Julie Leek’s interest in the Bradshaw family was sparked in 2002 when she came into possession of a small family Bible which contained details of the births and deaths of Job and Mary Bradshaw and their 13 children.  Four died in infancy, but eight brothers survived along with the youngest, a sister named Mary Elizabeth.

The Bradshaws resided in the city of Nottingham and would have been termed a “middle class” family. Job was a solicitor and, for several years, a member of the Town Council and Justice of the Peace. In 1832, he married Mary, daughter of John & Ellen Mills, also of Nottingham. Job was proprietor of the Nottingham Journal newspaper between 1841 – 1866, when he retired in favour of his sons. He died in 1877, his wife Mary having already died in 1873. Both are interred in a vault in St Nicholas’ churchyard on Maid Marian Way in Nottingham city centre.

 Julie thought it would be a nice gesture to locate a living descendant of one of the Bradshaw brothers and return the Bible to the family. She says, “As large families were common in Victorian times, I assumed finding a living descendant of the Bradshaw family would be an easy task. I was mistaken!“

After extensive research, Julie discovered that only two of the nine surviving Bradshaw children married.  Mary Elizabeth, the only daughter, married Joseph Littlewood, a surgeon, when she was 47 years of age.  She became stepmother to his five children,but had none of her own. Albert Septimus Bradshaw, a journalist, married Annie Cropper, an authoress. They had only one son, Vernon Albert Mills Bradshaw, born in December 1882.

Vernon married Henrietta Annie Foot in 1904 and it seems that the survival of this entire branch of the Bradshaw family rested entirely on their shoulders.  However, having failed to find any offspring from this union, Julie put her research on hold, hoping to discover more from the 1911 census. When it was released two years earlier than usual in 2009, there was no trace of Vernon or his wife Henrietta, let alone any children.  The trail had gone completely cold.

Years passed, then in April 2015 Julie received an email from a fellow geneology enthusiast named Elizabeth in Tasmania. She had found a family tree for the Bradshaws which Julie had posted on a popular geneological site and responded with a message, which read, “I have just come across your postings regarding Vernon … He married a kinswoman of mine, Doris Grace Gloster, in Australia in 1921. Did you know about this second marriage?”

From then on, Julie and Elizabeth put their heads together to complete the puzzle. They discovered that the reason there was no mention of Vernon Albert Mills Bradshaw or his first wife Henrietta in the 1911 census was that they had left the country on a ship bound for Melbourne, Australia on 25 March 1911. Vernon travelled abroad extensively as a motor agent, but whether this trip was for business or pleasure is unknown.

It is not known how Vernon met his second wife, Doris Grace Gloster, (born 1 April 1897). Her father, John Clarke Gloster, was an Officer in the Indian Civil Service and her mother was Mary Lyons Gloster (nee Holland).  Anthony was told by his mother that whilst her parents were in India she and her younger sister Kathleen were left behind in the care of two maiden aunts, who when they misbehaved locked them up in cupboards and on the whole treated them rather badly.

They may have met in Paris, where Doris confided to Anthony she had once performed with a troupe of English girls at the Folies Begere. However, he thinks that his parents were more likely to have met in London in 1918/19, when Doris was 21 and her sister Kathleen, two years younger, were both intent on enjoying themselves in a city where, at the end of World War I, the atmosphere was exhilarating.  Doris would no doubt have been swept off her feet by Vernon, a decorated ex-Major.

Vernon and Doris married in Durban, South Africa on 10 March 1921 and were blessed with a son, Anthony Vernon Bradshaw, who was born in England on 1 June 1923.

Elizabeth’s help was invaluable at this stage, as she discovered that Anthony had lived and worked in Australia for many years, that he was alive and well and, and crucially, how he could be contacted.

Once Anthony was located, Julie forwarded to him details of her research regarding his paternal forebears.  Anthony knew very little about the Bradshaw family. His grandfather, Albert Septimus Bradshaw, died in 1914 and by the time Anthony was born, only three of the nine original Bradshaw siblings were still alive. Anthony has the distinct impression that somehow his father Vernon had been labelled the “black sheep” of the family.  Why might that be? Considering this was the 1920s, there were two likely reasons, as follows.

