~ Chapter Five ~
A New Family

Life did change for them – and very quickly at that.  Within months of Amy’s passing, Charlie was seen in the company of another woman.  Her name was Elizabeth Holmes, she was twelve years younger than Charlie and she was destined to become his second wife.  The problem was that she was already married and living with her husband, three daughters and a son elsewhere in Margate.  Her maiden name was Quelch, and her mother stayed in the village of St Peters, only a short distance away.

            Not surprisingly, Charlie’s sons disapproved of his relationship with Elizabeth; it is said that they all fell out seriously with him because of it.  Despite their protestations, Charlie continued to woo Elizabeth and was out celebrating with her on Christmas Eve of 1906, as is evident from this account in the East Kent Times of a Margate Police Court case held on the subsequent Boxing Day:
Christmas Squabble
Charge Against Army Pensioner
Woman Stabbed
             A squalid Christmas story of a squabble at Reading Street was unfolded at Margate on Wednesday when Benjamin Towson, an Army pensioner, giving an address at 20, Russell Street, Chatham, was charged with having inflicted bodily harm on Emily Greenway, by stabbing her on the left arm with a pocket-knife, at Reading Street, early on Christmas morning.

             Emily Greenaway, a married woman, living apart from her husband, and residing with her mother at 2, Vine Cottages, Reading Street, said she was at present employed as ironer at a laundry. The previous (Christmas) day, at 12.30 a.m., she was at home with her mother (Mrs. Quelch), Mr. & Mrs. Holmes (her sister and brother-in-law), a Mr. Hewitt and a Mr. Gisby and the prisoner. They were having a sing-song, when the prisoner, whom she had known for some four years previously, got up, and as he passed her aimed a blow at her. She put up her left arm to ward off the blow and found she was bleeding. She called out “He has stabbed me.” and she and her sister ran out of the house. There had been no previous quarrel that evening, and she had given no provocation. When she found she had been stabbed she went straight to the police station.

             Cross-examined by Inspector Palmer: She had broken off her acquaintance with the prisoner last May. She had seen the prisoner the same evening at Margate, when she was with her mother. She had lived with the prisoner for about three years at Woolwich, and, as a matter of fact, she had suggested that he should come down to this part, as he was out of work, and she thought he stood as good a chance of getting work here as there. She had, however, definitely severed her acquaintance with him. She returned from Margate in a fly, with her mother and sister, Mr. Hewitt and a Mr. Gisby.

             Prisoner: You all came home together, and were all drunk.

             Dr. Frank Brightman said on Christmas morning, at 1.30, he was called to the Broadstairs Police Station, where he found and attended to Mrs. Greenaway, who was suffering a slight stab wound to the left wrist. It was quite a superficial cut.

             George Hewitt, 8, Percy Avenue, George-hill, St. Peters, said he was a married man, but was not living with his wife. On Christmas night he was in Margate, and accompanied Mrs. Quelch and her two daughters, with a man named Gisby, to Reading Street. He went into the house to have a drink, and whilst sitting there he saw the prisoner get up and make a lunge at Mrs. Greenaway as he passed her. Hearing that she had been stabbed he rushed at the prisoner, drew him across a table, and took the knife away from him. During the struggle for possession of the knife the prisoner said he would suffer death for her. Probably jealousy was at the bottom of the trouble.

             Prisoner: Did Mrs. Greenaway give you her photo?

             Witness: Yes.

             Prisoner: Was she smoking cigarettes when sitting beside you?

             Witness: Yes, and so were all of them.

             Mrs. Elizabeth Holmes, living at 134, Ramsgate Road, Margate, sister of the prosecutrix, in giving evidence, said she did not know of any grievance whatsoever between her sister and the prisoner.

             F. C. Ashby, K. C. C., stationed at St. Peters, said, at 12.50 on the morning in question, he proceeded to 2, Vine Cottages, Reading Street, where he saw the accused in the kitchen with his coat off. He told him he would be charged on suspicion with stabbing a woman (whose name he did not know) who was at the police station, and he must accompany him (witness) there. Prisoner replied: “I deny anything of the charge, she should not have got with other men.”

             Formally charged, prisoner said he denied that he wounded the woman wilfully. He was sitting there cutting up some twist tobacco, and felt uneasy at Mrs. Greenaway sitting beside Hewitt smoking cigarettes. In the heat of the moment he jumped up and went across to her with the intention of knocking the cigarettes out of her hand. She threw up her arm towards him and the point of the blade of his pocket-knife just caught her wrist.

             Inspector Palmer, in answer to the Bench, stated that the prisoner had served with credit in the Royal Artillery, and had also been in the Reserve.  He had been employed at Woolwich Arsenal, and his discharges had been in every way exemplary. He was the holder of a medal and three clasps.

             The Chairman, in committing accused for trial, said it was regrettable a man like prisoner should have placed himself in such a position for a worthless woman. The Bench offered to accept bail, the prisoner in £25, and one surety to a like amount.
            Perhaps only Charlie and Elizabeth were aware of it, but at the time of that “squalid” event at her mother’s home in St Peters, Elizabeth was already pregnant with Charlie’s first child.  Walter Charles Frederick Holmes, who also became known as Charlie, was born at the beginning of August 1907, marking the start of Charlie’s new family.  A second son, Sydney Ethelbert Gisby Holmes, followed in 1909.
            Although, as this photograph from 2005 shows, there is still a shop at 9 Market Street to this day, no-one knows for sure how long Charlie continued to operate it after Amy’s death.  What is certain is that he was no longer living there in 1911.  By that time, he and Elizabeth had set up a new home together in nearby Addington Street.  Two of Elizabeth’s children, Nellie and Elsie, came to live with them, while her third daughter, Edith, and her son, John, continued to live with their father, Robert Holmes.

            The new Gisby household was a large one, therefore, consisting of Elizabeth and her two daughters; Charlie and his three sons by Amy: George, Stephen and Thomas; and the two latest additions: a young Charlie and an even younger Sydney.
            Of the five older children, Thomas and Elsie were still at school, while George, Stephen and Nellie were all in work, as a pastry cook, a bread baker and a laundry machinist respectively.  Charlie was also working, but sadly no longer as a fruiterer and greengrocer, his occupation at the age of fifty-two having been demoted to that of a bricklayer’s labourer.

            The household grew even bigger in 1913 with the birth of Inez Kathleen Gisby Holmes, Elizabeth’s fourth daughter and Charlie’s first.  Although it was quite obvious who her father was, no name for the father was recorded on Inez’s birth certificate, nor was one recorded on Sydney’s birth certificate.  Why Charlie’s name was omitted in both those cases remains a mystery.  Perhaps it was meant to afford Elizabeth some respectability; after all, she was still married at that time and still going under her married name of Holmes.  Whatever the reason for the omissions, it is highly likely that Inez’s arrival would have added to the tensions running in the household as a result of the rift between Charlie and his three oldest boys over his association with Elizabeth.

            In the same year of Inez’s birth, tensions were also running high in the wider world.  Another “squalid squabble”, this time between the ruling monarchies of Europe, would soon escalate into a conflict that would claim millions of lives and would be dubbed The Great War.  Life was about to change again for Charlie and his family.