Susan was 15th of 19 children. She was left with three youngsters of her own when her ex-serviceman husband Fred Smith died after ten years of marriage. In the early 1940s, she moved with her second husband Harry Catlow to Tingewick, Bucks, where they ran The White Hart. Tragedy struck when both her daughter and her grandson’s wife were killed in car crashes ten years apart. I have updated this post (August 2025) to correct assumptions made about some of Susan’s descendants and again in October 2025, when those same descendants shared family photos and documents.

Childhood to first marriage

My 2xgreat grandparents’ 14th child, Mary Ann Susan Stocking, died in January 1896 from Measles. Not quite a year later, on 12 December, Susan Caroline Stocking’s birth was hopefully a happier occasion. She may have been named after my great grandmother, who married Susan’s oldest brother James Aaron Stocking in 1900; perhaps they were already courting by the time this Susan Caroline was born.

15th of 19 children, her first census appearance in 1901 finds her, aged 4, with her parents and 12 siblings at home at 44 Herman Road, Camberwell. She may have attended Rolls Road School like her brothers and sisters, but I have not found any records to support this. Ten years later, in 1911, she is one of four children still at home with their widowed father, James Thomas Stocking, by then living at 18 Beechfield Road, Catford, not far from where I grew up. She has left school, but has no recorded occupation.

This photo of Sue, as she was known, was shared by her descendants Brendan, Valerie and Angela. From her clothes and hairstyle, it may have been taken at the time of her 18th birthday, in 1914, or perhaps in 1917, for her 21st.

In the Jul-Sep quarter of 1919, after WW1 had ended, she married Frederick Thomas Smith. He had served throughout much of the conflict, and the Malaria he contracted while on active service may have contributed to his early death. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Fred Smith’s war

At the time of the 1911 census, Fred, born in Catford in 1896, was living with his Dustman father Alfred James Smith, his mother Harriet and his older brother George Alfred James Smith. He was 15 and working for a Furnishing Company. Their home, at 8 Scrooby Street, Catford, was about a 20 minute walk from Susan’s family home in Beechfield Road.

Military records show that Fred joined the Royal Horse Artillery as a Driver (reg. no. 671044) on 19 January 1915. He was 18 years old. He served for three years 8 months in Egypt and this photo of him, wearing a helmet of the kind used on desert duty, may have been taken there to send back to his sweetheart.

His discharge papers (Ancestry and FindMyPast) dated 28 February 1919 show that he was 23, from London, a Fitter for Cannon & Sons in Civilian life, and had ended the war in 1/1 Hants Battery of the Royal Field Artillery.

He first contracted Malaria in June 1918 in Palestine, and received treatment in military hospitals before being evacuated to England on 11 February 1919.

Extract from Discharge papers of Frederick Thomas Smith (Ancestry)

A marriage cut short

This lovely photo of Fred and Sue, again shared by her descendants, may have been taken at the time of their engagement or even their wedding, as she is displaying her ring finger rather prominently:

A daughter, Dorothy Betty Smith was born in 1920. The 1939 Register shows her date of birth as 1 June that year. The small family appears in the 1921 census, living with Susan’s older sister Elizabeth Bridgetina Evans, known as Lizzie, and her family at 96 Ringstead Road, Catford. Lizzie’s husband Arthur Evans is a Pipe Fitter, and his brother George Evans and brother-in-law Fred Smith are both described as Fitter’s Mates. All three are employed by W G Cannon & Sons, 107 London Road, Southwark.

Sadly, Frederick Thomas Smith died, at the young age of 33, on 12 November 1929 at 96 Ringstead Road.

Extract from digital death entry (GRO)

Fred died of Pneumonia and Valvular Disease of the Heart at the home he shared with his sister-in-law Lizzie, his wife and daughter, who would have been about nine years old. Susan Caroline Smith, his widow, registered the death the following day and he was buried at Lewisham on 28 November. They had been married for just ten years.

