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Dorothy Elliott Woodham

5 Broad Street, Deal
6 Windsor Avenue, Carlton, Nottinghamshire
33 Stanley Gardens, Hampstead
16 Gassiot Road Tooting, London
40 Mount Pleasant Road, Hastings, Sussex
218 Prospect Road, Woodford, Essex
14 Burnham Road, Dartford, Kent

Occupation: WRAF, Shorthand Typist

This research all started with an unused photo postcard of a young woman dressed in a WRAF uniform with Deal 1919 written on the front.

Checking available records we could only find one woman, from Deal, who this may be. She was Dorothy Elliott Woodham.

Dorothy was the daughter of Alfred Ernest Woodham who owned Woodham’s Tobacconist and also  Confectionery and Refreshment Rooms on Deal’s Broad Street, where Jilly’s the Dry Cleaners now is.

Deal Museum – DMO-7904

At the outbreak of WW1 it seems probable that Dorothy was working for her father but at some point in early 1918 she applied to join the newly formed WRAF. Her service record gives her enlistment date as June 5 1918 and tells us that she was sent to RAF No.1 stores at Kidbrooke. We don’t know for certain but she may well have been employed there as a ‘shorthand typist’  as she gives this as her occupation in later records. If so, it may have been at Miss Minnie Atwell’s typing school in Deal that she learnt her trade.

Deal, Walmer & Sandwich Mercury April 25 1914

Dorothy was discharged from the service in July 1919 so, if the photo is of Dorothy Elliott Woodham then this was perhaps a last chance photograph taken in the back garden of a friend as her parents’ shop on Broad Street did not have a garden such as the one seen in the photo. We have no proof that the photo is of Dorothy but whether it is or not she, perhaps not wanting to go home and lose her newly found independence, found employment as a shorthand typist, at Dover’s Burlington Hotel. Here she met one John Brown who was also employed there as a Porter. They married on December 10 1919 at Dover’s Registry Office. They must have ‘lived in’ as they gave The Burlington Hotel as their home address. The witnesses to this marriage were Christopher Royce of the RNVR, and  Dorothy Davies, a waitress at Woodhams Refreshment Rooms. So, probable friends to each of them.

Burlington Hotel Dover 1909

Up until this point this seemed a straightforward piece of research. Things started to get difficult when we couldn’t find this young couple in either the 1921 census or the 1939 register! We looked for children with the surname Brown, whose mother’s maiden name was Woodham, which threw up several names but by ordering copies of their birth certificate they proved not to be Dorothy’s children! 

1920s

Turning to Dorothy’s relatively unusual middle name we searched for any Dorothy Elliott’s born 1897 without using a surname. This turned up a Dorothy Elliott Smith born in Deal in 1897, in the 1921 census, where she was living in Basford in Nottinghamshire, with her ‘husband’ Alfred James Smith and their baby son, Frank Mervyn Smith. Ordering baby Frank’s birth certificate proved that his mother was indeed Dorothy Elliott, formerly Woodham. Two further son’s were found, born in quick succession after they had moved to London. Geoffrey in 1921 and Peter Denis in 1922. 

Who is Alfred James Smith and where is John Brown? 

Searching the WW1 service records for Alfred Smiths and John Browns, as you can imagine, gave us lots to look through even by narrowing down the search field with estimated birth dates. Somehow we struck lucky with Alfred James Smith, first with his place of birth being the same as his first son’s and second with an address written on the record being the same as the place of birth for his second son. This could only be our Alfred James Smith.

Turning to the newspapers to see if any information could be gleaned from them about either John Brown or Alfred James Smith. We again struck lucky and found Dorothy Elliott Smith living in the Hastings area, in 1924, with her ‘husband’ Alfred James Smith, when she was applying for a Maintenance and Separation Order after he had deserted her and their three children. 

A month later Alfred James Smith was in court after failing to make the ordered  maintenance payments and Dorothy was staying with her grandmother. Unfortunately for us it doesn’t state where but we feel Dorothy must have returned to stay, at least for a while, with her maternal grandmother, Jane Wood, who was living above the Refreshment Rooms in Deal. Her paternal grandmother died in 1914.

