1885-1961 Francis Cecil Harley

Cecil-Francis-Harley-b.-1885-late.jpg
  • Born 24 June 1885 Harborne, Staffordshire, England

  • Married 11 July 1911. Warwickshire, England

  • Died 18 July 1961, Auckland, New Zealand

Narrative

We knew our grandfather, the son of Frank and Louisa Harley, as Cecil, but the records show that he was Francis Cecil Harley.  Born in 1885, he was the first of four children and their only son.  His sisters were Olive, Patricia and Connie (“Aunt” Connie, the only one of these four I ever knew).

Cecil married Elizabeth Joy Gilvray “Bessie”; they were the parents of John, Tony, Joan and Ronnie Harley. All  I knew of him as a child was that he was still alive though I never saw him; that he had left Granny with the four children some time in the 1930s; and was living in Australia or New Zealand.

Francis Cecil was born on the 24 June 1885, in Harborne, Staffordshire, where members of the Harley family had been living since the 1830s.   In 1891 his parents had moved to Wolverhampton and by the age of 15, in 1901, Francis was at work as a commercial clerk.

In April 1911 Cecil was living in Cheshire, in a boarding house at 10, The Promenade, Egremont, a parish in the town of Liscard, now part of Birkenhead.  He was 26 years old, and employed as a company clerk. On December 12 1911 he was initiated into the Freemasons.  His address (probably a work address) was given as 18 Gordon Road, Liverpool.

On July 17, 1911 Cecil married Elizabeth Joy Gilvray in Solihull.  Their first child, John, was born in Birkenhead, Cheshire, in 1912, and Tony (Robert Anthony Harley) in Lancashire in 1914.

London years 1916-1931

With the outbreak of World War I, Cecil’s military service began in the 6th Royal Fusiliers, as a 2nd Lieutenant, but later he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserves.  An Ordinary then Able Seaman, he later became a temporary Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Navy.  Cecil and Bessie moved to London with John and Tony.  Joan, their third child was born in Hendon in 1916, as was Ronnie, the youngest, in 1917.  From 1919-1922 the family lived at 65 Woodstock Avenue, Golders GreenHe worked for Alexander Clark and Co., Fenchurch St., London, Manufacturing Gold and Silversmiths, Diamond Merchants, Dressing case makers and Cutlers, until 1919.

Cecil Harley worked for some time for Alexander Clark and Co., of Fenchurch Street, “Gold and Silversmiths, Diamond Merchants, Dressing Case Makers and Cutlers”, leaving there in 1919. (Philip has the original of a letter expressing regret at his departure.)

By 1921 he had set up his own business, as a ‘general merchant’ at 1 Leadenhall Street. A year later he was at 57 Bath House, Holborn Viaduct, London EC1 (Tel: City 3481) where he was to remain for some years.  From 1930 the business was listed in his name, as “C.F. Harley Ltd., Cutlers and Silversmiths.”  (There might be some connection with the John Lilly Company, established by his maternal great grandfather and represented in London by his grandfather, and certainly he was working in the same trade.)  He was also something of an inventor, and was awarded a patent in 1929 – in the USA and Canada as well as in the UK – for ‘an appliance for peeling apples and oranges’.

Whatever the family connection and whether or not this was a family business, the fact is, grandfather was ‘in trade’ as the English would say pejoratively.  He operated as a “General Merchant” with a specialty in cutlery – which Americans call silverware or flatware he worked on behalf of the Viners Company. When my siblings and I were married, we each received a gift of a cutlery set from the company.  Grandfather Harley had apparently used his royal friendship – or perhaps simply his salesmanship – to secure a Royal Warrant for the company. The Warrant entitled the company to adorn its products with a royal standard, and the words “by appointment to His Majesty the King”.

To verify this, I searched for a company catalogue, where I found the following:

Founded in 1901, Viners has a long manufacturing tradition of creating quality cutlery for every dining occasion. Sophisticated design and production methods are employed so that every piece bearing our name reflects our proud tradition of manufacturing excellence and our commitment to the highest quality products. In the early 1930’s the company designed two of the classic Sheffield patterns Jesmond and Harley which still, to this day, are copied worldwide.

The name leapt out at me.  I read on …

The Harley name was applied to a design created in 1930 by William Buterill of William Turner & Co, and is the most well known of the company’s designs and copied worldwide.  It is available in Hallmarked Sterling Silver, Silver Plate, 18/10 Stainless Steel.

