dublin and qualified in Medicine, then started looking for a job. Grandmother asked General Ballard for help, and he used his influence to get Gerald into the Colonial Medical Service, a very plum post indeed in those days. In the 1930’s, a medical colleague mentioned that he had been in the Colonial Medical, but had to give it up because his Mother cried so much when he went abroad, so I said, "Did you ever meet a Dr. Gerald Gallagher?" He replied "Oh, old Gallagher, how did you come to know him?" I replied, "He is my Father’s cousin." My colleague was astounded, according to him, everyone thought Gallagher had no relatives whatever. After listening to him and putting the bits and pieces he left out, I got the impression, that as Gallagher never mentioned relations, his colleagues thought he was the illegitimate son of some important man, who got him into the Colonial Service. One learns a lot more from a patient, listening to what they don’t say, than what they do say. Gerald went from Bombay to Dublin, using his inheritance. It kept him going until he qualified. He stayed in Dublin with the Clancys. Corny Clancy was an Army man. Grandmother and Mrs. Clancy were friendly, Mrs. Clancy as a girl had been in domestic service with upper class families. She had seen how the upper classes bring their daughters up, and she brought her own daughters up the same way. Edith (Edie), Louisa (Lulu) and Joulia (Julie). Gerald married Edie about 1912, I remember him bringing Edie to see us, as my Grandmother was living with us. Edie was very good looking, she was tall and willowy, with a mass of golden hair swathed round her head. Gerald was very proud of her. After they had gone, I said to my Mother, "Oh, Mummy, I think she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen," and as I was about 8 or 9, I must have seen an awful lot. My Mother who always considered herself the best looking object on the landscape, was furious with me and she took an instant dislike to Edith, which Edie in after years never seemed to notice. Their two boys died during the last war, Gerald felt it very deeply. I saw a lot of him the few years before he died. He had to have a lot of hospital treatment, going from one hospital to another. I ferried Edith to each one, and back to the flat. He died in his mid eighties. Edie died in 1981, and she must have been in her nineties. I know Gerald was born in 1886 and Edie was not that much younger, both her sisters came to Gerald’s funeral, that was when I met them. Edie was rather given to embroidering the truth. She told me in the 1920’s that a certain very popular actress had been in school with her. Well, the actress died last year, and her age was given. She was just a year older than me, she could never have been in school with Edie. Cousin Paddy, as far as I know, invested his share of the cash, and used the interest to supplement his earnings. He was in the Colonial Service, but had a job as some sort of caretaker. Nora, I know came to London, and trained as a Nurse, then went to the U.S.A. Well, that is the family history, we have had our ups and downs, both the Lauders and the Gallaghers owe a lot to the Ballards. It is through them, that we have been able to pull ourselves up with our own bootlaces from the working classes to the professional classes, and that is not such a bad thing. I will keep on trying to get Queen’s baptism cert. I do hope I succeed.

Love to you all,

Marjorie

[postmarked May 15, 1985, Hounslow, Middlesex]