1.

After my mother Clarice died in 1985, my brother Robert found our parents' 12 April 1930 marriage certificate. This revealed that my father Frank had been “Divorced, February 20th 1930” — that is, 51 days previous to the newer wedding. This was the first we’d heard of any former marriage.

Robert investigated. Clarice had been 14 years younger than her husband. When they met, Frank had a young son in tow. Rex (b 1919) accompanied his actor father on tours, or stayed in Sydney with Frank’s friend Charlie Bonner, who was married to a New Zealander, Jocelyn Green.

When things got serious between 26 year old Clarice and 40 year old Frank, she insisted that 8 year old Rex had to go. The Green family agreed to take the boy to New Zealand, presumably for adoption. He became Rex Hatherley-Green.

Robert contacted the Hatherley-Greens during the late 1980s, met Rex and his three children in New Zealand, and heard from Rex that his mother was “Myra Deane, ‘nee’ Florance”. She was, wrote Rex, “vivacious, well structured, as the chorus line of JCW demanded”. J. C. Williamsons were the major theatrical production organisation in Australia at that time. Rex also revealed that he had been one of twins: his brother had been stillborn.

Some years later, Robert discovered, quite by chance, that Rex, who had died in 1992, had not been the only living son from his father’s previous marriage. Frank Arnold Hatherley had been born in 1918, almost exactly a year before Rex and his twin.

Robert met Frank Arnold and his second wife Elaine at their portable house in a Byron Bay caravan park in 1996; later, so did I. Frank had been given away when “only a few months old” to a George and Bridget Parker, as “my Father & Mother were going on tour”. He could not have known that his mother was already pregnant again: before Robert contacted him, Frank Arnold had no idea that his brother Rex had ever existed.

Frank Arnold said his mother’s name was “Florence Myra Deane”. He treasured a photograph which he said was from her:

Three women and three men stand together on steps next to a pillar. They all wear broad brimmed hats. On the back is handwritten:

“London Revels Coy.” Taken on the steps of the Hotel Regis, “Patna”, North East of India, Jan 28th, 1931. Standing at the back, from left to right Myrtle Skewes, “Al Wynberg”, in front “Clyde Fields”, Flo. Deane, Jack Harris & Mrs Northcote. two of our men are missing. Lots of love Flo. xxx

This was all he knew about his mother. In July 1996 he wrote to Robert: “Strange feeling after all these years I still want her arms around me. I never saw her again.”

Rex had previously written: “My mother — and I say “God Bless Her” — disappeared in the Europe of the 30s-40s. Should she ever had remorse of abandoning a 4 year old I’m sure only she and the good Lord would know about it.”

Robert now searched for records of the marriage of his father Frank Hatherley (or Frank Hatherleigh Matters, his registered birth name) and ‘Florence Myra Deane’ or ‘Myra Deane Florance’ or any combination of the three words. No luck.

Frank Arnold produced his birth certificate which noted the date and place of his parents’ wedding: “18th July 1917, Adelaide, South Australia”. On the certificate the father’s name is “Frank Hatherley, Actor, 34 years”; the mother’s maiden name is “Florence Myra Dean, 22 years” — definitely no ‘e’ at the end of Dean. Frank had lied about his age: he was actually 28. Informant to the Registrar is “Florence Myra Hatherley, Mother” who resided at the ”Bank Hotel, Newtown”. If she really was 22, Florence would have been born in 1895.

No 1917 wedding in Adelaide on that, or any other, day could be located. No record of a 1930 divorce could be found either.

And that’s where Robert’s search ended. He died in 1998. Frank Arnold died in 2002. Florence must surely remain an enigma forever — the vibrant young chorus girl, possibly unmarried, living with an actor, giving her “few months old” child away just before having a second son who would soon also be given away, then leaving Australia in a touring band of entertainers, disappearing into Europe.


2.

Having returned to Sydney in 1997, I took up the search, mainly by tapping ‘Florence Myra Dean’ into Google, trying to pick up a trace somewhere, anywhere. It seemed hopeless. In January 2008 I had had a cheerful message from Peter Hatherley-Green, Rex’s son, to this website, so I started a new round of googling in his honour.

Frank Arnold had given me the names of his mother Florence’s parents: Harry James William Dean, born 1861, and Julia Pierroy, born 1870 in Tenterfield NSW. This time I entered Harry James William Dean into Google and got an immediate hit to the ancestry.com archives. In 2001, a Jill Morley had been investigating a relative named David Dean, and a Jennifer Burt had replied with a list of Deans that she hoped might be helpful. This list included Harry J W Dean of Hurstville, Sydney, who had married Julia Piercy (not Pierroy). They had had six children, the eldest being Florence M Dean, born 1895. This brief correspondence had been sitting in the archives since 2001, just waiting for me to stumble by.

Off I went. The website of the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths & Marriages is a cracker, so easy to use, so addictive. It’s not completely open for scrutiny: you can check births only up to 100 years ago, deaths only up to 30 years ago, and marriages only up to 50 years ago.

The first big surprise was Florence’s middle name. It was registered not as Myra, but as Myee. I felt that perhaps I was on the wrong track until I closely inspected the handwriting on Frank Arnold’s birth certificate. What I had assumed was Myra could indeed be Myee, a strange name. Later I was to find several other NSW people with Myee as their middle name or surname, some who lived in Tenterfield.