A second marriage and move to Tingewick

Four years after her first husband’s death, Susan Caroline Smith married 33 year old bachelor Harry Catlow. They married on 13 May 1933 at St George’s, Perry Hill, Catford according to the transcript of the marriage record at FreeReg. He is described as a Motor Driver, of 18 Beechfield Road, the son of Isaac Catlow, a Hatter. His bride is a widow, aged 36, daughter of James Thomas Stocking, deceased, and of 10 Beechfield Road. The witnesses were Margaret Catlow, and AE Stocking – possibly Susan’s brother Alfred Edmund Stocking. Susan’s daughter, Dorothy Betty Smith, would have been about 13 years old.

They had a daughter, Valerie Catlow, born in Lewisham in 1935 (FreeBMD); electoral registers in 1936 show the family at 11 Beechfield Road. They are still there at the time WW2 broke out, sharing the building with Susan’s sister, Catherine Alice, known as Kate or Kit, and her first husband Sydney H Ledger. Harry Catlow is working as an HGV Driver and there is a redacted record which may be that for young Valerie, who would have been four years old. Also living with them are Susan’s daughter from her first marriage, Dorothy Betty Smith, now aged 19, who was working as a Clerk for a Newspaper Company. Robert Leslie Piner, a Boot and Shoe Warehouseman, who Dorothy would later marry, is also at no.11 Beechfield Road.

Next door, at no. 13, are another of Sue’s sisters, Lavinia Monk, and her family.

On 27 March 1940, The Lewisham Borough News carried a photo and article relating to the wedding of Christina Alice Turner and J G Osborne, at St George’s, Perry Hill. Young Valerie Catlow was one of the bridesmaids, and the reception was held at 96 Ringstead Road, Catford, “the home of the bride’s aunt”. The bride was a member of her mother’s extended family, the daughter of Susan’s sister Annie Louise; see her story for more information about the wedding, and a photo.

Whether the family was still living in London at that time, or had already moved to Tingewick in Buckinghamshire, I do not know. Susan’s older sister Kate Hall (born Catherine Alice Stocking) had moved there some time in the 1940s with her husband and family. The Buckingham Advertiser and Free Press frequently published articles naming Susan and Harry’s daughter Valerie Catlow as a member of Miss Dandy Robertson’s dance school, performing both song and dance at village events. The earliest I have found at FindMyPast is dated 9 May 1942, which suggests that they had moved to Tingewick by then.

In August 1949, it carried a notice stating that H. Catlow, late of Sunny Cot and now at The White Hart, Tingewick, was resuming a car hire service (see left).

It seems that, just as Kate Hall’s husband Charles Hall took on the license of The Crown at Tingewick, so her sister Susan Caroline Catlow’s second husband Harry Catlow took on the license for another pub in the village, which he held for 16 years. In 1963, licensing magistrates refused to renew the license as the Brewery had not kept the premises in good repair.

Susan Caroline Catlow died in Tingewick in September 1971. The Buckingham Advertiser and Free Press carried a notice of her funeral, which was held at Oxford Crematorium. She was said to be a member of the Tingewick Evergreen Club, and to have left a husband and one daughter, Mrs Valerie Bradley. No mention is made of her eldest daughter Dorothy, who had died in 1968 in tragic circumstances (see below).

Susan’s widower, Harry Catlow, died the following year, on 6 July 1972. He is described as having been an active member of the Tingewick Evergreens (other newspaper reports show that he was also involved in the Royal British Legion). His time at The White Hart as licensee for 16 years is also mentioned. He left a daughter [Valerie], four grandchildren (I have only found records relating to three) and two great grandchildren.

