This Is Our Lives

George Leaney was my Great-Great-Grandfather. He was born in Herriard, Hampshire circa 1830, the son of John Leaney and Charlotte Munday. He was christened on the 25th July 1830 in the parish church. Two years later, his father John died and was buried on the 12th June 1832. George was the youngest of John and Charlotte's five children, his brother Richard being the eldest, followed by his sister Eliza and then brothers John and Thomas.

On the 23rd November 1833, Charlotte remarried, and George acquired a stepfather, Thomas Hall. Over the coming years he also acquired six half siblings, 3 brothers and 3 sisters. The family background appears have been that of agricultural labourers and over the following years, George is variously listed on census returns as being with his mother or his Grandfather, Richard Munday.

 The records of the quarter sessions in Winchester in September 1851 record that George Laney aged 19 was comitted on the 25th September 1851, by H Brown Esq, having been charged with having, on the 14th day of September 1851, at the parish of Herriard, feloniously stolen one watch and box, the property of George Alexander. He was sentenced to 3 calendar months imprisonment with hard labour. 

In the 1861 census he is listed as working as a Park Labourer whilst living with his mother and Stepfather and his half brother Isaac Hall. On the 8th November 1862, George married Elizabeth Smith in the parish  church at Tunworth. Elizabeth was the 5th child of Isaac Smith and Ann Trigg.George and Elizabeth's first child, Alice, was born in 1863 and was christened on 16th June 1863 in Herriard.

The 10th July 1864 was a day that I'm sure George never forgot and the events that unfolded were to have tragic consequences. On the evening in question, George and several others spent some time in the New Inn drinking beer. An argument developed where comments were made to his 3rd cousin about being round shouldered. On leaving the house, George agreed to fight with his 3rd cousin, Stephen Goodall, and as a consequence Stephen died from a violent injury to the head. Newspaper reports of the incident can be read HERE. The quarter sessions in Winchester October 1864 record that he was found guilty of manslaughter as no malice was involved and sentenced to 14 days imprisonment in Winchester goal.

In between the murder and the trial, George's wife Elizabeth gave birth to a son, Levi, on the 26th September 1864. He was christened on the 20th October. Elizabeth was to die just a few years later on  the 21st July 1867 of Purpura Anaemia. The 1871 census shows George living on his own in Bagmore Lane, Herriard. Alice is shown as being with her Uncle John Laney and his family in London. Levi is shown as being with his grandparents Charlotte Munday and Thomas Hall at 9 Park Corner, Herriard. But, it was not to be long before another tragedy befell the family and on the 16th May 1874, Alice accidently burnt to death.

By 1891 George was living in Lewisham with his son Levi. In the 1901 census he is shown as a boarder in a house in Lee. He died on 1st February 1911 in the Union Workhouse Lewisham of senile decay and cardiac failure. His death was notified by his son who by this time was gong by the name of George Levi Laney and living at 18 Derwent Street, East Greenwich.

 What did hard labour mean?

"Role modeling is the most basic responsibility of parents. Parents are handing life's scripts to their children, scripts that in all likelihood will be acted out for the rest of the children's lives." -- Stephen R. Covey

My father was a hoarder, without my mother's influence, he'd have become just like his father, turning over a room in the house to old newspapers from years ago. Just how much like his father he was, my mother didn't really realise until she cleared out the loft after his death. Everything went into that loft, supplies of wood for his garden and allotment, newspapers, jars of screws, anything, in fact, that he might have wanted some time in the future; but all was perfectly organised and he knew exactly where everything was.

But, my father's real space, the place where he kept his real treasures, was his garden and his allotment. I used to love to accompany him to the allotment as a a kid. He would spend hours there, happy with his own company, growing his vegetables, tending his chickens and his rabbits which he kept there. It was always a treat to be allowed to collect the freshly laid eggs, or to feed the chickens. For some reason, the patch of wild horse raddish at the top of the allotment assumed a special significance in my mind and I'd sit like a little gnome among the leaves watching my father digging. I was given my own patch and I chose to gr0w flowers, a mixture of wild flowers and roses. My dad taught me how to prepare the ground and look after them and then left me with the responsibility of ensuring that it was done. It was up to me to ask if I wanted help or advice, he never interfered.

