Lewis, Frederick's Eldest Son

Lewis Deefholts was born in 1806. The family tree prepared by his great-grandson Reginald claimed that he was a doctor, but according to local directories he worked as an assistant at E.Nosky & Co, Chemist's and Druggists, Calcutta, from 1834 to 1842. Various addresses are listed, including 43 Chitpore Road, Sukeas's Lane, and Loll Bazar. The directories show that many local streets openly boasted one or more opium dens, a reminder of Calcutta’s role in the trade which, in 1839, led to the outbreak of the first Opium War in China. The following description of that part of the city was given by the Chief Magistrate, Mr Farran, in 1836:

"... the only broad streets in the native part of the town are Amherst Street and the Central Road, the former unfinished and neither of them considered thoroughfares. The Chitpore Road is the great thoroughfare, but it is narrow, winding, dirty and encroached upon, while the cross-ways are all lanes, very narrow, very filthy and bounded generally by deep open ditches." [1]

According to the 1940s Family Tree, Lewis married Miss Grace Robello and they had four sons: Frederick (Jetties), born 1834; Felix Emmanuel (Jetties), born 1836; Henry Edmund (Customs), born 1838; Philliphine, born 1840. The birth of their first son on 22nd May 1834 is recorded in the East India Register and Directory for 1835, but there are no records in the Ecclesiastical Returns. They also had a daughter Georgina, believed born around 1837. [2]

Lewis' death on 23Jun42 is listed in the Bengal & Agra Directory, 1844, giving his age as 35 yrs, 8 mths & 16 days. There is no record of how Grace and the children fared until the latter grew up and started to appear in directories under their own cognisance, however tracing their careers and movements is difficult since the directories tended to record only an initial or initials rather than the full Christian name. Furthermore, certain Christian names were very prevalent in the family; for example, there were three contemporaneous cousins all called Frederick. [3]

The New Calcutta Directory 1856 mentions a Frederick Deefholts working as an assistant at in the inland transit company's office, and the next year as an assistant in the police office. This is probably Richard's son Frederick Richard, since both years he is resident at 10 Bow Bazar Lane, sharing accommodation with Richard and his brother, Henry Augustus. The same directories also list an F. Deefholts as Superintendent of the Post Office in Nepaul [sic], which could well have been Frederick "son of Lewis".

According to John Beames, a covenanted servant arriving for his first appointment in India in 1858:

"Nepal was ruled at that time by a remarkable man, Jung Bahadoor. He was Prime Minister in name but maharaja or ruler in reality, the real Maharaja being a puppet, who was not allowed to go beyond the walls of his palace. Jung had won his way to power by shooting no less than seventeen of his uncles at a Durbar. He was a vigorous and intelligent ruler and careful to keep always on terms with the British Government. He rendered us good service in the Mutiny with his Gurkha troops." [4]

The 1858 directory gives the Post Office Superintendent’s salary as Rs 60. Beames gives the following insight into the cost of living:

"Fortunately we obtained rooms at the best [boarding-house] in Calcutta - Miss Wright's, 3 Middleton Street - a large comfortable house, where we obtained on the first floor a vast, airy, handsomely furnished sitting-room about the size of a church in England, with two spacious bedrooms. For this we paid the modest sum of rupees 300 (£30) a month including board. My salary I found was to be Rs 333 3a 3p, equal to £33 4s 0d a month or £400 a year. Out of this I had to pay my half share of the rent of our rooms, Rs 150, about Rs 50 for three servants, a bearer or valet, a khidmatgar or footman, and a mehtar or sweeper, and I had of course to buy my own wine and beer and my clothers. The income, though not large for so expensive a place as Calcutta, would have been sufficient with economy." [5]

In 1859 there is no further mention of Nepaul, and in 1860 an F.R. Deefholts and an F. Deefholts are both included as Assistants to John Ogilvy Hay & Co, merchants and agents in Bassein, a town which had been captured by the British during the Second Burmese War in 1853. An F. Deefholts aged 25 (thus born 1833/4), appears in the 1859 List of Uncovenanted Civil Servants, employed as a Writer (i.e. clerk) to the Commissioner of Police (previously Writer to the Magistrate). [6] In 1861 he turns up as an assistant booking clerk in the East India Railway office, living with his brother Henry Edmond at 28 Chattawallah Lane. Two years later, still at the same address, he is working with the Oriental Gas Company, after which he is not mentioned again in the directories.

