What was my Grandfather doing in FREETOWN: SIERRA LEONE in 1938/39?
Another family mystery!
MAURICE FREDERICK PERRY 1901-1978 Part II
I am most fortunate to have a family that have led eventful lives, but sometimes it feels like I am forever having to put on my 'Nancy Drew' hat to try and uncover yet another mystery.
I left my Grandfather Maurice Frederick Perry, in a previous blog, having been medically retired from the RAF in the 1920's and having had a medical review where there was concern that there may be an underlying Mental Health problem that needed to be monitored.
Maurice Frederick Perry 1901 - 1978: MILITARY (mypynthdev.blogspot.com)
Maurice married my Grandmother, Alice Esther Emma Pitts at Cudham church in 1924. My father was born a few years later and Maurice had several different businesses during those early years, including a motor mechanic garage and a coal merchant, it is believed that these did not go well financially. In the 1930's the family moved to France, St Jean de Luz, where Maurice worked as a chauffeur for the French Legation for a year to 18 months. Shortly after their return to England, Maurice and Alice's marriage broke down, although their living arrangements were somewhat erratic, Alice and my father living with Maurice's mother and her adopted son. On the electoral rolls it would appear that Maurice was moving in and out of various family members addresses, inclusive of his mother's. It is around this time that Maurice begins to evolve into his new persona of Paul Parry Sefton. A name he adopted and then legitimised, sending documents to my father encouraging him to follow suit, which my father decided against.
So, during blanket searches I found ships manifesto's showing Paul Parry Sefton, travelling to and from Freetown, Sierra Leone on a couple of occassions.
His first voyage to Freetown was on the MV Abosso, the flagship of the Elder Dempster Line which made a regular scheduled service from Liverpool to East Africa, for mail, passengers and cargo. It's passenger capacity was 250 in 1st class, 74-2nd class and 332- 3rd class.
He boarded to 1st class on 2 Nov 1938, surprisingly he gives his occupation as a 'novelist'. Now, as his descendants, we had no knowledge of such a career. As if to underline this assertion he gives the address 29 Paternoster Row, London, a street in the City of London, that was the centre of the book publishing trade. Both the MV Abosso and Paternoster Row were destroyed in WW2.
PATERNOSTER ROWThe duration of Paul's trip was not long and he was shown to return to Plymouth, England on the 11th December 1838. He gives his onward address as 18 Bulstrode Gdns, Hounslow, this was in fact the home of his brother Ernest and wife Lily. Whilst Paul had left the UK as a novelist, he returned as an accountant.
So why was my Grandfather wending his way back and fore to Freetown? Sometimes in flights of fancy, I wondered if he was working undercover, a 1930's equivelent to 007, this I will add is before the letter regarding my Grandfather's state of health, came into my possession. These dates were just pre war and researching Sierra Leone, a British colony at the time, indicated that it was being prepared as a convoy station in preparation for the war as early as 1938. Comprehensive militarisation began in 1939 and the United States built military installations and stationed troops from 1942/3. At the height of the war, up to 200 ships would be moored in Freetown, either European cargo ships or military craft. Was my Grandfather involved in any of this?
An exploration of foreign office records and such like by a lady better equiped than myself at searching at the National Archives, came up with nothing, as in my heart of hearts I expected.
So reviewing the ships manifesto's for the MV Abosso, I noted that many of the passengers on my Grandfather's 2nd voyage were involved in the financial or trade sector.
During the 1930's there was an significant economic change in the country, previously Sierra Leone's economy had been 'agricultural,' but in the 1930's mining of minerals, gems and diamonds and their exportation became the focus of the country's economy.
Politically there was also change, in 1924, a new constitution was set in place , the UK government dividing the country into 2 sections, the Colony, being Freetown and it's coastal area's and the Protectorate, the hinterland, dominated by local chiefs. But one of the biggest changes was that in 1938, ITA Wallace-Johnson, trade unionist and Nationalist leader, returned from exile to Sierra Leone and 'within a year had established, 8 labour unions, a newspaper and a mass political movement that swept aside all opposition in the city council elections.' (www.sierra-leone.org). Could any of this have been the catalyst for those financiers, accountants and merchant tradesmen, travelling to the country?
Or, on another flight of fancy, returning to the mining of gemstones, could my Grandfather have been an international diamond smuggler? The answer to that is, perhaps, - however if this was the case, where are the spoils of such an enterprise?
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