My father was definitely a soft touch, I remember him agreeing to look after a rabbit that had broken its leg. What he didn't know was that it was pregnant. Once the babies were born, the mother started to eat them as she couldn't cope. Dad bundled the babies up int0 a box and took them home to be hand reared. My mother used to look after them whilst dad was at work and would often give them the run of the sitting room. One night, dad brought home a friend unexpectedly and mum was mortified that she was asleep on the settee in her curlers with baby rabbits running everywhere.

I don't remember long conversations with my father, probably because there weren't many. He was a quiet man who showed his personality more through actions than words. My Aunt is fond of recounting a story of how he turned up to see his brother one day, waited four hours for him and went home without saying a word. But, despite his lack of words, my father always had the ability to help. I hadn't realised until recently just how much I learned from him, but his ways of coping are mine, nature, the garden, walking. His hoarding. Yes, I'm a hoarder too, but there is a purpose and reason behind my hoarding, just as there was his.

It's been a long time since my father died, and I have to say that my memories of him are faded. I sometimes wonder how many are true memories and how many are established through stories I've been told. But, that's the beauty of my memories of time spent on the allotment; they are solely my memories, nobody else shared them or knew about them. It was a time spent by me with my dad alone, none of my brothers or sisters wanted to come. My father established his love of nature and gardening when he was evacuated from London to a farm during the war. I learned to appreciate these things through my father. He helped me to develop an appreciation for space and solitude. He encouraged me to roam and explore. He taught me how to be self sufficient, in every sense. He taught me that you don't have to shout, rant or rave when you're displeased or upset. But, most of all, he taught me that it's important to respect differences and to protect and help those less fortunate than ourselves.

Considering it’s around thirty years ago that my father and youngest brother died, it is somewhat surprising that I still find the memories of that time hard to deal with. I can say with utmost honesty, that the months of their illnesses were both some of the best and some of the worse moments of my life. It’s hard to explain but, despite the devastation that I still feel at their loss, over the years there has been a transformation in my thinking, and the realisation that what was a great personal tragedy, was also one of the greatest gifts that I was ever given.

I was only eighteen and a complete stranger to the world of hospital visits, pain and responsibility that I was to become acquainted with over the coming months. Newly enrolled at University, I had a phone call to say that my father had collapsed and been rushed into hospital. My mother insisted that there was no need for me to come home and that she was sure that everything would be alright. My father had been ill for some time, complaining of stomach and chest pains, the doctor had even signed him off work for six months, but my father, bored with sitting at home, had insisted on returning. I have always been much better at coping with events if I know exactly what is happening. No matter how bad the circumstances, I worry less about what I know, than with what my imagination conjures up. It would therefore have come as no surprise to my mother that I totally ignored her advice to stay where I was and hopped on the first train back home.

I suppose it was a sign of my immaturity that I didn’t immediately recognise that my mother had somewhat more on her mind than she was admitting to. I saw little of her my first night home as she’d spent most of the evening visiting my father in hospital. On her return, she merely told me that the hospital had performed an emergency operation on my father for what they’d suspected was a perforated ulcer. I had no reason to doubt what she was saying. The next morning she followed her usual routine of taking my youngest brother and sister to school, telling me that she’d only be a few minutes as she wasn’t going into work afterwards.

Some hours later and I was becoming aware that all was not as it should be. My mother hadn’t returned, and being the worry guts that I am, my imagination went into overdrive. Around lunchtime I heard her key in the front door and the squeak of the hinges as it swung open. There have been several moments in my life, when events seem to occur simultaneously in slow motion and high definition. This was one such occasion. To this day, I can still remember all the sensory input that my anxious brain seemed to lap up. There was an absolute stillness, unusual in a house that was home to seven people. I could smell the orange peel that my sister had flung in the kitchen bin as she was leaving for school. Light streamed through the door windows, hitting the glass of the fish tank and bouncing around the small square that we called a hall, and there silhouetted against the halo that it created on the wall, stood my mother, her face gaunt, and for the first and only time in my life, I saw her crying.

