LIVES and TIMES: John Baldwinson, Teresa Duffy and family Minnie at 90 2nd Edition For Teresa th on her 84 birthday This edition published in Great Britain in 2016 by TBR Imprint First edition of this work published in Great Britain in 2014 Main text: Copyright © Tony Baldwinson, 2014, 2016 Appendices: Copyright © as credited and dated Tony Baldwinson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License. ISBN 9780993526725 Standard Print A5, Large Print A4 available online in PDF format 26 Chapel Road, Sale, Manchester M33 7EG, UK LIVES AND TIMES: John Baldwinson, Teresa Duffy and family Preface to the Second Edition ......................................... 7 Preface to the First Edition ............................................. 9 Family Trees ................................................................. 10 The Higgins family ....................................................... 12 Minnie ....................................................................... 12 Mary Jane .................................................................. 35 Bill............................................................................. 36 Beatrice – Trixie ........................................................ 38 Lil .............................................................................. 39 Sarah Jane – Cissie.................................................... 40 Harry ......................................................................... 42 Jack Higgins .............................................................. 44 Linda ......................................................................... 45 Arthur ........................................................................ 49 The Duffy family .......................................................... 59 Jack Duffy ................................................................. 59 Maria ......................................................................... 65 Joseph Duffy ............................................................. 66 James – Jim ............................................................... 67 3 Catherine Mary – Kitty.............................................. 67 Elizabeth – Bessie ..................................................... 68 Ellen – Ellie............................................................... 68 Capt. Joe Duffy ......................................................... 69 John Duffy (Snr) ....................................................... 99 Maggie ...................................................................... 99 Margaret Brynes...................................................... 100 Cecilia ..................................................................... 101 Piotr – Peter ............................................................ 106 Jan Jozef – Janek .................................................... 118 Pawel Alojzy – Paul ............................................... 121 Krystyna – Krysia ................................................... 122 Bernard Wozny ....................................................... 124 Bernard Duffy ......................................................... 124 Margaret – Betty ...................................................... 138 Julie ......................................................................... 140 Cathy ....................................................................... 141 Colin ........................................................................ 142 June ......................................................................... 154 David ....................................................................... 155 Helen ....................................................................... 156 Teresa – Teddy ........................................................ 157 4 The Wallace family ..................................................... 179 Edith ........................................................................ 179 Sarah Rachel – Momma .......................................... 183 John Wallace ........................................................... 190 Thomas .................................................................... 192 Susan ....................................................................... 195 William ................................................................... 195 Isaac ........................................................................ 197 Jack Wallace ........................................................... 198 The Baldwinson family ............................................... 206 Fred – Bud ............................................................... 206 Alice ........................................................................ 210 Percy ....................................................................... 214 Charles .................................................................... 223 Fred Hammill .......................................................... 225 John Baldwinson ..................................................... 267 John Baldwinson ..................................................... 267 Mary Emily ............................................................. 268 Joan ......................................................................... 269 Geoff ....................................................................... 273 Sylvia ...................................................................... 276 Stewart .................................................................... 277 5 John – Johnny ......................................................... 279 Teresa’s and John’s children ................................... 309 APPENDICES ............................................................ 310 John Baldwinson – Awards ........................................ 310 Letters and Press Cuttings (1900-1997) ...................... 315 A Fraudulent Poster ................................................ 315 Correspondence, Joe Duffy ..................................... 316 Curious Theft Case ................................................. 321 Spiritualists in Conference ...................................... 326 God Help the Others ............................................... 327 When the Safe Period Doesn't Work ...................... 331 Birth Control and Poverty ....................................... 334 Obituary, John Baldwinson ..................................... 336 John Baldwinson: ‘His Own Man’ ......................... 337 Daughter Angry Over Hospital Meals .................... 339 Publications by Fred Hammill .................................... 341 “A Short Biography”................................................... 345 Draft ad, unused: “Declaration of War” ..................... 350 Bernard Duffy – Royal Navy Service Record ............ 354 A Time Has Come ...................................................... 356 Acknowledgements ..................................................... 359 6 Preface to the Second Edition The first edition of this family history was a booklet circulated within the family at Christmas 2014. It was 64 pages, and drew some very kind comments. I already had a sense that we risked losing many of the oral stories within the family, basically as time and people passed. I was also very curious to learn more, I liked using my research skills, and I knew I could easily forget or misremember stories if I did not write them down. What started as lists grew into prose. As many have said, the generations before us were told it was bad manners to talk about themselves. It was the sin of vanity. They were not the Facebook generation. And, they told themselves, their lives were just ordinary. Write about someone else, they might say, those other people are far more interesting than me. At best, we sat down together with a family photo album and repeated our stories as we turned the pages. But mostly I feel we said too little. I’m massively indebted to the many people who have kindly helped me. Relatives have given me very generous, candid and sometimes dark and heartfelt accounts – including many stories that I knew nothing about until recently. Strangers have also helped, including people researching their own family history who kindly gave me their time, advice and new leads. I have stopped my research mostly at the 1980s, and before that when I reach living relatives of my 7 generation and younger. Partly this is for their privacy, and partly because I understand that this account here is simply one history, and that it would be impossible for it to be the history of our families. We may have memoirs we want to write ourselves when we are ready. We may also disagree. This is essentially a collection of stories rather than a list of old dates. It is about relationships, some of which were at times dysfunctional in anyone’s book, “each ... unhappy in its own way” to quote Tolstoy. I hope in describing the range of our family relationships here it helps us to reflect, learn and grow. * At times I must admit I was tempted to cheat. I could just say that I had traced the Duffy line back to the year 497 CE (Common Era, or Anno Domini in old money) and traced the Baldwinson line back to 672 CE. For Duffy we have the Gaelic family name of Ó Dubhthaigh, going back in records to Dubthach who was the Bishop of Armagh in 497 CE. Duffy originally