Reginald's researches suggested that Frederick (son of Lewis) had a son, also called Frederick, and two daughters, Winnifred and Ethel. Frederick jnr worked as a carriage inspector on the East India Railway, married a Miss Marie Lepies, had two sons and two daughters, the eldest daughter named Sophie. Winnifred married Mr Chas Castere; Ethel married Mr Alfred Arratoon, the son of Sarkies Arratoon, from a well-known and reputedly well-to-do Armenian family, in 1893. [7]

The Ecclesiastical Returns record the sudden death of one Laetitia Henrietta Deefholts, wife of Frederick Deefholts - in all probability, Frederick (son of Lewis) - in 1905, at the age of 64. She was born in January 1841. Frederick himself (to whom she left 910 rupees) died three years later, the cause of death being "Complication of diseases, heart, etc".

Lewis's second son, Felix Emmanuel, born in 1836, is more traceable than his elder brother. According to Reginald, he married Bertha, a Native Convert, and had one child, Lewis. The directories first mention Felix Emanuel in 1856 when he is listed as a clerk in the shipping and steam department at the general post office and living with his uncle Robert at 7 Emambaug 2nd Lane. He next appears as F.E. Deefholts in 1862, working as an extra Customs Preventive officer and living at 28 Chattawallah Lane, with his brothers Frederick and Henry Edmond. In 1867 Felix turns up in Midnapore, West Bengal, working as a clerk in the Public Works Department. He remarried in 1870, the certificate verifying his father’s name as Lewis and describing him as a widower of “full age”. His bride was Mary Catherine Scott (nee Gordon), a widow. By 1874 he had returned to Calcutta and is later listed as a tallyman on the Calcutta jetties. He died of an abscess in 1882, at the age of 46.

As for Felix's son Lewis, Reginald advises that he became a tally clerk, married a Margaret Peters, but had no issue. An L.A. Deefholts turns up for the first time in the directories in 1878, working as an export tallyman and living with his father at 216 Bow Bazar Lane. Living at the same address is a T.E. Deefholts, also a tallyman on the Calcutta jetties from 1875 to 1878, after which he disappears. Could he have also been Felix's son? L.A.'s last appearance is in 1882. Contrary to Reg's assertion, research at the IOL indicates that Lewis & Margaret had at least one child, David Samuel, born 1898. Margaret died in 1910 aged 50 of unknown causes.

Lewis senior's third son, Henry Edmond, will be discussed a little later. According to Reginald the fourth son, Philliphine, was born in 1840, married a Miss A. D'Cruze, had a son Richard and a daughter Alice who married a Mr Lapies. No trace of this cluster has been found from any other source. There is however a record of a Georgina Lorenza, daughter of Lewis Deefholts, who married Mr John Richard Alexander D'Cruz on 5th September 1855. She is described as "under age" but no date of birth is given. He is described as "of age". The IGI records his birth in 1839, which means that he would have been only 16 at the time of the marriage. [8] They had at least one child, "Henry Lewis, son of John Richard Alexander DeCruz & Georgina Lorenzo, born September 12 1857, baptised February 15, 1858. Vol#93, Ref: N-1-93". The IGI also records John’s marriage in 1865 to "Virginia Constance, born 1843", so presumably Georgina died in her mid-twenties.

