‘MY RELATION FOUGHT FOR AUSTRALIA IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR’
Wilfred’s illegitimacy would have brought great shame on the family
Sometime in the early 1910s in a house in one of Hull’s better neighbourhoods, the family of respectable grocer Ben Smith is sitting down to dinner. With them is a visitor, cousin Wilfred. Ben junior, heir to the family business, is showing off. “Their father looked across the table at Ben and said, ‘You thought you were my eldest son, didn’t you? Well, you’re not. He is!’,” pointing to Wilfred. “What Wilfred felt about this revelation, nobody recorded.”
This semi-fictionalised account by Ruth Braithwaite appears in her book (Hutton Press, 1985), one of three that chart her family history. It was what sparked Michael Wrigglesworth’s interest in his Smith relations – and in particular Wilfred, who was the eldest brother of his grandfather Charles. Ruth’s account claims that Wilfred, born out of wedlock, was exiled to Lancashire to be brought up by relatives of
