Georgina Pocklington’s Terrible Legacy

Another old photograph. It shows my maternal grandparents, her sister and husband, and four of their children, on a lovely day on the beach at Bridlington on the Yorkshire coast around 1936. Apart from the clothes, it could be this year. And, apart from the two men, all are descendants of Georgina Pocklington who I wrote about in June. You may recall she died aged 45, of what was essentially a poverty-related illness, a few years after her husband deserted her. She also left us a terrible legacy. 

The happy, smiling woman on the left is my grandma, and the bald man on the right my grandpa. She was born in 1899, and he in 1901. “She baby snatched him”, he said. Previously, she had been engaged to another he died in the war. My grandpa was just too young to serve. They would have been around 35 and 37 in the picture, but look older. Grandma went white very young, and like many of his family, Grandpa lost his hair early. 

The dark-haired woman at the back is my Grandma’s sister, Aunty Gina (named after Georgina Pocklington), with her husband in front wearing shorts. I liked them enormously, and have written about collecting loose road chippings on my tricycle for him to make a new front door step, and when older going after school to watch television. They would help anyone. He made new pelmets for us, and kept an eye on the house when we were away. They were a happy and contented couple. 

There are two children from each couple. The curly-haired girl next to my grandpa is my aunt, aged about 4. She is called Aunty Bina elsewhere in this blog (Aunty Bina’s Farm). In front of her is Uncle Owen, her older brother. The others, front right, are their cousins: the girl is Aunty Olga who in an earlier post described their village as a lovely place to grow up; I know much less about the boy, except he had 5 children and moved away. Not present is my mother, possibly looking after the family shop, nor her youngest brother who had yet to be born. 

Georgina Pocklington left us a legacy of cancer. I know it was her because she had children by three different fathers, and it appears in all three lines of descent. It could have come further back through the Pocklington family, but I suspect it was from Georgina’s unknown father. It would cost hundreds of pounds to obtain the death certificates to be more sure, but even that might be inconclusive because we would need to go back before registration in 1837. 

The women tend to get breast cancer around the age of 60, like my mother and her mother’s mother, or the men or the women tend to get bowel cancer slightly older, like my grandma’s cousin and son. Those who escape are prone to environmental cancers, like me in cigarette-smoky offices, houses, buses, cinemas, and pubs, and polluted 1970s Leeds; and one of Olga’s daughters who ran pubs for many years. Some have the misfortune to be affected much earlier, like my brother who got bowel cancer in his thirties, and one of Olga’s granddaughters who developed breast cancer at the shocking age of 30. 

Not everyone succumbs. My grandma suffered a stroke at 73, and both girls in the picture lived to a good age, Bina to 81 and Olga to 86. You can think the illness has missed a line, but then it crops up again unexpectedly a generation or two later. One of Bina’s daughters, i.e. my cousin, has just been diagnosed with breast cancer at 61, as was another of Olga’s daughters. 

When Bina dies, I wrote to Olga to tell her, and she telephoned me twice the same day, forgetting she had phoned once already. Foolishly, I told her, which distressed her. I wish I had simply talked with her again. It was the last time we spoke. 

Without getting into the complexities of the family tree, likely deaths can be seen in the descendant lines of Georgina Pocklington’s children to three different fathers before, during, and after her marriage. Another of grandma’s cousins, who was around the same age as my mother, died from breast cancer around the same time, and one of her nephews who was a few years older than me died of bowel cancer 7 years ago. Aunty Gina, the dark-haired woman in the picture, lived only to 67. Her husband, very distressed, survived her by just a few months. 

In a line of descendants from another cousin who moved to Horwich in Lancashire, the illness is widespread. One, a senior nurse, said some years ago that she thought there must be a rogue cancer gene in the family. But geneticists who have looked at it maintain there is insufficient evidence. 

Coming back to the picture, my grandfather’s family have not enjoyed better luck, although this is really for a different blog post. His father was one of just three from eleven to live beyond their early thirties, and he lost a sister in infancy and an older brother in the First World War, leaving him the only sibling. He then dies of a sudden heart attack in his fifties, as did both the son born after the picture and a grandson, in their thirties. And, Uncle Owen, who I just remember, he died in a military accident while on national service.   

I find it astonishing that one picture, a snapshot from a very different time, reminds us of so much.  

What a feeble, sickly lot we are.