The next generations: More lives cut short

Susan Caroline’s daughter from her first marriage, Dorothy Betty Smith, married Robert Leslie Piner in Lewisham in the last quarter of 1939, just as WW2 was getting underway (marriage index at FreeBMD). When The 1939 Register was compiled, they were both living with her mother and stepfather Harry Catlow at 11 Beechfield Road; Dorothy’s surname is shown as Smith (later crossed out with Piner, and then Nolan, added), so the couple appear to have married after 29 September, the date of the Register.

It is possible that they separated not long after the marriage. FreeBMD birth index records show two children with surname Piner and mother’s maiden name Smith: a daughter in the Jul-Sep quarter of 1942, Willesden district, and a son, Sep-Oct 1944 in North Bucks, which includes Tingewick. These led me to assume that these were Dorothy and Robert Piner’s children.

Other family trees on Ancestry.co.uk feature a photo said to be of Robert Leslie Piner and a daughter with the same name as the birth entry, possibly on her wedding day. But I have not verified that she was Dorothy and Robert’s daughter, nor found any further information about her marriage that might corroborate the names of her parents, or hints of where and with whom she grew up.

One of Susan Catlow’s descendants (her great grand daughter Angela) made contact via this blog and was kind enough to correct my wrong assumption in relation to her father, the son born in 1944. His birth certificate names his father as John Joseph Nolan, and this ties in with a marriage entry on FreeBMD for Dorothy B Piner and John J Nolan in the first quarter of 1948, in North Bucks. There is also an entry for Robert L Piner and Gladys M Beaven in the second quarter of the same year, in Willesden.

Dorothy and Robert may have had to wait for a divorce to be finalised before they were both free to remarry, but I have not found any record of divorce proceedings, few of which are available online.

I have not found any electoral registers or other records to show where the Piners and Nolans spent the intervening years, but I did find a shocking accident that took place 20 years after Dorothy and John Nolan married.

Dorothy Betty Nolan, aged 48, was killed in a crash between a minivan being driven by her husband, John Joseph Nolan, and an American USAF Staff Sergeant. Tragically, she was thrown out of the van on impact, suffering two fractures of her skull, and died at the scene. Her husband and the other driver were both injured. The American was later charged and convicted of driving dangerously and well over the alcohol limit. The Nolans’ home address was said to be Stowe View, Tingewick (various newspaper reports from the Buckingham Advertiser and Free Press, FindMyPast).

Click on the image left (21 June 1968) for a larger view.

History sadly repeated itself just after Christmas of 1979, when her daughter-in-law was killed in another crash. Newspapers (FindMyPast) report that she was a front seat passenger in a car driven by her husband when they were involved in a head-on collision with another car. She was 31. Their two young daughters were also in the car and suffered minor injuries.

Susan’s daughter with her second husband, Valerie Catlow, “a popular member of Miss Dandy Robertson’s troupe of dancers”, married Charles Robert Lloyd Bradley on 25 March 1956. An extensive account of their wedding in Tingewick from the Buckingham Advertiser and Free Press notes that the groom had previously served in the Royal Navy for seven years, including a stint in Singapore, and was now on the Reserve list. He is said to be employed at ‘Westcott’, which was a nearby village, the site of the Rocket Propulsion Establishment, although I do not know if that is where he worked. His bride was employed by the Guildford House Laundry, and was described as the daughter of Mr and Mrs H Catlow, of The White Hart public house.

She wore a dress of white net over taffeta, with headdress of lillies and narcissi. She was attended by her sister Mrs Dorothy Nolan as matron of honour, and her cousin, Miss Sandra Dunphy. A page, Master Paul Stocking and a groomsman, Mr B Stocking, were described as cousins of the bride, although I haven’t been able to identify which branch of the Stocking family they hail from.

Valerie has a treasure trove of family photos and documents and was kind enough to share them via her niece Angela.

By happenstance (a road closure and diversion) I found myself in Tingewick earlier this year, when travelling from Swindon to Lincolnshire. A slow drive along the main street passed the Old White Hart, now a smart-looking bay-windowed private house, and Buckingham Street, higher up the hill, where several of the extended family once lived.