In court Dorothy stated that she and Alfred had married in December 1919. As this was the same month and year that she had married John Brown we were becoming a little confused and slightly suspicious. To be sure, we checked marriage records again, but no marriage record between an Alfred James Smith and a Dorothy Elliott Woodham at any time in 1919 or even in the years either side can be found. The only marriage for Dorothy Elliott Woodham in that time period is to John Brown. So where is he? Well, we believe him to be Alfred James Smith.

Alfred James Smith.

Alfred James Smith was born in Basford, Nottinghamshire in 1900. In October 1915 he joined the Royal Naval Reserve (RNR) from his then home town of Radford in Nottinghamshire. After training in Portsmouth he was sent first to join the  ‘Barle’, a hired trawler, used for mine clearance, then on to other similar vessels. He was then just 15 years old and remained on mine clearance duties throughout and after the war. In September 1919  he was posted to Dover where it seems he never reported for duty as his service record simply states ‘Run.’ This is naval shorthand for desertion! Perhaps relying on the fact that no one knew him in Dover he got a job in The Burlington Hotel using the name ‘John Brown.’

Why did he run ‘Run’? Alfred at this time was still only nineteen years old and had spent the war under the constant threat of being blown up by a sea mine.

He may quite simply have had enough and with the war over saw an easy way out. Chistopher Royce, himself only sixteen years old, was also on mine clearance duties with the RNVR where he and Alfred must have met when they both served on the Attentive. He therefore must have known of the change of name if not the desertion. If Dorothy was aware at the time of her marriage, the true identity of ‘John Brown’, and that he was only 19 years old and therefore needed parental consent to marry, we simply don’t know.

We don’t know how the authorities caught up with Alfred or whether he reported to them himself but his RNR Service Record states that in June 1920 he was physically unfit and had ‘deserted subsequent to armistice.’ As his and Dorothy’s first son, Frank Mervyn, was born in Basford, Nottinghamshire in August 1920 whatever action was taken against Alfred must have taken place there.

We do know with certainty that he forfeited his right to war medals and any prize money and that in 1922 the RNR decided he was no longer required by them for any future service and his papers were then sent to 33 Stanley Gardens, Hampstead which is where the birth of Geoffrey, his second son, was recorded.

We have not been able to establish what happened to Alfred James after his court appearance in 1924.

Leonard Percival Jeffery

How long Dorothy remained in Deal is not known but by using the Electoral registers we found her living in Woodford, Essex, in 1928, as the wife of Leonard Percival Jeffery!  Leonard, who was an elementary teacher, was by then a divorcee having divorced his wife in 1924. Up until then he had been teaching in St. Leonard’s Church of England Boys School, so it is possible that Dorothy’s sons attended this school and is where they met.

Her marital problems and his divorce may have prompted the move to Essex where they could live together as man and wife, with her three sons, without anyone passing comment on their ‘living in sin’.

We assume that his three children had also remained with their mother, Ethel, nee Jones, following their divorce.

Looking again at marriage records we found that Dorothy Elliott Brown married Leonard Percival Jeffery in 1930 in Penzance. Their marriage certificate tells us that Leonard was then a divorced 43 year old Vacuum Cleaner Salesman and Dorothy was a 32 year old widow! Whether she was actually a widow or not can not be proved as there is no definitive trace of Alfred James Smith after his court appearance in 1924. 

By 1939 the now officially married Mr. & Mrs Jeffery were living in Dartford with Peter Denis. However, no record can be found for Frank Mervyn or Geoffrey until their deaths in 1995 and 1996 when both their deaths are registered twice, as Smith and also Jeffery, suggesting that they were unofficially adopted by Leonard. 

After spending some time in the London area Leonard and Dorothy returned to the Hastings area where they both died in the 1970s. 

Sources and further reading:
Newspaper image © The British Library Board. All rights reserved.
With thanks to The British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk)
The National Archives Divorce Court File: 5922
WRAF record – AIR-80-264-146
RNR record – BT-377-7-66703