John Knowles.net

The Family of Percy John THUNDER and Emma Flora HURST

This page is devoted to the first family of Percy with Emma his first wife and is the result of information provided by Jim Johnson-Rollings a direct descendent of the family.

Percy was born on 23 Sept 1871 in Brighton Sussex, Emma in 1871 in Cuckfield, Sussex. They were married in 1895 and had three children, Marjorie Ellen b.1899 in Marylebone, London, Brian Cecil Percy b.1903 and Violet b 1905.

Jim writes: Off the top of my head, the family lore on our side was that Percy was sentenced to hard labour for deserting his wife and children. After he left we’d assumed he had died as his wife (ex-wife) listed herself as a widow on censuses, and Marjorie listed her father as deceased on her marriage certificate. Emma (Percy’s wife) lived into the 1940s and my uncle (her great-grandson) remembers sitting at her feet - he called her “Mum-Pa”. Brian married a South American lady and emigrated to Argentina in the 40s. Marjorie married Charles Owen in the late 1910s. We have an incomplete collection of letters he wrote to her during WW1, which show that her mother (Emma) didn’t approve of their relationship, as he had to address the letters to a friend’s house instead of hers.

They lived in Brighton and had four children, Barbara, Audrey, Derek, and Nanette. Charles died before Nanette was born after falling from an aircraft (on the ground - he was the mechanic to a Captain Bull (possibly I am misremembering this name, as the surname Bull appears elsewhere in the family, upon whom the family claim Biggles was partially based). As a widow, Marjorie moved from Brighton to Torquay in Devon, where Charles’ parents lived in a large house named Beggar’s Roost. Charles’ father (also Charles) was apparently very strict and wouldn’t allow the girls to go to school, and insisted that nobody should ever pass a weed.

Marjorie did not feel the children were best placed here, so moved the family back to Brighton where they lived a fairly poor lifestyle. Upon the older Charles’ death, he left his estate in trust for his four grandchildren, as well as a pension for Marjorie. The house and all his possessions were sold by Lloyd’s Bank, and the family had to purchase back any items they wanted to keep. A number of items of furniture from Beggar’s Roost remain in the family today. The grandchildren would each receive their share of the trust on their 21st birthday or upon marriage. All four children married and produced 15 grandchildren for Marjorie. Marjorie, Barbara, and Audrey all lived within ten minutes walk of each other throughout the second half of the century, and the whole family gathered for birthdays and Christmases until the late 1980s, by which time another generation had arrived. Marjorie died in 1984 shortly before I was born. Derek was the last surviving of her children, only passing away last year, well into his 90s.

Jim has provided the following photographs: