I was researching a possible future article about my old alma mater, Fountain Road Boys’ School. However my attention was caught by another small item in the column I was reading. As a result this piece emerged.
Return with me, if you will, to the world of 1923. That dangerous experiment of Prohibition in the USA was laying the foundation for the organized crime networks that we still live with today. The memorials to the carnage of the First World War were still being erected throughout the land.
The young women’s skirts on both sides of the Atlantic were becoming dangerously short lingering just below the knee. This coupled with the fast dancing to jazz, civilization, as we know it, was likely to disappear.
Enter Lucy
In Hull during 1923, my parents were presumably still in nappies both being born in 1921, and a young girl called Lucy had gone missing.
Her full name was Lucy Lillian Porter and this whole escapade took place over about a week in August. Lucy was born in 1909 and in 1911 she lived with her father and mother, Herbert and Bertha Porter with 5 other siblings at the family address of 1, Arthur’s Terrace, Massey Street.
The 1911 census
The completion of the census form obviously caused some consternation to the family as crossing outs and extra inclusions abound. The form tells us that the husband was a fisherman and was not present on the night of the census. Margaret Ellen, the eldest daughter, was also absent. She was employed as a domestic servant and may well have appeared at some other address as a live-in servant.
The eldest child present, Thomas Porter, signed the form as Thom Porter. I thought that was strange as the census transcription had him employed as a lawyer. I had expected a better degree of literacy.
However, the census form itself states that he was a sawyer at a sawmill so that explains the literacy issue. Sometimes you just have to smile at such transcription errors. The remaining siblings were James aged 9, Florence aged 8 and Alice aged 6 years respectively. Lucy herself was the youngest aged 2.
The break up of the family
By the time of the events of 1923 took place this family had broken up. The mother died in 1913. The eldest daughter married a Joseph Drake at St. Peter’s Church in Drypool on the 24th July 1915. Joseph enlisted in the KOYLI, 5th Bttn., and was presumed dead on the 27th September 1918. This was less than 6 weeks before the war ended. He was later listed as killed in action on that date.
The younger brother, James, was married and living at Goole. The father had re-married and now lived at Poole in Dorset. The elder brother Thomas Herbert had married in 1912. He had gone through the war as a private in the infantry but survived, eventually dying in 1960.
Upon the death of her husband and her mother, Margaret Ellen Drake, the eldest sister, took upon herself the role of parent to her three younger sisters. The family home was now at 7, Benjamin’s Terrace, Dalton Street, Wilmington.
Where’s Lucy?
From this address Lucy Porter absconded on the 22nd of August 1923. The Hull Daily Mail headline of the 28th of that month read, “After Adventure?” closely followed by “Young Wilmington Girl Disappears Completely” followed still further by “With Beauty Aids”.
The story recounted that Lucy had left the family home on the 22nd of August, “after daintily equipping herself”. It went on to say that she had left with “about £3 in money, a handbag, a suit case, nightdresses, brush and comb, a jar of face cream, a bottle of scent, a silver button hook, a pair of scissors and other articles”. She also left a note stating, “Dear All, I am going away. Don’t put the police after me.”
Adventures
“She is a delicate girl and reads cheap novels whenever she can get hold of them.” Another sister, Florrie, said. “She also goes to the pictures a lot too. I think she has been reading some book that has impressed her. She seems to have gone out to seek adventure.”
Later in the article Florrie also disclosed that Lucy had had a previous adventure of a kind. It appears that Lucy had gone missing some 2 years before this event.
“All the neighbours searched for her and she was found wandering a few hours afterwards on the Cottingham Road. The doctor said she had been drugged and thumped in the chest. That was all the matter with her. She said she was on a nature ramble at Pearson Park when she was at Fountain Road School. She was just with another little girl when a man beckoned to her and asked her to direct him somewhere. She did so but the man asked her to take him to the spot. She did so and after walking so far, the man tripped her up. She remembered little else till after she was found on Cottingham Road.” (my italics)
Comparison with today
Oh my! One can imagine the rather more hysterical response that such an event would elicit now from participants and media alike. Today, authorities would be questioned. The culpability would be assigned followed by that deadly outcome. The sound bite that acompanies so many tragic events. Some spokesperson states that “lessons will be learned and that the systems in place have already been modified to offset the chances of this kind of incident occurring again.”
In 1923 it appears the authorities knew nothing of this incident and the community policed it themselves.
Was there ever a Golden Age when children were safe in the streets? Any student of history will tell you the answer to that question is no, of course not. No
Society, in the past, accepted that the act of living was inherent with risk, and no one, least of all children, could be protected at all times. This appears to be something that our present society appears to have difficulty understanding with its reams of risk assessments and heath and safety regulations. I say this after over 25 years of child protection work as a social worker and as a probation officer.
“No man in the case”
By the 29th the newspaper’s headlines were less flippant. “No Man in The Case” appears to be an attempt to defuse any thoughts that Lucy had run off with an admirer.
It goes on to state, “She was a delicate girl, the least suited to stand the buffetings of life on her own, but possessed an imaginative turn of mind, and her sister believes she has grown tired of her quiet home and gone out to see the life.”
That Lucy’s actions were premeditated was evident. Firstly, she left her own everyday clothing, “which the ‘Mail’ man observed”, hung neatly behind the kitchen door next to the note she left.
