RootsChat.Com

Hi folks and, in particular, Carol., 

Some of you are old friends who I’ve met before, there are some new ones among you who I have not read before.  No one among you will know that I suffered an horrendous heart attack last June – the reason you have not heard from me since then.  This involved 2 operations including the first unsuccessful one to repair a hole in my heart.  The second was almost successful – so I’m left with a heart with a slight weepage left to right ventricle.  I was not expected to live but miraculously I survived thanks to a wonderful team of heart specialists in Leeds.
Now back in the fray I am still concerned in finding the details for my father- in- law , William Percy Collins, and his siblings in the Hull Seamen’s Orphan Home.  He came out of the orphanage aged 14 to start work as a butcher’s boy on 11 May 1909.  His father, Henry Collins, a coastguard at Barton-on-Humber had died suddenly with an embolism, aged only 42, on 16July 1904.   His wife, Elizabeth Ann Collins (née Robins), must have been unwell but lived on in Hull until 1914 when she committed suicide by hanging (on 17 March 1914).  The coroner’s report was “of unsound mind”.  My wife, Lydia, and I were always told in the family that Elizabeth Ann died of breast cancer – that, of course might have been contributing factor to her suicide.
At the end of June 2010 I had arranged to come to Hull with a friend to visit the new heritage centre in Sutton at the old school (I lived in Sutton as a lad until His Majesty demanded my Service.  My own grandfather was a pupil in the school and I have his leaving report dated 1890 in my possession.  Thereafter beyond the age of 18 I never went back to live in Hull though my family was still there until 15 years ago when my parents died in their 90’s).  My heart attack and the following 4 months in hospital put an end to visiting places for some time.     I cannot now say when I’m likely to get over to Hull as I am not driving yet, and also  following heart surgery an embolism in the retinal artery to my right eye has completely demolished the retina of that eye.  I have another laser eye operation in Leeds on Friday of this week.    I should be able to drive on my one good eye though but it will be many months before I get to that.
Finally are there any readers who had relatives in the Seamen’s Orphan Home with match the dates of my father-in-law.?

Good wishes to all of you who read this,
Bernard

Thank you so much for your v. kind thoughts, Carol.  I do appreciate them.   

Lydia having to go into N.H. so suddenly has been quite a psychological shock to me, I have to admit - more than ever I had expected.  It wasn't as though this was unexpected but I had hoped it would be into 2010 before she had to go.

I now have nothing left to come to Hull for except to look up things, my aged aunt (97) having died earlier in April.  However I can have look up all the family graves at St James' Sutton as well when I come through to see the Sutton Family Research Centre.  I wonder whether they would like a copy of my grandfather's school report from Sutton School about 1891.  Maybe they will say it was too bad a report - I certainly would not have like to have had it to my name!!   However he excelled himself as a sprinter - North of England Sprint Champion i the 1890's - so he did have ability - physically!

My best wishes and thanks,
Bernard

Incidentally you'll find us in the Sutton, St James' registers, married on 31/08/1957.

Hi  again Carol,

As I sent the last post I noted that you have a Perry in  your listing of names.  Perry in your tree is not by any chance associated with the Brain family in the Bristol/Bath area is it?  If it is we are probably distantly linked somehow.  One of the Brain branches went to the Cheshire/Liverpool area.  My mother went to one of their funerals there in the 1920's; her uncle's. 

All the best,
Bernard

Hi Kim,

I don't quite understand why you made your last comment.   Was it about my use of the term "dead-end"?  Maybe the following will help.  The facts are simply these. 

My wife, while attending an extramural writing course at Hull University about 1977/8, tried to obtain information while she was in Hull about her father who had been in the Seamen's Orphans Home about 1904-1909.   She was informed then that there appeared to be no records available; this was the "dead-end".   It was suggested to her that personal records might have been destroyed in the air raids on Hull during WW2 (1940 -1944).  Since then, and right until last week, I have never pursued our quest further in this area - but then I found these current contributions about the Hull Seamen's Orphans Home on Rootschat.  This has opened up a possible new avenue for us to find out something about William Percy Collins, her father.

William Percy Collins, died in 1961 (unfortunately my wife was even unable to go to Hull to attend her father's funeral because she giving birth to our first child in Edinburgh at exactly the same time).  I knew him well after 1954.  Surprisingly, or possibly not surprisingly, we can never now know about his life , and also that of his brother and sister, at the Home.   Although I learned a great deal about my father-in-law between 1954 and his death in 1961 he said NOTHING at all about his early life in those years between 1904  and 1909.   Moreover neither of his daughters knew anything except that he was an orphan in that home when he was a boy.    His son (the eldest of his three children) died in 1974 (Parkinson's disease); he might have known more than his two sisters!

Regards,
Bernard