Lewis' third son was Henry Edmund (H.E.C.) Deefholts, born in 1838, and local directories show his career started as an assistant at the GPO, circa 1859, sharing lodgings with his brother Frederick at 10 Bow Bazar Lane. [9] Calcutta at around the time of the Mutiny was perhaps at the height of its golden age. John Beames recalls that,

"The first view of Calcutta impressed us very much, the long rows of shipping, the lines of stately white houses of the 'City of Palaces', and the beautiful villas with their luxuriant gardens composed an attractive picture". [10]

In 1860, Henry joined the Customs as an acting wharf officer. By 1871 he was fourth in seniority out of sixty-five assistants in the Wharf Department, earning Rs 125 on a scale from Rs 40 to Rs 175. By 1873 he was promoted to Examining Appraiser, and by 1883 he was a Government Pensioner (aged 45!) living at 34 Blackburn's Lane, Calcutta. After 1884 he is not mentioned in the directories, but he witnessed his son Milford's second marriage in 1901, then aged 63. Henry's certificate of burial has not been located, but his wife Virginia's has:

WHEN DIED: 1910 Jan 5. Virginia Clarissa. 66 yrs 8 mths 13 days. Wife of Henry Edmund Deefholts (Customs Officer Pensioner). Cause of death: General Prostration. Buried: St John's Cemetery, Sealdah. [11]

The reference to her as the wife rather than the widow of Henry Edmund suggests that he survived her. According to Reg, his grandfather Henry had married Virginia Gonsalves. They had six children, the first being a son, who was still-born. No records of him have been located at all, and his siblings' baptism certificates are not recorded in the Ecclesiastical Returns.

Their second son, Elwyn, was born in 1863. He is first mentioned in the directories, by his initial E, in 1886, working as an Assistant at the GPO, and resident at 84 South Road, Entally. From 1896 to 1900 his occupation is given as an assistant at Whiteaway & Laidlaw, which is consistent with Reginald's family tree. His certificate of marriage in 1896 records him as Edwin Deefholts, aged 33, a bachelor, Assistant at Messrs Whiteaway Laidlaw & Co, resident in Calcutta. It cites his father as Henry Edmond Deefholts and his bride as Mary Cesar, aged 31, a spinster, resident in Calcutta. [12]

Whiteaway Laidlaw & Co was one of several big Calcutta emporia, or department stores, others being the Army and Navy Stores, Newman's and Hall and Anderson's, the latter noted as a "furnishing" (i.e. furniture) store. [13] It was said to be "like a small Harrods. The upper management was invariably European, the clerks usually Eurasian." [14] In contrast Norman Watney, who worked on the North West Railway from 1925 until after Independence, reminisces as follows (albeit a quarter of a century later and presumably about the branch in Karachi, where he started out):

"We were recommended to go to an emporium called Whiteaway and Laidlaw, known universally as 'Right away and paid for' because of the necessity of paying in ready cash. Whiteaway's had acquired the distinction of being solely for those with small purses and had a large clientele of junior officers such as ourselves. Others in a more senior position used to go down the road about a quarter of a mile to the Army and Navy Stores.

We went along in a four-wheeled Victoria, a musty-smelling apparatus with a driver who must have been at least ninety, and eventually landed at this rather imposing building. The doors were thrown open by stalwart Pathans in grandiose uniforms and we were directed to a counter where we obtained all the necessities required by the junior officer during his first tour of duty. The assistant was able to tell us that it was not expected of people in our position to buy indigenous articles; it would not look good for us to be seen to have inferior equipment and for this reason only the best would do." [15]

Elwyn and Mary's first recorded child is Irene Maria, who was buried on 03FEB1901 at the age of 11 months at the Roman Catholic Cemetery in Calcutta. Their second daughter, Adrienne, was born on 04OCT1901. There followed a son, Roland Elwyn, who died of an embolism aged 1 year 10 months on 01SEP1904 and was buried in the Lower Circular Road Cemetery. The baptism certificate of Ulric Conrad Deefholts, the son of Elwyn Camillus and Mary Grace, born on 16FEB1906, shows that Elwyn was still at Whiteaway Laidlaw. Ulric also died in infancy in July of the following year of a double pneumonia. Thacker’s Indian Directory for 1917 records an E.H. Deefholts, Asst Whiteaway Laidlaw & Co, resident at 16 Fordyce's Lane. Mary Grace died of pneumonia in 1930 (525/180); Elwyn however lived to the ripe old age of 75. Their only surviving child, Adrienne, married Mathew Carvalho in 1928 and they went on to have three children: Ivan, Adrienne and Kevin. Their granddaughter still has their wedding invitation! [16]