But why was the name Harley used?  A call to the company elicited the information that the name had been applied in recognition of someone who had worked for the company at the time. There were no more details, but it seems possible that Grandfather Harley did leave some kind of royal legacy.   Just not quite the one I had imagined.

The family meanwhile had left Golders Green.  In 1923 they moved to 77, Vivian Avenue, also called “Glengarry”, a house we visited often during the 1950’s and 1960’s. It was from Uncle John (the oldest child of Cecil and Bessie) that I learnt of the circumstances of the move.  I was somewhat skeptical at first, but it seems the story he told me in 1999 was true: the railroad ran through the middle of the house!  The London Underground’s Northern Line was extended north from Hampstead to Golders Green and beyond, and the new line was to run through Woodstock Avenue. Brent station (now Brent Cross), which opened on 19 November 1923, was originally to have been named Woodstock.

Hendon, a village recorded in the Domesday Book as ‘Hendun,’ or place of the highest hill (higher presumably than Hampstead Heath) was in the early twentieth century rapidly developing into a suburb of London. Glengarry was a rather gracious mansion. Its rooms included, besides a very elegant sitting room, large kitchen, and innumerable bedrooms, a billiard room large enough to be later converted into a separate family unit. It was a home of some privilege, clearly, but the family fortune was to suffer.

For Cecil was a spendthrift and a playboy.  Joan remembered sitting in a car outside Windsor Castle on several occasions, waiting for her father to emerge. When he came out, she told me, he would be the worse for wear, his business evidently including drinking and gambling. But he used his playboy contacts to advantage, for he secured the Royal Warrant as Cutlers and Silversmiths to King George V, in 1930, for the Viners Company.  In return (I assume) Viners named a line of silverware ‘Harley’.  He perhaps had inherited not just the family trade but also his father Frank’s abilities as a salesman.[1]

Despite this achievement Cecil was losing money, and in 1926 he was obliged to rent out the house on Vivian Avenue and moved Bessie, Joan and probably Ronnie, to Willow Road in Hampstead.  The older boys at the time were at boarding school, (John may have been forced to leave school already, and at work in a bank) with the family retreating to France, where the cost of living was cheaper, for the summers.  Since Joan mentioned that Cecil had left the family when she was about 13, this may have been the end, or certainly the beginning of the end, of the marriage.

The best information I have as to his whereabouts during this period is from telephone directory listings. In addition to the business address and number (CITy 3481), the listing for Glengarry (HENdon 1335) was in Cecil’s name until 1931.  In 1932 there was no listing for the Vivian Avenue House, and from 1933 the number and address were listed in Bessie’s name.[2] From 1925–38, C.F. Harley had an additional listing:  “Prince of Wales”, 136 Hampton Road, Twickenham (Tel: POPesgrove 1054). It would appear that this is where Cecil lived when he left the family.

I do know one of the ways in which he lost money.  My mother, Joan Harley and I were watching television one evening in the late nineteen fifties.  It was a Sunday evening, and we were watching “This is Your Life,” an early example of ‘reality TV’.  In the show the host surprises a special guest, before taking them through their life with the assistance of the ‘big red book’.  It was hosted on the BBC by Eamonn Andrews,from 1955 until 1964.  On this particular evening the ‘surprised’ guest was one Tiger Sarll, described as ‘a big game hunter, war correspondent, actor, journalist and photographer’, who was well-known for his frock-coat, striped grey trousers, silk hat, patent leather boots, and spats, and monocle.  Eamonn Andrews remembered him thus:

If, quickly, I had to identify Tiger Sarll to viewers of the BBC’s ‘This Is Your Life’, I’d forget about the monocle and the six foot four erectness of the soldier and even the near incredible incidents from his story.  I’d simply say:  ‘Remember the man who, when we brought his grown family on one after another, stopped one of them and said, “You’re not one of mine, are you? Which one are you?”

He probably infuriated every woman in the audience – and the happy, robust family reunion afterwards was too late to assuage the feelings of outraged parenthood. But that’s Tiger Sarll, the wanderer, the adventurer, the soldier of fortune, the Spartan who puts sentiment and affection way down the line and who’s not prepared to murmur with the rest of us a hypocritical, ‘How nice to meet you again.’ More likely, ‘And who the hell are you?’   … This extraordinary adventurer frightens the wits out of me every time we meet.

