Memories - Saturday 20th October 2018

Vi is staying with us for ten days whilst John and Brenda go to the game reserve with John's brother Sam and wife Rene.

In the quiet of our peaceful life, and around the supper table she started talking about 'long ago.'

"Dad's (William Henry Clarke) mother (Martha Letitia Miles) had a very hard life.  Her husband (Thomas Henry Clarke) divorced her when she went blind.  He went off and married someone else.  Dad's father was a hateful, cruel person.  No one wanted her (my grandmother)...

When Vi was about 15 she was visiting the house where her grandmother lived... she heard moaning from the back room.  When she asked what that was, the person said   "Your grandmother.  Your Dad's father brought her to me to take care of.  I put her in the outside room." said one who too her (not sure who.)  Vi went out to see her.  She found her uncared for.  She went to her father (William Henry Clarke) and said "You had better do something about your Mother!  She is dying there in the outside room.  She has no covering." 

Martha Letitia Miles's father (William Perkins Miles)  used to tie her with a piece of cotton to the table when he went out.  If the cotton was broken when he got back he would thrash her."

"When we went to the family reunion" (organised by Vi's nieces Emily (Jonker) and Jennifer Stonehouse) (their Mother Emily Jane Clarke was Vi's sister) "I saw a picture of him there with his walking stick.  I thought to myself 'If I could get that stick I'd hit you with it for being so cruel to my grandmother."

Another memory...

"My Dad (William Henry Clarke) is buried in the same grave as his mother (Martha Letitia Miles)." in the old Krugersdorp Cemetery."

"My parents were poor but they were very good parents."
(William Henry Clarke and Emily Jane Smith)
"So they did not carry on that cruel legacy?"
No they did not."