Henry Edmund’s daughter, Mabel, was born in 1869. She married a Mr E.O. Rooney, who witnessed two of Milford’s marriages and several of his childrens’ baptisms. Henry's third son, Milford, will be discussed a little later. A fourth son, Rodney, was born in 1872, is recorded by Reg as working at Jessop & Co., the iron foundry in Howrah, across the river from Calcutta. An R.E.Deefholts is recorded in the 1917 Thacker's Indian Directory working as an assistant at "Jessop & Co Ld, 93 Clive Street".

Clive Street, c.1915

The following listing also relates in all probability to Rodney:

"Mariners Tickets 1897-1920: Deepholts [sic] R.E. b.1872 Calcutta. India Merchant Navy cert no 145 issued Bengal 15Nov1897: 2nd Class Engineer. [17]

Rodney married a Mrs Nellie Gonsalves (according to Reg, the same surname as his mother’s maiden name). They had no issue. Blanchard, born in 1874, also worked on the East Bengal Railway, and had no children.

The youngest child, Birdie, was born in 1875 and died in infancy. There are no ecclesiastical records relating to Mabel, Rodney, Blanchard or Birdie.

Milford Raymond Deefholts, Henry Edmund's third son, was born on 21st July 1865 (the same year Rudyard Kipling was born in Madras). He was the first of this branch of the family known to have connections with the railways, working as a Carriage Inspector on the East Bengal Railway [18], although he was also known to have worked in the foundry at Howrah - presumably Jessop's - between 1882 and 1891.

The Nilagiri Express

Milford married Elizabeth Murray (known as Alice) in 1888, by which time they already had two children. The delay in obtaining a formal marriage may be attributable to the fact that Milford was posted at a remote uplying station in Katihar, North Bihar. According to Leon, Alice’s father was a Professor of English at the University of Bombay. Alice died in Dacca, Rangoon, of puerperal fever in 1899 at the age of 32, having borne another seven children the last of whom, Constance, died with her mother. Milford married her younger sister, Ethel Lina, in Calcutta in 1901. They had a further five children before she too died. His third marriage at the age of 51 to 21 year old Cordelia (Coral) St Martin, was childless. They were both at that time living in Katihar. Milford died in 1929 at the age of 63, of "heart failure following diabetes". [19]

Milford's eldest son, Cyril, was born on 9th May 1886. He became a fitter on the East Bengal Railway, and married a Miss Maggie Gasper. Ronald Bertram, the second son, was born on 24th April 1887. He also worked on the East Bengal Railway, as an "S.M." (according to Reg), which means possibly Station Master, possibly Senior Mechanic. He married a widow, Charlotte Greve, in Dacca in 1919. They had no children, but they did have an adopted son, whom Ronald outlived. He was known by his nephews and nieces as "Uncle Tutu" (phonetic). [20] A photograph taken of him and several of his brothers and sisters in the mid 1920s shows him as taller and thinner than his siblings, with a pencil moustache. [21] His nephew Mervyn recalls Ronald's pride in his collection of shotguns, including "Purdies" manufactured by the renowned London gunsmith James Purdy. According to some family members, Ronald was murdered by his housekeeper and an accomplice some time in the early 1940s. They cut his throat, apparently hoping to acquire his land, but were caught by the police. Reginald went up to Katihar when the news broke, to try and sort out the mess. Edredge did not find out about the murder until some time later, otherwise he would probably have gone as well. Ronald was very close to Edredge, who apparently was devastated by the murder. At the time of his death he was a widower. [22]

Milford's third child was a daughter, Eileen. According to Reg, she was born on 14th December 1889 and married Mr E.D. Bastien (who, incidentally, witnessed Milford's third marriage in 1916). [23] She had four children: Edwin, born 1909; Willie, born 1910, who married a Miss Bully; Joyce, who was born in 1918 and died the following year; and Desmond, who was born in 1920 and died in 1935. Eileen was widowed in 1943 and died two years later.

