EVELYN MASIE LAWRENCE (Bayliss) March 1926 by her daughters ANGELA & ELAINE
Angela: Mum and Dad always said they didn’t have to get married. Our Mum first came to England as a war bride from New South Wales. She married a local man living in Newcastle. He was in the Navy. All she has ever said about that marriage was that he wasn’t a nice man, so she left him. We think she must have agreed to be a war bride to make a new life for herself. Her parents died when she was seven, so she was raised by her Grandmother. She had two children that were put in to care; taken off her because of her young age. She was always seen as the Black sheep of the family and made to feel that way. Looking back at her life, it seemed that no one had any understanding of how a child suffers emotionally after losing their parents, so it is not surprising she came to England and saw it as a way of starting over again. She shut it away, hid for near enough forty odd, fifty odd years. Her only brother came on visits. There was a curiosity about how she was getting on with Dad and just wanting to know that she was happy and that things were going ok for her. He kept the ties open with her grandmother until her death. When her brother died in a train accident, Mum was really torn. He was such a lovely person, he wanted to know everything, and he was really close with Dad. She didn’t want to keep in contact with what little family she had back in Australia probably because of all she had been through. But when her brother died, she went over. Dad paid for her. Leaving Newcastle, she came to stay with a friend in Manchester who was dating a Black man. One
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