My mother is one of those women who rarely show their emotions. She’d had a strict upbringing and had been taught from an early age that public displays of emotion are unacceptable. More than a decade had elapsed between her birth and the birth of her brothers and during her teenage years she’d often been left to care both for them, my Grandmother’s diabetic fits and her Grandfather’s dementia. Throughout her married life she’d shouldered the responsibility of five children, with a full time Managerial job and running the household, whilst my father worked nights and slept during the day. It therefore, came as somewhat of a shock to me to realise that my mother had her vulnerabilities also. I suppose this was one of my rites of passage, the day I realised that I was no longer a child and for the first time in my life faced the responsibilities of adulthood.

My mother had spent her morning trying to sort out her tangled emotions, having been told the previous evening that my father had terminal pancreatic cancer and an estimated three months to live. There was nothing that the Doctors could do to help and they’d left her with the responsibility of deciding whether my father should be told or not. My mother is extremely astute and she confessed that the news was not a surprise to her, she’d feared as much, but never the less, actually being told had left her shaken and lost. Her biggest dilemma was whether or not to tell my father or my brothers and sisters, but together we talked this through and reached a decision.

Going to the hospital with her that afternoon was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Together we told the Doctors that we wished my father to know because we knew that would have been his wish. My mother wanted some time to herself before she faced my father, so I entered the ward alone. Glancing around, I thought at first that he wasn’t there until he called me softly from his bed. Nothing could have prepared me for the way he looked, totally unrecognisable from the father I’d said goodbye to only a few weeks before. Looking back, the greatest kindness the Doctors could have done my father was to have helped him quietly die on the operating table instead of stitching him back up and allowing nature to take its course. But, of course, then, as now, it wasn’t allowed. My father was never to recover, and although, he did come home, he was on a downward track. His pain was never adequately managed and I have vivid memories of him crawling on the floor, moaning in agony. He died exactly three months after his collapse.

It can’t have been easy for my mother, a widow at forty with a young family to care for, but, she put a brave face on and started to piece her life together, not dwelling on the negative, looking for the positive. But, life has a way of kicking you in the teeth when you’re already down and this is just what it chose to do to us. My youngest brother started to complain about pains in his legs. At first, my mother didn’t take much notice, thinking that he was attention seeking and chose to just ensure that he had plenty of attention. Gradually, his complaints became more frequent until they could be ignored no longer and my mother took him to the doctors. At first the doctors weren’t too concerned, but when things didn’t improve they referred him to a rheumatologist who thought he probably had rheumatic fever. Andrew continued to decline until one weekend we couldn’t stop him screaming with pain and our GP decided to sit on the phone for an hour, refusing to budge until the hospital agreed to see him there and then.

There followed another of those moments when time seems to stand still. The trolleys clattered down the corridors, stopping every once in awhile whilst the nurses chatted or dispensed medication, that sterile hospital scent, that to this day makes me feel sick and shaky inside, seemed to grow stronger, and Andrew’s x-ray, prominently displayed on the light box on the wall seemed to expand in my mind until it gained gigantic proportions, pushing out every sensible, rational thought that might once have resided there. Even I, with no medical training or expertise, could quite clearly see the growth surrounding his spine. No words from the doctor were needed. My mother and I just looked at each other and exchanged a look that we both understood and accepted meant that Andrew’s time with us was limited. Even so, when the Doctor’s words confirmed what we already suspected, it was almost incomprehensible at first. The Doctor might just as well been uttering his diagnosis in a foreign language for all we took in.

Facing up to a terminal illness in an adult is hard enough; coming to terms with a terminal illness in a child is so much harder. We were told from the outset that there was virtually no hope. Andrew had a rare form of cancer, an undifferentiated sarcoma that was almost always fatal. They promised to treat him but suggested that he had at most a year to live. Again their prognosis was spot on.

Living with a child with terminal illness helps to focus your attention on the things that really matter. Small, everyday incidents assume vitality out of all proportion to the norm. Life seems to become so much more intense. It was a year full of laughter and tears; fun and despair; hope and anxiety; and at the end of that year, when Andrew died a time to be grateful for the extra year that the hospital had given us with him.

Despite the loss I feel, I really do believe that those 18 months was one of the greatest gifts that I was ever given. It was probably the hardest time of my life, especially since my Grandmother also died in the middle of it. But, despite the sadness, the worry and the hurt, I gained much from it. Life was lived in technicolour with enjoyment being gained from the smallest incident. People were really supportive and kind and we really learned who our friends were. But, most of all I learned to understand myself and what was important to me. Those months were to formulate the person that I am today.