An extensive family tree was compiled by Reginald, Milford and Elizabeth's fourth child who was born in 1891. He followed his father onto the railways, as a Permanent Way Inspector (PWI) on the East Bengal Railway. The Permanent Way meant the railway track, and the job of the PWIs was to ensure that the whole length of the track was in good repair. The inspection was carried out from a trolley propelled by two men at each end of a lever, the inspector out in front examining the track and the telegraph wires alongside. Each telegraph pole had a sign giving details of the distance from the last station, so the exact location of any damage could be noted. The PWI would later return with a gang of labourers to carry out the repairs. During the 1940s much of this involved replacing entire sections of track which had been ripped up as part of Gandhi’s non-violent action movement, accompanied by a squad of Punjabi or Gurkha soldiers and with a pistol or shotgun always to hand in case of reprisals. At some stage Reginald was assigned to work on a railway project somewhere in East Africa, returning afterwards to India. On retirement he moved from Calcutta to Bangalore and then back to Calcutta. Having access to cheap travel, he set about researching the family history from original documents, some of which he found in the records of the Bengal Secretariat of the East India Company. [24]

Reginald's first wife, Eileen Rebeiro, died of tuberculosis in the 1920s. They had one daughter. His second wife, Olive (Violet) Gillis, was a close friend of Jenny Brodie-Brown having been brought up in the same orphanage. They had a further five children. The children emigrated to several parts of the globe. The elder sister, Joan, married Mr John Warman, who worked for Brooke Bond at Kidderpore. They moved to London, setting up house north of the river. Pamela also moved to England, settling in Luton. She and her husband Tony followed one of her two daughters to New Zealand in February 1988 but later returned. Colin and his wife Eva moved to Sydney with their family, having been welcomed with open arms by the Australian embassy when they heard that he had five daughters, because of the shortage of women there! He died of cancer and diabetes in 1988.

Reginald's daughter Margaret Gladys Philomena (Peggy) was born on 24th May 1934. She married Mr John Hildreth, an Englishman whose parents had moved to India before he was born. His family had returned to England before independence, when he was 11 or 12, and he was schooled at Tonbridge. After independence, when the general wisdom was that the British had had their day in India, he bucked the trend and went back there. In conversation in 1992 he said that as far as he was concerned, India in the early 1950s offered easy pickings. There was plenty of work and you could make a fortune. The problem was hanging on to it because there was so much to do! He was apparently quite a bon viveur and had a penchant for horses, which he used to ride in amateur events at the Calcutta race-course. It was not all plain sailing, though. One form of industrial action which became prevalent in factories consisted of locking the management up in their offices until they agreed to a pay rise. More gruesome was the practice at Jessops, the iron foundry, of catching Europeans off guard on the shop floor and heaving them into the furnaces. Quite a few met such a fate. Peggy added that she had heard of this practice in the disturbances leading up to independence, the father of one of her friends being a victim.

When they eventually started to make arrangements to return to England, John had let his British passport lapse and had quite a few problems getting another one, since he had been born in small town in what was now Pakistan. (A further problem was that he had not officially entered the country. There had been no medical officer available when his (cargo) ship arrived at Calcutta and he had sneaked through customs rather than wait for the ship to get clearance. It turned out later that the medical officer was at the races.) They eventually succeeded in getting him a British passport, although Margaret came on an Indian passport. They came over to England in 1967. Her mother, Olive Gillis, died only two weeks after they had left. They had six children (Sue, Cathy, Gill, J[?], Norman and Pam) all of whom had been born in India. John died in 1996 of emphysema.