Within moments of hearing Sarll’s name, Joan sat up sharply.  “That’s the man who swindled my father out of his money” she exclaimed. And she certainly was infuriated. I didn’t learn much of the details, but gathered it had to do with investing in an ostrich farm in Rhodesia, just as ostrich feathers went out of fashion.

Disappearing in the Antipodes

Cecil left the family in about 1929 and two years later he sailed from France on board the SS Astrolabe; he crossed the Equator on November 29 1931. He may simply have gone for a visit – his sister, Connie Williams, lived in Sydney.  Or he may have stayed.

There is a tantalizing news item of a Cecil Francis Harley in Broken Hill, New South Wales:

Jumma Khan, camel driver, of Chapple Street, petitioned for a divorce from Luisa Khan on the grounds of adultery.  Mr. J. J. Davoren appeared for the petitioner.  Evidence was given by the petitioner and Cecil Francis Harley, law clerk and J. J. Davoren, solicitor.  His Honor found the issue proved.

Mr. Harley’s role is not clear, but His Honor found the issue proved.  And there is no evidence that this was our FCH.  Barrier Miner (Broken Hill, NSW) Wednesday 4 May.[3]

And he was certainly in Sydney for a while at least between 1935 and 1937, for Joan said that she saw him in Sydney once, at a bar – she did not talk to him, she had nothing to say to him. By 1946 he had settled in New Zealand.

Yet it is not certain that Cecil had left the UK for good yet.  His business address – C.F. Harley Ltd, Cutlers and Silversmiths, 57 Holborn Viaduct – remained in the London phone book until 1940, and the Prince of Wales listing in Twickenham until 1938.  What is clear is that by 1941 Cecil had settled in New Zealand.[4]

New Zealand years:  1941-1961

In 1946 in 1949 Cecil Francis Harley, a Retired naval officer, was listed in the New Zealand Electoral Rolls, living at Pahia, Northland. There was also an entry for Ione Erina Harley, described as married.  In 1949 and 1954 Cecil and Ione were registered in Oneroa Beach, Tamaki. In 1957 they were registered to vote in Auckland Central.

A year or two before they both died, Cecil wrote to Bessie asking her to grant him a divorce.  As I heard it, he told her that he wished to marry a rich New Zealand widow, and when he did so he would pay Granny all the alimony he owed her (from 193?).  I wasn’t around to hear her response, but I gathered it was in the negative, in no uncertain terms.  I assume that Ione Erina was the woman in question, and that though she claimed to be married and used the Harley name, in fact she could not have been married to Cecil Harley.  Within a short time after that exchange of letters, both Bessie and Cecil died.

Death

July 18 1961.  26 Gladwin Road, Epsom, Auckland.

On December 7 2013, Cecil’s great granddaughter, Lorna Macnee, was visiting Auckland and spent some time looking for Cecil.  She found his death certificate in the archives.  While somewhat short of detail this was enough to affirm that this was indeed the son of Frank Harley of Harborne.

His name was given as Cecil Francis Harley, born in Harborne, Birmingham, England.  There were no details of his parents, or of a marriage, except that he left a widow aged about 76 (Granny was 76 in 1961; but could it refer to Ione?) and that he had four children:  three male children, ages unknown; one female child age unknown. He had lived in New Zealand for about 20 years (so since 1941), and he was described as a Retired Naval Officer (Ex-Serviceman).  His death was the result of carcinoma of colon and the form certifies that there was only one day between onset and death, though presumably this must have been the diagnosis not the actual onset of the disease.  His home at the time was at 26 Gladwin Rd, Epsom (at base of One Tree Hill), Auckland and he was cremated at Purewa Cemetery.  Lorna visited the house, which had been the Epsom Schoolhouse till about 1941.  She sent photos and a printout of the death certificate.

And thus ends the story of Francis Cecil Harley.

[1]This is the way I remember the story, unlikely as it seems.  But when I learnt that he he had a home away from home in The Prince of Wales Tavern, in Twickenham, it occurs to me that I may have confused mother’s tale.  Or perhaps she was confused.

[2]I suspect that in the separation agreement (the divorce was never finalized) Bessie acquired the house, and was able to move back in in 1933.

[3]While I have not found another Cecil Francis in Australia, there was a Cecil Harley in Ballina NSW – along with plenty of other Harleys, and a good few whose second name was Francis.)

[4]From his death certificate.

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Joan Mary Harley 1916-2002