Born the eldest child to John Gale Hellier, a stoker in the Royal Navy, and his wife, Mary Ann (nee Congdon) in 1878, Kate Louisa Hellyer had a difficult start in life. She was 12 when her mother died and was listed on the 1891 census as a 13 year old housekeeper in her father’s home, no doubt looking after her four younger siblings who were also residing there. Three others were living elsewhere including her youngest brother, John, who had been born a few months before his mother’s death and had been adopted.
Kate had only just turned 17 when her father died in 1895 and she was further separated from her younger sisters when they were sent to various orphanages.
In March 1897, she had an illegitimate child, Reginald William Hellyer, in the Devonport Workhouse. This must have been a frightening and awful time for her; she had no parents to lend her support and, it would appear, no other family members willing or able to help. Reginald was fostered out at 4 months old to a couple named William James Parkes and his wife, Mary Ann (nee McCarthy) and placed into Barnado’s when he was 9 after William Parkes died.
Kate married Thomas Hambly at the beginning of 1899 and her next child, Thomas John V Hambly, was born around the same time. Kate’s first husband died during 1900, probably a short while before the birth of a daughter, Hilda Louisa Hambly, and the following year she married John Stone. Kate had several more children by John and the 1911 census shows that her two children by Thomas Hambly also lived in the same household in Laira, Plymouth.
John Stone was a railway signalman and it makes perfect sense that the family should live in Laira as there is a railway depot there to this day. Kate might have lived there for the remainder of her life. She was definitely in Laira in 1918 when her youngest sister, Jane, died of influenza and pneumonia in her home at 1 Garfield Villas. The family were also recorded at the same address in 1921.
AI Generated image depicting Kate nursing her sister, Jane.
(No actual photographs of the individuals are available to the author.)
My mum never met her Great-aunt Kate but she is aware she lived in Laira because my mum’s Auntie Lily (Lily Alice Geake) used to visit Kate. Lily, Kate’s niece, bought my parents an iron for their wedding in 1959 with the wrong voltage because she had assumed the voltage for Plymstock, where my mum and dad were going to live, was the same as for Laira which was only a few miles away.
In 1931, Kate was widowed for a second time and she died in Plymouth in about 1955.