Leon stayed on until the mid-1970s, working in Chittagong, East Pakistan for a few years with Gladstone Lyall & Co, and then moving to Madras to take over the management of the new office set up there by his uncle Edredge. He later moved to Bombay. Leon married Colleen Gambin and they had a son, Christopher. [25] They divorced, and he then married Margaret Penn-Anthony. Their two children, Glenn and Susan, were born in 1971 and 1973. They now live in Canada.

Reginald's youngest son, Keith (born 23Jul1939) also moved to England in the early 1960s, met the girl who was to be his wife (also born in Calcutta) at an Anglo-Indian dance, and married in London. They had three children, Eugene Keith (born 1964) and Leanne (1970) and James. They lived close by Millie, in Addiscombe, South London, and emigrated to Sydney in 1974, sponsored by Keith's elder brother Colin, "the original 10 pound poms". [26]

Adrianne (born 01JAN1893) was the fifth child of Milford. Reg. gives her name as "Addierine". Her neice and nephew knew her as "Auntie Addie". She married Terence Gasper, who later witnessed her sister Eileen's marriage in 1908. He had three children from an earlier marriage, to which he and Addie added a further eight. She lived in Katihar and ran a bakery shop owned, according to one source, by her brother Ronald. They supplied bread to the railway company. She was apparently an excellent cook who took her secret recipe for bread with her to the grave! They would have lived through the terror and destruction of the huge earthquake which devasted Bihar (and Kathmandu) in 1934. Terence died at some time in the 1940s (before the murder of Addie's brother Ronald) and Addie later joined her children in the UK. She suffered from diabetes. Addie’e eldest daughter, Eva, recalled that her grandfather, Milton, at that time living in Calcutta “wore glasses and always spoilt his grandchildren.” She married a Mr Dawson who worked for Brooke Bond in Kidderpore. Alice married a Mr C. Scott and as at September 1992 was living somewhere on the Isle of Wight. Edgar and his wife won scholarships to study medicine and moved to the UK. Edgar died in 1999. He suffered from Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT), as apparently did his brothers Charles and Shirley, his sister Alice, and his uncles Harrie and Arnold. [27] Charles moved to Australia. Shirley was a ship’s purser; he died of a brain tumour at the age of 40. Mercia also had at least one child, who lives in Canada. Joan married a Mr Butler and had two daughters, Jane and Linda [Peterson], born in the 1960s in the UK.

Henry was Milford's sixth child, born on 27th July 1894. His neice and nephew recalled him as "Uncle Harold", from which it can be deduced that he was probably known as Harry. He was a fireman on the railways, and lived "up the line" from Calcutta, until he lost all his toes falling from the engine in an accident. He is believed to have suffered from Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT). He died on 18th September 1943 possibly (according to anecdote) like his brother Ronald, in suspicious circumstances.

Group of Thugs, c.1894

Geraldine Millicent Deefholts was born on 17th March 1896, the seventh child of Milford and Elizabeth. She married Mr Sydney G. Sargeant, a fireman (probably of the railway type) in Saidpur in 1915. They had five children: Enid and Marjorie, twins, born in 1916; George; Reginald; and Doreen. [28] Millie was famed throughout the family for her excellent curries and her warm hospitality; she kept open house in Calcutta and her neice recalls her favourite saying was "Free Grub - Eat Like Hell!". Esmond boarded with her in Calcutta for a short period after leaving school, as did Leon, whose parents at that time were still in Bangalore. Millie eventually settled in Britain, living with Doreen in Croydon. She very kind to Esmond when he first came over to England. She suffered from diabetes and, like her brothers Reginald and Edredge, preferred homeopathic cures to conventional medicine. As a result she lost one of her eyes. After the death of her elder brothers she assumed the role of matriarch. Millie died in the early 1980s.

Edredge was born in an uplying station in Katihar, Bihar, north of the Ganges, the eighth son of Milford and Elizabeth, on 25th May 1897. Owing to the remote location the birth was not officially registered. Edredge married Jennie Agnes Brodie-Brown in 1927. Jenny had been brought up in an orphanage following the death of her father William Dalrymple Brodie-Brown, who drowned when he fell from his horse whilst crossing a river on a tea estate in Darjeeling. The story goes that Edredge was inspecting a roof overlooking the orphanage when he spotted her and fell in love instantly. They married when she was sixteen.