By ordering birth, death and marriage certificates, and experimenting with the NSW Registry site I soon found plenty of new facts and figures.

Florence Myee Dean was born 10 August 1895 at her family home, Northbrook Street, Bexley, Sydney.

Her father was Harry James William Dean, a “Hall Porter”, born 1861 in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England. His father, Florence’s paternal grandfather, was a William Dean, who had married a Harriett Moore. Harry himself reached 100 years old, died in Hurstville, 1961.

Florence’s mother was Julia James Anna Maria Piercy, a “Dressmaker”, born 25 January 1870 in Tenterfield. She died in Sydney at the age of 69 in 1940. Julia’s father, Florence’s maternal grandfather, was James Piercy who was born 1822 in Devonshire, England. James was a “Sawyer” at the time of his marriage, then he was a “Gold Digger” living at “Groombride’s Swamp, near Tenterfield” at the time of Julia’s birth.

Grandfather James had married Anna Maria Donnelly in November 1858 at Ranger’s Valley, Dundee, south of Tenterfield. She had been born, according to her wedding certificate, “At Sea” in 1840. At her marriage to James, she was living at “Hanging Rock” (not THAT Hanging Rock, that’s in Victoria) and the marriage certificate states “The consent of the parents were given to this marriage, the bride being under the age of twenty years”. She was 18. The “At Sea” classification unfortunately doesn’t allow us to know from what country she had emigrated, though ‘Anna Maria Donnelly’ sure sounds Irish to me.

Florence herself died at the Calvary Hospital, Sydney, aged 83 on 14 July 1979, so she must have returned from Europe to Sydney at some stage of her later life. In 1979 her son Frank Arnold was 61 and her son Rex was 60. What might they have given to know more about their mother?



3.

If Florence had left Australia a few years after Rex’s birth, travelling via India to Europe, she could of course have lived her life absolutely anywhere. So I was to receive a shock when, one day, I idly entered her name into a Marriages search on the NSW Registry website.

There she was. Florence Myee Dean (and how could it be anyone else with that middle name!) had married Michael Arthur Freestone on 25 April 1916 at St Michael’s Roman Catholic Church in Hurstville, Sydney.

Here was proof that she was married at 20 to Michael Freestone one year BEFORE her alleged marriage to Frank Hatherley, two years before Frank Arnold’s birth, three years before Rex’s. How could this be? It occurred to me that Michael might have been a young soldier, that he went to Europe and died there during the Great War, leaving Florence free to marry again, to have children by another man.

I found an excellent Australian Army website with plenty of information about soldiers from the 1914-18 disaster. Michael Arthur Freestone, soldier no. 1294, was certainly there and his various entries astonished me all over again.

Born in 1893, in Orange NSW, Michael had joined the army — D Company, 9th Infantry Brigade, 35th Infantry Battalion — on 4 January 1916. His pay was 5 shillings per day. He had embarked for Europe on the HMAT Benalla on 1 May 1916. This was six days after his marriage to Florence.

So their marriage was sudden and hurried, to allow a mere six days before he sailed to war. My romantic vision was heightened by the assumption that Michael had copped a bullet or a dose of poison gas at the front, and been buried somewhere unmarked in a Flanders field. But I soon found more prosaic information.

His Sydney unit had disembarked at Plymouth in July 1916 and, after some time training in the UK, had “proceeded from Southampton to France in November”. Michael is further mentioned as having served with the 9th Field Ambulance. And he was discharged from the army back in Sydney on 20 June 1919.

These dates gave me a headache. Frank Arnold had been born in November 1918. Michael Freestone returned to civilian life the following June 1919 when Florence was already five months pregnant with her twins. Frank Arnold had been given away when he was “only a few months old”; that June he would have been eight months old. Rex was born in October 1919.

Where did Frank Hatherley, my father, fit in to this new 1919 scenario? Rex remembered that he had been with his mother until he was 4. Had he and Florence lived with Frank or with the returning Michael? Did she return to the stage after this? Indeed, I now wondered, had she EVER been a chorus girl?

The 1938 Australian Electoral Roll is available online. From this I discovered that Florence Myee Freestone, ‘home duties’, was living at 11 Halley Avenue, Bexley, along with Michael Arthur Freestone, ‘health inspector’. I may eventually find more references to them, but it already seems likely that Florence never left the Hurstville/Bexley area of Sydney, that the “Flo. Deane” of Frank Arnold’s photograph was not his mother, that she lived her whole life within easy contact distance of her two sons, Frank Arnold in northern NSW, Rex in New Zealand. She and Michael were childless.

I don’t believe she ever married and divorced Frank, who lived a few miles away in Mosman, on the other side of Sydney Harbour with his wife and his two further sons, Robert and Frank. It’s a strange, sad story.


4.

Stumped for further developments, I recently wrote letters to 19 Deans from the Sydney phonebook, all currently living in the general Hurstville/Bexley/Rockdale area. Florence had five siblings: Harry (1899-1989), Alma J (1902-1930), Leslie A (1904-1968), Harold J (1906-1956) and James Keith (1913-1954). I reckoned there must be children and grandchildren around who might remember Aunt Florence. I explained that I was doing research and wondered if they could help.

Three letters were soon returned unopened from the Dead Letter Office. Two Deans rang to say they were unconnected. One Dean wrote to say her aunt in Moree might know something: I have been given an address but I am doubtful about the contact.


FH, June 2008