Secondly, she was seen walking down the street with the suitcase.She had volunteered the information that she “was just taking this case to the station for her sister.”
Thirdly she left behind a box of soldiers for her 6-year-old nephew.
“Not strong enough”
The elder sister stated to the reporter, to perhaps quash any ugly rumours that may have begun to circulate, “There is no young man in the case. Lucy seldom went out except when I went with her: And very seldom indeed at night. Perhaps she thought I kept her too close to me, and has gone to see the world. She was devoted to children.”
Margaret also said that Lucy had worked at the laundry where her two other sisters worked but that she, “came home ill, and I told her to stop at home whilst I went out working a couple of days a week.” She also said she gave her pocket money.
The sister went on to say that Lucy had said she wanted to work as a nursemaid. Margaret had told her she “was not strong enough and would have to come home again.”
Obviously, the Hull Daily Mail ran this story. It was also picked up by other provincial newspapers. These included The Dundee Courier, the Aberdeen Journal, the Portsmouth Evening News, the Gloucester Echo, the Hartlepool Mail, the Nottingham Evening Post and the Yorkshire Post and probably others too.
Found
On the 30th the mystery was solved happily. The Hull Daily Mail reported it as such. “Hull Girl Found” was the primary headline placed over another headline that stated, “Days of enjoyment at Withernsea and London”. The story further told of what she had done since disappearing.
It appears that Lucy headed for Withernsea from Paragon Station arriving there on the day she disappeared. She then booked a room at the Pier Hotel. The owner of the hotel, a Mr Henrickson, recounted to the Mail that she came to the hotel about 4.00 p.m. ,“and asked to book a room for her and her mother.”
Mr Henrickson was wary of the situation. He said to her that “You are only a little girl: You must go and bring your mother with you and then it will be alright.” Lucy replied, “All right: Mother is on the beach.” The time of 6 p.m. was fixed for her to return.
Donkey rides
Lucy arrived back alone at 6 p.m. with the story that her mother had to go back to Hull by the 6 p.m. train. Lucy also told Mr Henrickson that her mother had said it was alright for Lucy to stay there. Mr Henrickson said the hotel was nearly full but they had one room. With that he passed the problem of Lucy on to his wife. Apparently, Lucy made herself comfortable spending some of that first night with the hotel maids.
The following morning, she helped shell some peas in the hotel kitchen and then went out to the beach and “was observed having numerous donkey rides.” That day Mr Henrickson, becoming more and more suspicious, asked his wife to question Lucy.
When she asked, “Have you run away?”, Lucy said, “No, of course I have not: Mother said I had to stop till she returned.” Asked if she had any luggage, she replied that it was still at the station.
Mr Henrickson said that she should go and fetch her luggage and that she could stop till her mother arrived. He was still suspicious and accompanied her to the station where she picked up her suitcase.
Police informed
He was still concerned and reported the matter to the police and a sergeant came to interview Lucy. According to Mr Henrickson, she told the police sergeant, “a rare tale.” This was that her mother had made an acquaintance of a man called Jim and that they had gone off for a day or two.
Shortly after this Lucy went up to her room and put most of her clothing on. Coming downstairs afterwards with a small tied up bundle, she said she was going to bathe but she never returned. She left her case containing a few odd and ends but she never paid for her stay at the hotel. According to Mr Henrickson, “Lucy spent most of her time having donkey rides, and must have got through a good deal of her money in this way.”
In London
From Withernsea Lucy went by train to London and it was there that the police apprehended her. What we know of her escapades in London is simply a terse telephone communication from the police stating, “Please inform Margaret Drake, sister, that Lucy Lillian Porter was found in London and is detained at St Pancras House; let us know arrangements she can make to get her home.”
Mrs Drake told the Mail that she could not afford to pay for Lucy’s return at the moment. She was told that in that case Lucy “would have to stay in the workhouse till the amount was raised.”
Forgiven
“Mrs Drake had not heard of her young sister’s escapades in Withernsea, but said that her sisters had forgiven her taking the money, and if she promised to be a good girl, they would do the best they could for her.”
It is at this less than satisfactory point that Lucy’s story ends. That Lucy did get back to the bosom of her family is in no doubt. It is apparent that her eldest sister loved her greatly and would have made sure that the money would have been forthcoming to secure her return to the family home. I’m pretty ceratin the other siblings probably thought she was spoilt rotten.
Take a letter, Miss Porter
Was this the end for our intrepid traveller? I’m afraid that it looks that way. A woman called Lucy Porter sat and passed her shorthand, examination from Wood’s College on Spring Bank in 1929.
Now that really is a sad ending to this tale of mystery, if it is the same girl grown up to be a woman. Poor, poor little Lucy Lillian Porter. Instead of adventure she found accounting. Instead of life she discovered lever-arched files. The hoped-for hero, who would sweep her off her feet, in the image of Valentino as the moody, lusty hero gained from lonely afternoons spent at the nearest “flea-pit” cinema never arrived. Instead he probably turned into the married, fat, balding, octopus-handed Mr Jones in the office. The reality of her adolescent girlish imagination was probably as far from what would ultimately befall her as the sand and donkeys on Withernsea beach were as distant from the real Middle East.
Still, at least she tried to escape and how many of us can say that.