Frank Henry Tansley

  Research Notes:

Alan Craxford notes:
As a young man, Frank went to sea visiting the Far East and Australia. On his return to England he became a turner for an engineering factory. At the time of the compilation of the 1939 Directory he was living at 55 Harewood Street with his recently remarried mother and his brother, hosiery warehouseman Leonard Johnstone. About the same time he met 21 year old Mary Bennett. She was a tack sorter for the British United Shoe Corporation. In September 1939 she was living at 9 Prebend Street which was a boarding house owned by Mrs Grace Hammond (20). Frank and Mary were married in the autumn of 1939.
They had one child, a daughter born on May 30th 1941 and named Joyce Rosalind Johnstone. For some reason as yet unclear the marriage faltered. Five year old Joyce was sent to stay with her uncle and aunt (David Bertram and Isabella) in Asfordby Street who subsequently adopted her. She changed her name to Joyce Tansley (a somewhat ironic occurrence because, if Frank Henry had persisted with his birth surname, Joyce would have also started life as a Tansley). Frank's further history is also uncertain. A family memory places them in Overton Road after the Second World War. Indeed, a Mrs FK Johnson is recorded in a 1960 Directory living at 32 Overton Road (21). Frank died in the city in the spring of 1982.
Joyce went to Bridge Street and Moat Road Schools. She met her future husband in one of her classes. After her parents died she sold the house and moved with David Skevington to Rosebery Street. His family had lived in Rolleston Street at the beginning of the Second World War. Joyce and David were married at the Leicester Register Office on April 23rd 1973 witnessed by his parents.

A recent DNA test and results posted on trees on the Ancestry website show an apparent close link (first cousins) between people in Australia and here in the UK. It has been suggested that Frank Henry Johnstone sailed into Brisbane, Australia in 1929 where he met 15 year old Mabel Elsie Rice. They did not marry but Mabel delivered a daughter in 1930 she named Alice Mary Rice. No father's name was entered on the birth record. Mabel married Samuel Henry Skeates in 1934 and Alice adopted this surname prior to the onset of the Second World War.
It has been also suggested that Frank left Australia before he knew of Mabel's pregnancy. However, is it a coincidence that the baby received the same two names as Alice Mary Tansley, his mother's older sister? Is it also possible that news of this association was, at least in part, responsible for the subsequent break up of his own marriage?

Frank had a relationship with Mabel Elsie Rice, daughter of Thomas Joseph Rice and Elsie Alice Tindall, circa 1930. (Mabel Elsie Rice was born on 31 Jan 1914 in Byron Bay, NSW Australia and died on 25 Nov 1976 in Brisbane, Queensland Australia.)