Dorothy Isabel Cattley - my paternal great grandmother

aka Dolly the bolter

I never met my great grandmother Dorothy as she died before my father was born. I have heard stories about her and have several photos and even some newspaper clippings about her.

Dorothy Isabel Cattley was born on 4 March 1891 in St Petersburg, Russia to Oswald Cattley and his wife Margaret. The family was part of the English merchant circle. The second youngest of 10 siblings there were 18 years between the oldest (Margaret born 1874 and Elsie born 1892).

There isn’t much available about her childhood however the family moved back to England in the early 1900s. I have a lovely photo of them all together which I have labelled. I’m not sure if this is in England on a trip back to visit family or somewhere in St Petersburg. The background shows rhododendrons which could be anywhere and she looks between 7 and 9 dating the photo to around 1898-1900.

Her mother, Margaret Sophia Handyside, died in 1908 in when Dorothy was just 17. I think the photo below must have been taken some time around then or maybe a bit earlier.

The 1911 census has Dorothy (20), Elsie (18) and Nora (27) lodging together at 28 Horbury Crescent, Kensington, London in the household of a William Kettlewell.

First Marriage and children

I don’t know how my great grandparents met but they were both based in London so maybe at an event somewhere. Dorothy married John Berkeley de Fonblanque on 4 January 1913 at Saint Matthias in Earls Court.

On the certificate it states she is 22, I have her as 21 in my research and I believe this may be due to the differences between the Roman and Russian (or Julian) calendars at the time which was around 13 days behind but this has yet to be confirmed.

I have their marriage licence (all beautifully folded up in an envelope - the photo shows it unfolded below). Note the date on the licence (31 December 1912) isn’t the marriage date.

Dorothy was pregnant when they married as my grandmother Pamela appeared in July 1913, followed by Sheila in March 1915 and Marion Elizabeth (Betty) in 1920.

Life in London

Using the electoral rolls on Ancestry I found her in several different locations between 1919 and 1928

• 1918 54 St Mark’s Road, Kensington

• 1919-22 58 St Mark’s Road, Kensington

• 1924-8 39a Emperor’s Gate, Kensington

They all appear on the 1921 census together living at 58 St Mark Road, Kensington.

It was not a happy marriage and John divorced her for adultery with Allan Leslie in 1928. The record is available at Kew however it has not been digitised.

Second marriage

Dorothy went on to marry Allan Leslie in 1932. He was Scottish, divorced from his first wife, and from a well connected family. This marriage seemed no better than the first one. John, her first husband, kept scrap books filled with newspaper cuttings.

Dolly the bolter

Two cuttings from April 1934, shown below, name her as Nina Leslie (and I have no idea who the young girl is in the photograph - it’s not my grandmother or her sisters). There were family rumours that she miscarried of twins but I have no way of verifying this.

What’s going on here?

In 1936-7 Dorothy and John de Fonblanque are both registered as living at 85 Linden Gardens.

From what my grandmother said, her father supported Dorothy financially (despite them no longer being married). I have no way of verifying this was true. Did they get back together?

1939

On the 1939 register she is recorded as Dorothy Leslie working as a club assistant at 31 Newton Road, Paddington,W2 with her brother Patrick Cattley. There is no record of where she is actually living however she states she was still married.

Allan Leslie is shown as being in the Metropolitan Police on the 1939 register and at 162 Old Brompton Road.

Death

Dolly was only 50 when she was killed by a bomb in the blitz in 1941 at 2-3 Clarges Street, Mayfair.

The heaviest raid of the Blitz, on 10-11 May 1941, took a more serious toll in Mayfair. At 12.50am on 11 May a high explosive bomb fell on 1-3 Clarges Street W1, just off Piccadilly. At No 2, Carr's Hotel was demolished and eight casualties reported, of which five were confirmed fatalities. In the subsequent rescue operation, firemen played water onto walls in an adjacent property to prevent flames reaching a trapped woman (later pulled out uninjured). At 2.15am nos 20-24 Park Lane (the site of today's Park Lane Hilton Hotel) were damaged and Shepherd's Market and Hill Street W1 were gutted by incendiaries. At 3.10am, a parachute mine destroyed four floors of Mayfair Court on Stratton Street W1. Eight casualties were reported and BBC staff trapped in its basement were successfully extracted.

She appears in the list of WWII civilian deaths for Wesminster in 1941.

Burial

She was buried as Nina Dorothy Leslie in West Brompton Cemetery on 28 May 1941 however they have her age wrong in the register. It says she was 45 when she was 50.

Summary

Creating this bio made me aware of several holes in Dorothy’s story and brought up contradictions. Also finding her under different names and it raised the question - did she and John get back together again?