[Cherub] Clarrissa
‘A Wonderful Wife and Loving Mother’
Clarrissa was born in 1898, to Frederick and Mary Jane Laughton. Her father was an umbrella maker when she was younger and then became a hairdresser. She was one of ten children. Her husband [Leonard] George was the son of Walter and Louisa Bryden. Walter was a railway waggon and carriage wheel maker.
The young couple arrived in New Zealand from Leeds in 1922, a few months after they were married. They settled in Invercargill where their two youngest children were born. It was here that George, who was an engineer, established the New Zealand branch of F & A Parkinson & Co (later Crompton Parkinson), which was a British electrical manufacturing company.
The family then moved to Wellington where George was elected to the Wellington Chamber of Commerce in March 1927. In April, Clarrissa donated money to the Eastbourne war memorial. This was as much as we could find out about her life in New Zealand.
Clarrissa died three weeks after the birth of her third son, on 18th October 1927, at her home in 400 Muritai Road Eastbourne (the numbers may have changed).
On 13 October 1928, George sold up the family home, described as the last house on the beach. Included in the sale were a new ‘Guerney’ electric range and an oak cased ‘Colombia’ Grafonola.
George and his two eldest boys set sail for Vancouver on the S.S. Niagara on 25 October 1928. They arrived in London in November and went on to his father’s house in Leeds. Newspaper reports said that he had been recalled back to head office.
Youngest son James arrived back in England in March 1930 accompanied by a typist named Marian Bellingham. Marian had emigrated to New Zealand in 1926 and her sister, Mrs H A Bick lived in Pahiatua where Marian based herself.
George Bryden and Marian Bellingham were married in London in June 1930 and went on to have six children. George died in 1960 in Leeds. Marian died in 2001 aged 96.
Plot Ch Eng 2/J/23
