General Chat

She was! When I knew her, she kept a smallholding with cows, pigs and chickens - and every animal came to it's name!
One of her Frauds, was collecting for 'Disaster Relief' - presumably her own!!

When she retired, she went off in her car collecting money for Kidney Research - or did she?? She did - and won an award for the vast amount she collected :-D
She was sure she had kidney disease - she didn't.

My dad would have been 13, and my aunt 11 in 1939. Unfortunately, both are dead now, but I knew my dad was sent to boarding school - until the final demand for fees, then he was removed, his name changed, and he was sent off to another one :-S
I have no idea where either he or my aunt went while gran was incarcerated.
This is the aunt who went on to shoot one of her husbands......

Just had another trawl, she was bound over in 1935 and imprisoned in 1936 for passing fraudulent cheques.

OOoerrrrr !!! She sounds fun ;-)

I've just been doing some searches on FMP, using the 1939 register.
I thought I'd try my dad's mum. I found her, alone, no 'officially closed' sections (my dad and aunt). It must be her, as she gave her name (maiden) plus the name she was known by, ie Mary Anne Smith Jones (not her name)

Then I looked at the top - it was a prison!!!
She gave her 'occupation' as a 'Traveller in Gowns' (sounds audacious enough!) :-D

So, I looked up local newspapers.
A Mary Smith (known as Jones) was arrested in 1939 for 'no fewer than 68 charges of false pretences against her' :-S
It gave the same place of birth as my gran, but gave her age as 29, gran would have been 31 (she always was a bit vain)

I checked for births in the same village, of children with the same name as gran 5years before and 5 years after her birth, just to be sure - none!
The accused had 2 children - as did my gran.

This wasn't her first 'brush with the law' - she'd previously been charged with passing dud cheques.

In passing sentence, the judge said:
"For several years the accused has been associating with undesirable company, especially when associating with a man whose companionship has been instrumental in leading her to this position. He has let her down badly. "