Edredge & Jenny had three children. Esmond was born in 1928. The address recorded on his certificate of baptism was 121 Lower Circular Road, Calcutta, and Edredge's profession is given as "Assistant, Ellerman Arracoon Cy". Mervyn was born in 1929, followed by Lorna in 1931. In the early 1930s Edredge was moved to the New Delhi office of Gladstone Lyall & Co Ltd, a Calcutta roofing company, where he became first Resident Representative and later Branch Manager. Jenny recalled how he used to tear around on his company motorbike (according to his nephew Leon, a Triumph 500) which was replaced on his promotion with a company car. At some stage he seriously injured his back in a fall from a rooftop. After the family moved to New Delhi Jenny worked in the National Grindlays bank as personal assistant to the branch director. The family lived in a fairly well-to-do part of New Delhi, at 12 Parliament Street, with a khansamah (cook), a maid, an ayah (nanny) and a sweeper.

Esmond and Mervyn were educated first at St Vincent's School, fairly close to Calcutta, and then at St Michael's High School, a boarding school seminary run by the Christian Brothers at Naini Tal, one of the four main hill stations in the Himalayas, while Lorna attended St Mary's Convent, just down the hill. Esmond's first job when he left school was as a steward with BOAC (the British Overseas Airways Corporation) in Delhi, which became the Indian National Airways after independence. He worked there from September 1946 to April 1948. One of his duties was to drive the airline bus to collect passengers from the centre of New Delhi and take them to the airport, on the outskirts of the city. This was the period of communal riots between Hindus and Muslims, and for many this was their escape route to the newly established Pakistan. It was dangerous work and on occasions meant driving over mounds of bodies to get through. Esmond left India for England in May 1948, never to return, and was later joined in England by Mervyn and Lorna. Esmond married Toni in 1951. They had four children: Christine, Luke, Benedict & Simon. Mervyn and his wife Sheila had two children, Emma and Debbie. Lorna married Leonard Alsford. Edredge was an acute diabetic and died of uremia in New Delhi in 1967. Jenny moved to the UK to live with Lorna & Leonard, in 1968. She died on 10th December 1991 in a small cottage hospital in North London, aged 82.

Ivy Helen was the first of Milford's children by his second wife, Ethel Lena née Murray. She was born on 21st July 1901 and married a Mr E. Hayman, with whom she five daughters, Gwendoline (who married a Mr L. Mason); Barbara, Daphne, Cynthia and Joyce.

Arnold was born 8th December 1904. He married Constance Isobel Babbington. According to one family member's recollection, he was the station master at Howrah, the largest railway station in India. Arnold and Connie had four children, Ida, Peter (christened Ashley), Trevor and Duncan, one of whom died of typhoid at school in Naini Tal. They emigrated to the UK in 1950 (see Passenger Lists), moving first to Scotland and later settling in Leyton. Arnie had a reputation in the family as a musician, and the front room was dominated by an upright piano (not to mention a gaggle of Yorkshire terriers). He is believed to have suffered from Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT). [27] Arnie died after a brief spell in hospital circa 1979. Ida died in 1988/1989. Peter married Williamina Clark and lives in Peterhead. He has at least one daughter (Lynn) and at least one granddaughter (Lorraine).

Carlyle Milford Deefholts was number twelve. He was born on 6th November 1906, and died of diphtheria at the age of five in 1911. Irene was Milford's thirteenth child, the fourth and penultimate of his second marriage (to Ethel Lena), born on 18th October 1908. Her younger sister, Kathleen, died at the age of four in 1916 of "Kala Azar". [29] According to one family member, Irene was an excellent classical pianist, and Mervyn recalled that she had a piano in her flat in Calcutta, not to mention a set of drums on which Mervyn (who used to play in his school band) would enjoy a bash. She married a Mr E.C. Apcar. They had no children.

Richard, Frederick's Second Son

History: Index