The trunk

I grew up in the 1950s in East Leeds. In our box room was a shipping trunk which I occasionally played in. I knew that it had belonged to my maternal grandmother but I was unaware of the heartbreak and disaster that was associated with it.

Jane Ann Fines was born in 1885 in Cowden, East Yorkshire, a village which has since disappeared into the North Sea. Jane was the eldest of seven surviving children. She was nineteen when her mother died of typhoid aged thirty-nine, Jane brought up her younger siblings as if they were her own.

Jane Ann Fines.

By 1912 the family were living in Spaldington near Howden. Jane had an affair with a local man, Henry Broader, and became pregnant. Broader’s parents were against him doing the decent thing so Jane was left to bring up her son William by herself.

Jane then met a good man, Charles Harold Atkinson, who accepted William and was happy to marry her. The couple planned to emigrate to Canada with Jane’s brothers, Charles Edward and George William. The three men went out together first. Jane and her son were to follow once they had become established. and they were to be married in Canada. Jane bought a shipping trunk and started packing her belongings in it, including a wedding cake..

Charles Harold Atkinson

Disaster struck when the first World War was declared in 1914. The three Yorkshiremen all joined a Canadian regiment which was soon shipped to France. George was killed in November 1915. Charles was wounded at Passchendale but recovered to a certain extent and was demobbed at the end of the war.

Jane and Charles were married in England in January 1918. By early 1919 Jane was expecting a baby but then Charles contracted a chest infection. which developed into pneumonia. He was sent to a military hospital in Bramshott, Surrey and died shortly after, on 6th February 1919. His daughter Nancy was born in October 1919.

Jane Ann never remarried. On her death in 1946 Nancy inherited the trunk and it spent the next 42 years in Leeds. The trunk is still in the family 109 years after it was purchased and is currently in North Wales.