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The following is just a synopsis. The site author can be contacted for more detailed information.
Harold Edward (1) Bone (HE1B) was the fourth child of Thomas Henry Bone (THB) and Annie (1) Woodhurst and was born in 1905. His birth certificate [Birth Index: Edmonton 3a 584, 1905 (March)] states that he was born on January 26th 1905 at his parents' home which was then 57, Elsden Road in Tottenham - considerably further north than most of the other places where they had lived in London. The informant was THB, then occupied as a railway fitter mechanic.
HE1B was a little less than 10 years old when his father died in 1915. His daughter Hazel Edith remembered being told by him that "he had a rough upbringing". When his mother left London in 1917 to move to Leicester he naturally went with her, as so also did his brother Thomas Richard (then in his early twenties) and his sister Mildred Margaret who was only about 5.
He was still living in Leicester when he married at the age of 21 to Edith Sophia Cooper, then aged 19. Their marriage certificate [Marriage Index: Leicester 7a 399, 1926 (March)] states that they married at Leicester Register Office on January 30th 1926. His occupation was then a hosiery dryer and hers a shoe machinist - both typical Leicester occupations. Their addresses were both given as 14, Bakehouse Lane in Leicester. His father is described as a railway timekeeper (deceased) and hers, George Cooper, as a labourer at a cardboard box factory (also deceased). The witnesses were E. Storer and N. Storer, whose connections are unknown.
Edith Sophia was born on October 12th 1906 [Birth Index: Leicester 7a 284, 1906 (Dec)], the last child of a large family. Her mother died around 1914 when she was only 7 years old. George Cooper subsequently married Annie (1) in 1918, but they did not have had many years together because he died in 1924.
Edith Sophia was probably already pregnant when she married HE1B, for within seven months she gave birth at 14, Bakehouse Lane to their first child Harold Edward (2) (HE2B), born on August 20th 1926. The following year they had a daughter Hazel Edith, born on November 10th 1927. Subsequently these children were looked after by Annie (1) during the daytime when Edith Sophia was working again at the shoe factory. By then, Annie (1) had married yet again, this time to a nightwatchman named Samuel Clements.
HE1B and his family seem to have moved a number of times whilst in Leicester. By the time of his brother Thomas Richard's death in late 1933, they were living in Cardinal Street opposite Abbey Park. Later still they moved to a council house on the Braunstone Estate. By the late 1930s HE1B had joined the Royal Air Force as an aircraft mechanic. At the outbreak of the War he moved the family to Cliftonville in Margate, Kent where they stayed for five months. They then went to Ramsgate for one month and finally - together with Annie (1) - back to Leicester for six months. During this latter period he was seeking a new home in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, where he was then stationed. He found one and moved his family into it, leaving Annie (1) and Mildred Margaret in Leicester. These details were related to the site author by Hazel Edith.
He was sent abroad by the RAF in early 1940, but not before making Edith Sophia pregnant for a third time; in September of that year she gave birth to a son named Clifford Thomas Bone. HE1B served in Iraq, Abyssinia and Mesopotamia, but by 1944 he had contracted amoebic dysentry and was consequently demobbed. "The War had changed him", wrote HE2B in the 1980s. Although the complete import of this remark is uncertain, it appears that HE1B became ever more restless once back in England. A fourth child named Gordon Bone was born to Edith Sophia in early 1950, but only two years later HE1B emigrated to Australia, leaving all his family behind him. Whatever his reasons for that may have been, his new life in Australia was short-lived. The effects of the amoebic dysentery caught up with him with a vengeance and, following an operation, he died there in 1954 at about 49 years of age. He was buried on April 5th 1954 at the Geelong Western Public Cemetery, Greater Geelong City in Victoria.
Edith Sophia died in 1975. The death certificate [Death Index: Peterborough 9 1010, 1975 (Sept)] states that she died aged 68 on July 23rd 1975 at Peterborough District Hospital from an aortic aneurysm due to atheromatous disease of the aorta. She is described as the widow of HE1B, a motor engineering mechanic. At that time her address was 104, Montagu Road in the Walton area of Peterborough. The informant was HE2B, then living at 7, Church Drive in the Orton Waterville area of Peterborough.
Harold Edward (2) was born on August 20th 1926. He married in 1962 to Greta ("Bridget") Fisher [Marriage Index: Peterborough 3b 1998, 1962 (March)]. She had been married previously and already had two daughters.
Hazel Edith died in mid-November 2003. Until the War came in 1939 she lived quite near to her aunt Annie (1) and knew that the latter was a habitual user of snuff as well as of alcohol.
Clifford Thomas was born on September 29th 1940. He married in 1959 to Ruby George [Marriage Index: Hunts.N. 4b 844, 1959 (March)]. Five years later he succumbed to multiple sclerosis. He died without issue on September 5th 1979 [Death Index: Peterborough 9 946, 1979 (Sept)].
Gordon Terence was born on March 6th 1950. He married Eileen Ruth Holober in Broward County, Florida on April 20th 1989 and settled in Miami.