Vernon was declared bankrupt in 1927, something which was greatly frowned on in the 1920s. He had to appear before the Bankruptcy Court where he admitted that, although the cause was primarily due to losses on his companies and other investments, it was also partly due to his extravagance.  All of this was reported in The Times newspaper of 24 March 1927. This would  not have ingratiated Vernon with his remaining Bradshaw relatives, especially as he had inherited a sum of £120,000 upon the death of his Uncle William Bradshaw only seven years earlier in 1920, which would have made him a millionaire several times over by today’s monetary values. Yet there was more …

Vernon’s decision to leave his first wife Henrietta in order to marry Doris Grace Gloster would have been considered an even worse disgrace. Divorce in the 1920s was rare, expensive to obtain and carried a lasting stigma. Anthony’s mother Doris later told him that his father’s relatives had persuaded him to move abroad, and in all likelihood the reason for this would have been to avoid the scandal and disgrace a divorce would bring upon the family name. The intention was that they remain overseas, but they soon returned to England.

Sadly, the marriage broke down and Anthony says that his parents “separated but never divorced”. Vernon stayed in contact with his son, having him to stay for a week twice a year and taking him on day trips which he still has pleasant memories of to this day. However, Anthony recalls his father was “singularly uncommunicative about his past”. Sometimes he would ask his mother why she and his father no longer lived together, but was simply told, “You wouldn’t understand”.

Despite his parents’ marriage break-up, Anthony benefited from a good education, attending private schools and later graduating from Imperial College, London in 1944 with a first class Honours degree in Metallurgy, which opened the door to a prestigious career both at home and abroad. (See below) 

Anthony Vernon Bradshaw (born 1923) studied at RSM (Royal School of Mines) and after obtaining his (first class) degree in 1944 worked at mines and smelters around the world. He returned to a readership at the college in 1958 where, with help from the Nuffield Foundation, Harry Oppenheimer, and the British Steel Corporation, he formed the John Percy Research Group in Process Metallurgy in 1965 … He left Imperial in 1975 to become Chief of the Division of Process Metallurgy in the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization of Australia.

The History of Imperial College London, 1907 – 2007: Higher Education and Research in Science, Technology and Medicine by Hannah Gay. Published by Imperial College Press.  Page 395 n. 185

Anthony has childhood memories of his mother Doris once taking him to Nottingham to be introduced to Mary Elizabeth Littlewood née Bradshaw, in the hopes of building bridges with the family and possibly securing an inheritance for her son. His father Vernon knew of the visit and cautioned him to be on his best behavior. After the death of her husband, Mary had moved to live with her brother William, who died in 1920. She was a very wealthy lady in her own right, but became the main beneficiary in her brother’s Will, also inheriting his home, Carisbrooke House, Cavendish Crescent North, The Park, Nottingham.  She lived on for another 27 years, dying on 20 June 1947 at 93 years of age. The net value of her estate amounted to well over £500,000. However, Anthony was not one of the beneficiaries.

Vernon Albert Bradshaw, Anthony’s father, died on 13 May 1943 at 59 years of age whilst working as a store keeper for a motor spares company in Coventry.  He did not leave a Will.

His first wife, Henrietta, outlived him by 5 years, dying in 1948. The death certificate describes her as “Widow of Vernon Bradshaw – of independent means”.  This raises the possibility that she and Vernon may never have legally divorced, which in turn would perhaps explain why Vernon and his second wife, Doris Grace, “separated but never divorced”. Although they married abroad and had a certificate to prove that, it would not be considered a valid union if Vernon’s marriage to Henrietta was never dissolved.  It is also a possibility that Vernon had to come to some arrangement with Henrietta to support her financially, which may have been a contributing factor in his being declared bankrupt.

A final word from Anthony: “Fortunately I saw sufficient of my father, Vernon, to know that despite what he did to dissipate his inheritance, he was of kindly disposition, able to take a considered view on most topics, and my only regret was that he died before I had the opportunity to know him better.”